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Countable Ops Manual

Transparency Policy

Purpose

Documents the reasons for Countable’s dedication to transparency.

Scope

Covers the general transparency policy, its driving justification, and some caveats and examples.

Transparency Policy

There are data indicating transparency is important: “90% of job seekers say that it’s important to work for a company that embraces transparency.” (Glassdoor U.S. Site Survey, January 2016; *Updated from 96%, Glassdoor survey, October 2014).

Our transparency policy is, any information that we don’t have specific and serious concerns about being released is to be made public.

Further Reasons for Transparency

  1. To avoid secrets. Unnecessary secrets have a cost to the organization because everyone must focus on managing information access rather than other business activities (which create net value unlike hiding information).
  2. Trust. Between any parties working with or within the Company.
  3. Alignment and Clarity. We will be incentivized to design processes which benefit everyone. And failing this, at least expectations will be laid out.
  4. Learning. To help us learn from others, and others to learn from us.
  5. Experimentation. An experiment on practical corporate transparency limits.

Caveats

  1. As mentioned elsewhere, the need to be clear about what information is Confidential and careful it’s not released along with everything else.
  2. The cost of publishing everything on public channels. This should be mitigated by automating by convention and tools.
  3. The cost of ensuring what’s released is clear and interpreted how intended.

Examples of Things We Release Publicly

  • Our operations manual
  • Financial and legal templates
  • (soon) Our corporate subreddit which acts as an advisory board
  • All our brand materials / assets for our company
  • Most (hopefully one day all) of our own source code

Exceptions (Sensitive Data)

We’ll note specific exceptions here, where data is considered sensitive and the minimum necessary people should have access.

  • Passwords to shared accounts
  • Clients’ information (code, correspondence, documentation), or information about clients which they don’t already have public.
  • information on, or belonging to, any users of systems we develop.
  • Employees’ details other than their name, job description, photo, and things they’ve chosen to release.