Supporting inclusive and effective team culture using an organizational culture handbook

Leaders can help support their system, district, or schools by creating an organizational culture handbook.

A culture handbook is a living, breathing, authentic snapshot of a school or system’s culture that captures values, behaviors, and helpful artifacts. Typically, culture is implicitly communicated among teams, but in a remote environment, a handbook goes a long way to call out the details of mission, values, goals, and culture – removing the guesswork and bolstering inclusivity.

Use this in order to…

• Provide new staff with a jumpstart on what your school or system values and how staff members work together.

• Demonstrate commitment to creating a strong internal culture.

• Make values and behaviors visible, explicit, and inclusive.

Key Components

• Clearly define your school or system’s mission and the impact you want to have on students.

• A values statement acts as a guide for how the organization gets work done.

• Share goals and priorities so that staff can make independent decisions that align with your strategy

• Capture your school or system’s unique culture with values and traditions that are true to your team (and not adopted just because they sound good).

Considerations for Remote Implementation

• Include content about what makes a remote culture unique and how you will leverage intentional and thoughtful remote practices to improve inclusiveness and equity.

• Integrate the handbook into your onboarding practices so that new staff can start to understand your culture and supporting practices from the beginning.

• Insert your values. Craft your culture handbook around your school or system’s values and leverage them to be the driving force behind the cultural routines and procedures you prioritize.

The Remote DEI Collective was a collaborative group led by The Learning Accelerator (TLA), and brought together participants from remote organizations to address the challenges of advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in remote environments. This strategy has been adapted from the Remote DEI Collective’s toolkit, which was built to offer resources to improve remote culture and practices, in order to better suit leaders and educators working for schools that offer virtual and hybrid learning options to students.