This week, the 36-page onboarding document for the production company for YouTuber Mr. Beast’s leaked.
- In many ways, Mr. Beast is not a people-first leader – he’s known for a tough work environment and is currently the defendant in a class-action lawsuit regarding the treatment of participants in his reality TV show.
Why it matters: Ignoring some of the particular cultural practices he discusses in the onboarding document, the guide offers an impressive level of clarity and transparency of expectations to the onboarding employee at Mr. Beast's company.
- Tom Hammer (Former Head of People + Talent at Bird and current People Advisor at a16z) said it best, “Lots of interesting chatter on the mrbeast onboarding doc leaked this weekend, but I bet 99% of startup employees would KILL to have this level of clarity on what their founder expects of them.”
Backdrop: If you’re a People leader (or really if you’ve ever been an employee), you know that company onboarding docs tend toward vague platitudes about culture that may or may not actually reflect the company's day-to-day life.
- Very rarely do company handbooks actually serve as an operational guide to navigating the company culture.
On the other hand, the Mr. Beast onboarding guide's example-filled approach gives the employee a clear understanding of what success looks like on the production team and what’s required to achieve it.
My favorite illustration of how the company values are brought to life in the document is the discussion of the priorities (prios).
- In almost all jobs, an employee succeeds or fails by their ability to prioritize the limitless tasks in front of them in the way that leadership wants.
- But few companies actually offer the employee a structure or examples to guide them toward how to navigate the limitless tasks sitting in front of them.
- In the Mr. Beast onboarding doc, it’s clear. Your prios come before everything.
- But instead of just offering the value 'Nothing comes before your prios' and moving on, Mr. Beast shows what that looks like and how serious the value is.
.png%20.png?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=People%20Ops%20Community-Identity-final_Weekly_Full%20Lockup%20(white).png%20.png)
.png?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=HRIS%20(3).png)