The Motley Fool is a top multimedia financial investment services company based in Alexandria, VA.

What they needed:

• A complement to the Interactive Onboarding Process/Story Archive we created for them
• Increased engagement with the employee handbook
• Ease of updating the employee handbook
• Employer branding and increased organizational transparency

They have been widely recognized as a great place to work — and their employee handbook, The Fool Rules, was already a much more employee-friendly read than a typical legalese-filled handbook.

The Fool Rules had always been a printed booklet, so any changes to a policy required a new print run. The Motley Fool is big on transparency and had always mailed the booklet to anyone who requested it with the hopes of getting inspiration from it. They sought a way to increase its public availability and easily make changes when necessary.

Our Solution: What we Created

• Interactive, web-based employee handbook
• Policies explained through employee stories, video, comics, and interactive elements

Armed with our story-focused methodology, we conducted a series of eight interviews of Fools who shed light on the variety of interesting policies at the Fool. Drawing on the stories uncovered in those interviews, we developed an interactive employee handbook, which adds color to the company’s policies—and the back stories that account for their existence—using video, custom illustrations, comic strips and clickable content.

Uses and Impact

Onboarding — New hires at The Motley Fool click through the interactive version of The Fool Rules to become familiar with the Fool’s policies. New Fools will get an early sense of the culture of the organization by learning why The Motley Fool has the unique policies that it has.

Employer Branding — The Fool Rules also doubles as an excellent piece of employer branding and recruitment marketing content. Putting the handbook online has powerful implications when it comes to connecting with an external audience. A lot of the web traffic goes from the handbook to the careers page, because candidates want to learn more. This is a great example of repurposing culture content.

Scaling Culture — The Fool Rules is a celebration of The Motley Fool’s culture. The use of storytelling in the new digital document will make it more engaging and its important information more easily retained.