Thursday, May 31, 2012

I've been meaning to post about this for awhile, and teaching the unit on U.S. Employment Law to my summer students gives me the perfect opportunity. Earlier this spring, the employee handbook from Valve, a gaming company, was floating around the blogs and twitter. It's unusual in that it doesn't talk about the kinds of things we're all used to seeing in handbooks--no policies (exactly), description of benefits (in the usual sense), or disciplinary structure. Instead, it's an introduction into a workplace culture that at least portrays itself as flat (no hierarchy), with work driven by each worker and projects developing organically. The handbook is useful for a couple of things--first as a breath of fresh air, it shows alternative work arrangements might look like. Also, I think I have some serious job envy, although in a lot of ways, it describes what our jobs as law profs are like. Second, it would be a great platform to talk about all of those contract issues that employee handbooks usually raise (sort of the anti-Hoffmann-LaRoche handbook that Rachel Arnow-Richman, Denver, uses to teach transactional skills in employment law), or other issues, like the fact that the figures and cartoons of employees show almost no women, and no people of color, male or female. Anyway, here's the pdf version: Download Valve_Handbook_LowRes

MM

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/laborprof_blog/2012/05/employee-handbook-version-2awesome.html