Abstract

Founded in February 2004, Facebook helped people communicate with their friends, family, and coworkers. Its core applications included Photos, Events, Videos, Groups, Pages, Chat, personal messages, Wall posts, and Status Updates. Based in Palo Alto, California, Facebook had five headquarters worldwide. As of March 2011, the social networking site had about 661.5 million active users worldwide and this figure was expected to reach the 700 million mark by the end of May 20116. The company had about 2000 employees spread across twelve countries. According to Facebook, users from more than 180 countries were members on the site and about 70% of them were from outside the US. The top five countries in terms of number of Facebook users were the US, Indonesia, the UK, Turkey and France. The company’s internal culture was open and transparent and was based on small teams working together and building innovative things. Facebook offered numerous perks and benefits to its employees. Paid vacation days, free food (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and transportation, employee benefit premiums, cash for new parents, laundry services, and photo processing services were some of the perks of working at Facebook. In addition, Facebook employees got Paid Time Off and gym membership discounts. According to some analysts, employees were drawn to Facebook not just because of the perks offered but also because there was a culture of openness to which the employees soon became addicted....This case study is about the corporate culture at Facebook Inc. (Facebook), which is considered to be one of the fastest growing companies in the world. The culture at Facebook was open and transparent with no hierarchies. The company was well known for its ‘hip geek culture’ fostered by its founder Mark Zuckerberg. He tried to attract the best talent in the industry by creating a fun environment wherein employees had the opportunity to work on the best projects with a sense of openness. The case discusses the various aspects of its culture including the benefits and perks offered to employees. These included paid vacation days, free food and transportation, employee benefit premiums, cash for new parents, laundry services and photo processing services, etc. The case describes how Facebook evolved from a small company to a global corporate icon with thousands of employees. In order to meet growing business needs, Facebook opened new offices globally. However, some analysts felt that balancing growth and preserving its corporate culture was a big issue for Facebook as the company was expanding rapidly and was preparing to shift is global headquarters to a more corporate location.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Study the corporate culture at Facebook and examine its key elements
• Understand the relationship between culture and innovation
• Understand the importance of transparency and openness in an organization
• Analyze the various work life benefits offered by Facebook to its employees and how these contributed to its becoming an employer of choice
• Analyze the challenges before Facebook in preserving its culture and helping it evolve as it continues to grow at a fast pace

Keywords

Corporate culture, Work environment, Best place to work, Innovation, Competitive advantage, Self-sustaining culture, Engineering Bootcamp program, Landing Teams, Facebook