We’re all familiar with the concept of company values. Essentially, they are a guide to how organisations expect us to behave and should help guide decision-making. Values give direction, attract the right people to your organisation, set the tone for how you do business and ultimately, help to create the culture you desire.
But, here’s the rub. So often values end up as sound-bite statements adorning various communications assets: posters on a wall, fancy visuals on your website or intranet, published in handbooks. They often don’t represent how it really feels to work in an organisation.
Think about the company that espouses innovation as a core value and yet employees are risk-averse because mistakes aren’t tolerated. In my in-house days I remember clearly looking at the values posters proudly adorning the office walls and thought “if only”. If values are not truly lived, an organisation lacks integrity: that is, what we say does not align with what we do, and this is the quickest way to erode trust and engagement.
So, just how do you ensure your values are more that posters on a wall? Here are some top tips.
- Involve your people
First up you need to involve your people in defining your values. Ask them how it feels to work here, how they would describe their day-to-day experiences. This insight is a great starting point to understanding what makes your culture different and special – and will help you define possible core values. And if you already have values, then involve your people in sharing experiences of where they have seen them come to life: the more tangible the better.
- Be aspirational
It’s ok for your values to be both credible and aspirational. The credible values will ring true for people, reflecting how it currently feels to work here, helping to establish integrity by demonstrating what you say aligns with what you do. During your research, you may uncover some values which aren’t consistent with how things are today – but are vital to help move the culture to where it needs to be. That’s ok – just be honest about it and work on a plan to help move your culture to the desired future.
- Don’t follow the herd
Don’t always go for the obvious stuff. For example, many customer-facing businesses will likely have a ‘customer focus’ value. But this is stating the obvious; it’s also quite bland and no different to any of your competitors. Have a think about what makes you different and special in the way you focus on your customers: do you love your customers, do you always put them first, are you customer obsessed? Another example – most organisations will want to be high performing, who doesn’t? How about daring to be the best though? That feels different and more inspiring.
- Take action
The words you choose to explain your values are critical. They need to inspire people and direct behaviour and decision-making. It’s critical to communicate what is meant by each value – what are the behaviours you’re expecting to see and equally important, communicate the behaviours you don’t expect to see. For the credible values, the approach is to reinforce and refresh, but for those aspirational values, take time to plan the required behaviour changes to bring them to life – it is not as simple as mouse-mats and posters. Whilst this approach is great at raising awareness i.e. yes I know what our values are, it doesn’t develop understanding, buy-in or commitment. Use our adoption curve below to help you plan your activity to ensure you values are embedded. Have a think about the different tactics you can use during each stage of the adoption curve – posters and mouse-mats can raise awareness but to develop understanding and buy-in will need more conversation and time.
- Use stories
One of the best ways to bring your values to life is to share real life stories. Gathering stories from your people is a great way to involve them and explain really clearly what ‘innovation’ or ‘collaboration’ really means in practice. Sharing stories of your values in action makes it tangible, and helps your people understand what good looks like.
- Build your values into your employee-lifecycle
Ensuring your values run through the way you manage performance, reward people, attract and recruit, all help to embed them. Take a look at the touch points on your employee lifecycle and ask yourself if the experience supports and is aligned with your values or not. For example, if one of your values is around innovation but your on-boarding experience is anything but, this will erode trust and integrity. If customer obsession features and yet those in back-office roles never get anywhere near a customer, this won’t feel authentic either. Building values into your performance management approach is a great way to get people thinking about how they personally can bring them to life.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on how to ensure values are embedded – leave a comment below, or get in touch today.
