Evaluating Company Values

If your colleagues and employees groan or cringe at the mere mention of your company’s “core values”, it might be time to ask yourself whether you have the right values in place and reflect on how you’re communicating these values in your organisation.

A study by employee engagement firm Fond, identified that over 85% of respondents don’t believe their employees could accurately recite their company’s values. It’s not an uncommon experience – discovering that your team doesn’t know the organisation’s values or mission. Many employees feel disconnected or unaware of their company’s values, leading to a misconception that these values are meaningless corporate speak and
superficial (Harvard Business Review). However, in my experience, values are integral to running a high-functioning and motivated team and definitely not superficial when defined and indoctrinated properly.

So, why do values matter? According to Forbes, values represent a framework that provides team members with two key things: clarity and purpose.

Creating Clarity:

Employees cannot fulfil their responsibilities if they don’t clearly understand what is expected of them. Equally important is understanding their specific role within the broader team. In the workplace, this is most commonly reflected in clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Teams function more effectively when each member knows their duties and how they contribute to the collective goals. Consider a soccer team: the goalkeeper, striker, and defender each have distinct roles on the field. If the goalkeeper were unclear about their responsibility and joined the striker in an offensive position, the team’s defence would be compromised, leaving the goal unprotected and allowing the opposing team to score. Value-setting is an effective way of establishing clarity about what it is that an organisation does.

Promoting Purpose:

To truly excel, teams must not only understand what they do, and how they do it, but also, why they do it. High performing teams understand their organisation’s vision, enabling them to align their decisions with this overarching purpose. A study by Mckinsey highlighted that 63% of respondents said it was important to them that their company / team has a clear and defined purpose, indicating that this is a key motivator for employees. Moreover, a shared purpose fosters autonomy and empowerment. Leaders who articulate a unified vision enable their teams to make informed decisions within a clear framework, promoting a culture of trust and growth as individuals are equipped to make decisions effectively.

Core values are key in providing clarity and purpose for teams. So, how do we create effective values? Throughout my experience, I’ve learned that effective values are defined by four key principles:

1. Core Values should be action-based.
   For company values to truly resonate with individuals , they must guide daily decisions. Effective values aren’t just aspirational—they’re specific and actionable. Bob Keiller’s TEDTalk on Doing Values, illustrates this with Glasgow’s “safety first” value.

   When faced with a decision of whether to shutdown one of their most profitable sites due to safety concerns, it was this value that helped Keiller make the challenging decision to shut-down and reset. A company’s values should help teams make decisions.

2. Your team will trust action more than words.
   Trust is pivotal; people follow leaders they believe in. If employees see a disconnect between stated values and executive actions, they lose trust. Leaders must embody values and support their team in applying them.

   Keiller gives a great example of this in his TEDTalk. When he made the call to shutdown a particular site, the executive team for Glasgow questioned his actions, contradicting their core principle of “Safety First”. It’s important for any organisation, that its leaders support decisions in line with the company’s values. This is also why teams benefit from more specific, tangible values to ensure everyone has a clear definition.

3. Tell stories to create awareness.
   Employees need to first know what the values are, before they can adopt them. According to Keiller, it’s not enough for companies to slap a poster on a wall with their values, or simply post it on their websites. To make your team truly aware of the values, they need to understand the context and origins behind the values. Companies like Google and Disney succeed because their values are deeply rooted in their founding stories.

   My favourite example of this is the fashion brand Showpo. Founder – Jane Lu’s story of building the brand from her parents garage and her goal to disrupt the fashion market at the time, is the driving force behind the company’s values that focus on body positivity and size inclusivity. Values with a story are more compelling.

4. Don’t just tell me your values, show me how to use them.
   Values become “fluffy” when they’re not integrated into everyday culture. Managers must demonstrate how values are applied and share real-life examples of their impact. Keiller emphasises the importance of regular internal and external comms to share examples of how values manifest in the day-to-day role.

Key exercises to help your team start crafting meaningful company values:

1. Team Workshops: Define and discuss values within respective departments. Understand how these values can and will influence daily work and behaviours (eg; how will we show up as a team each day?). Sense-check that everyone in your team knows the values of the organisation.
2. Scenario Training: Ask your team to apply the team’s values to a specific scenario. If your values are specific and tangible enough, they should be able to use the values as a framework to make a decision in the situation. If they can’t, perhaps your values need to be repositioned.
3. Share Stories: Regularly communicate how the organisation’s values are reflected in everyday operations through various comms channels. For eg; if your team is all about collaboration, consider what team standups are happening and why? If your team is about efficiency, what is your training calendar for trialling new tools?

The real question isn’t if company values are necessary—they absolutely are. The challenge for leaders is whether their values meet these four crucial principles. Keep it real: regularly check in with your team to ensure your values are not just words but an actionable framework to provide clarity and purpose.