Mumsnet: Our Culture
Our Mission
We make parents’ lives easier
�By helping them make the best decisions
Our Vision
We want to be the first choice for online advice for parents & parents-to-be and the number one choice for brands wanting to understand, reach and engage with parents
Our promise to users
1. Honest - We are truthful, straightforward and tell it like it is
2. Useful - We focus on solving parents’ problems
3. User first - We listen, engage and put our users’ interests first
4. Fearless - We speak truth to power and admit our mistakes
5. Fun - We don’t take ourselves too seriously
Our Values
Our values aren’t just something we put on the wall*
We ask our staff to hold us to them And we recruit, promote and release people based on these values.
Here’s what they mean...
*In fact, they’re not even on the wall
1. Collaborative.
We are team players and believe that collaboration leads to better results.
We only want to hire great people
Great people work here and they want to work with other great people
But they have to be great people who share our values
We are not a perfect fit for everyone, and not every great person is a perfect fit for us
We only want team players
When we’re hiring, we’d rather leave a hole than hire an arsehole
What being a team player means:
Computer says “yes”
Eg If we need to tell a colleague,
“We can’t do it that way”, we follow up with: “What if we tried X instead?”
We have team bonuses because we believe we serve our users and clients better by working together.
If you’re motivated by individual bonuses, this may not be the place for you
Ultimately, like Aristotle, we believe that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts
Together, everyone achieves more.
2. Flexible.
We are solutions-driven and pragmatic.
We don’t like micro-management
People at Mumsnet work towards goals, not a list of things to do
Each team sets its own quarterly goals - derived from the company’s overall strategic targets
All team members are involved in this
We love self-starting, entrepreneurial people who spot a problem and then solve it
If you need written instructions on how to do all aspects of your job, this may not be the place for you
We don’t like unnecessary meetings, processes or rules
If you spot any, we want you to help us get rid of them
“Because we always have”...
...is never the answer to the question “Why are we doing it this way?”
We always want people to question how we do things
And if there’s an alternative that makes more sense, we change it
Most of us work flexibly in one way or another
We're open to discussing what works for you - as long as it also works for your team and the job gets done. Likewise we may expect you to flex up occasionally if and when the job requires.
Working for Mumsnet means never having to pretend you don’t have a family or other commitments
And we promise never to keep you away from the school assembly (unless you want to be kept away).
3. Straightforward.
We do the right thing, even when no one’s looking and give honest feedback delivered kindly.
We put purpose before profit
We’ve turned down hundreds of thousands of £s from companies who don’t make parents’ lives easier
We put our users at the heart of what we do
If you want to work for a company where it’s all about the bottom line, this may not be the place for you
Feedback, delivered with kindness, is how we learn and improve
We’re not afraid to give it or ask for it
We ask colleagues: “What could I be doing better?”
...and ask ourselves: “What feedback have I not yet shared with others?”
Our probation period is a “test it out” period, to see if it works for you and for us
If not, either side can call it quits with no hard feelings.
There’s no corporate jet and definitely no reserved parking spaces for senior managers
Your voice is important regardless of how junior or senior you are
We don’t have set career paths
There are many different things you can do here, and if you’re good you could be promoted fast - but there’s no grade-by-grade promotion track
That means that sometimes, in some teams, there may not be enough growth opportunities for everyone
And that’s ok - if your experience at Mumsnet helps you get a bigger job elsewhere, we’re happy about that
4. Driven.
We work hard, take ownership and follow through
We expect each other to work hard
Research has shown that effort is twice as important as talent in achieving goals
We work hard because our mission is important
We’re here to make parents’ lives easier - and that informs everything we do
We’re ambitious
We want to be the best we can be at everything we do
We take ownership
We see our projects through to the end and we don’t pass the buck when things get hard
5. Lean.
We have an agile, test and learn approach, and we treat company money like our own
We take an agile approach to everything
We test - and if something’s not working, we change our plan
We’re not afraid to make mistakes - mistakes are how we learn
You won’t be fired for making one - in fact, we don’t believe it is a mistake if we’ve learned from it
We believe learning is important
And we set aside time every fortnight where we all “drop everything and learn” on our e-learning platform
We treat company resources like our own
We look for good value in every penny (and minute) we spend
We don’t sell with expense accounts. We give brands a unique opportunity to understand, reach and engage with our users.
If you need an expense account to make a sale, this may not be the place for you.
And then there’s one final thing…
We believe in a work environment that encourages friendship and fun
We hire great people who are interesting and interested, so people make real friends here
We believe in having fun together
From yoga at lunchtime...to Wine O’Clock...to Shuffleboard and Table Football and Rounders competitions...to our monthly amazing socials…to our annual Pub Quiz, we make time to relax and have fun.