@Dipali Pallai These are the the different things that you need to unpack here: We define a Culture manifesto as a codified culture document (what’s important in the company, how it will operate, what kinds of behaviors help you progress in the company and what gets you fired) - this is a short document that is optimized for memorability and used in hiring and spreading the larger message. A culture handbook is a more detailed document which lists expected behaviors at all levels, along with examples. This helps converting the culture manifesto document more concrete and actionable. Employees can use this document as a guide to how to behave in the company. Playbooks are recommended workflows for different functions in the company like hiring, onboarding, performance management system, feedback, communication etc. which is a triangulation of three things - the culture manifesto that the key stakeholders have agreed upon, the best practices and how that workflow has been done over the years. The reason for not going with the best practice is that sometimes it may just be too different from what people are used to and thus, they’ll not switch. You want to incorporate best practices but need to be practical as well so that the change actually takes place and is sustainable. This is also to take into account the important thing you bring up in your question - the traditional Indian company framework. Most of the literature around industry best practices, especially on remote/hybrid work comes from a Western/ American standpoint. That is very different from the Indian context e.g. candid feedback will come naturally in an American context but not so much in a traditional Indian context. While designing playbooks, such cultural nuances need to be acknowledged instead of blindly following what a Netflix/ Atlassian follows. Coming up with the Culture Handbook and Playbooks is easier in the case of a young company because everyone can change without any pre-existing baggage. In the case of a mature org., you will also need to do a more involved culture audit to understand how things are on the ground. When the culture manifesto and handbook is being created with the founders + key stakeholders, you may hear people saying all the right things in the workshop. That’s where the facilitators need to bring up anecdotes/ nudge the n-1/n-2 leaders to be honest about how things really operate in the company so that the culture manifesto and playbooks are rooted in reality. Regarding water cooler conversations - in a physical/ co-located office environment, people have opportunities for bumping into each other and do small talk which leads to collaboration, ideation, getting to know their colleagues better - thus engagement. In the hybrid/remote world, companies have aimed for the same outcome by organizing fun events. The problem here is that employees are either in switched on mode on work calls or completely switched off mode during these fun events (quizzes/ antaksharis/ bring your own beer/ standup comedy/ drumming etc.) The water cooler conversations happened when people were somewhere between switched the on and switched off states. That slack in mindspace is what allows for the subsequent steps of getting to know each other better/ collaboration/ jamming on an idea etc. So companies need to create avenues (events/ platforms/ channels) which are in spaces that are adjacent to work, incorporate prompts and triggers to share about themselves/ their work/ ask about their coworkers. Companies also need to understand the role of asynch. and synch. communication and channels in the service of these objectives. Slack plugins and apps are great to keep things going and allow people to have fun. You need to have a more human touch for some higher-order objectives. Take a design thinking approach, put the employee at the centre of the design, factor in the business objective while acknowledging that there are different ‘jobs to be done’ for different people and iterate to find out what works best for different groups. A one size fits all approach will almost always fail!