Aligning your company Values with the Values of your Employees

Aligning your company Values with the Values of your Employees 

Many organizations have company values. I have worked at multiple firms with very defined values, often on the walls of each meeting room, also very much part of the corporate literature and these values have often been around for a long time. But that’s where it stops…

I was once in a meeting with a senior manager who had been with the company a long time, and we were sitting in one of these meeting rooms and as it happened the values were on the wall behind him, so I asked do you know what our 5 values are? He paused and then said a couple of them and then blinked and said “I can’t remember this rest”…

And that is how it is for most companies. Some executive or marketing person thought these would be cool, they may have even invested money and time into creating these with a 3rd party organization specializing in employee branding and employee engagement and yet they never stuck!

They were just some words on a framed picture on the wall of an executive office most likely collecting dust… (In fact why don’t you try and rub your finger across the top of the frame, it probably is covered in dust lol ??)

A recent study of nearly 4,500 employees and leaders revealed that the majority of company values are falling far short of what the original plan for them was…

On the flip side when done well and embedded into the company culture and people are able at “their level” to understand the importance of these values your employee engagement will go up dramatically. And that’s the key word, “at their level”, not what the CEO or executive management team think about them.

According to data Employees are 115% more engaged when their organization when it has a well-defined set of company values "that they understand". One issue is most companies have not explained what specific behaviors are necessary to live their company values. Which by the way starts with the leadership team and every single manager in the company, “if they ain’t walking the talk” then don’t expect your employees too!

The other key components are to make sure these values are embed into the company performance appraisals and how you reward and recognize your talent, along with embedding the values into the recruitment selection process, I see time and time again managers hire people based on skill set only and not a cultural fit and certainly do not use the values in their interviews looking for key examples of how potential new hires fit the company culture.

Organizations seem to treat the values as some additional component to what they do, maybe create fancy pyramids with the vision and mission etc, but values are about “Who we are” and “How we behave”, they are the company’s DNA, not a part of who you are, they are you!

And we must embed these values with the values of of employees and help people to consider how they connect their own personal values with the values of the company…

The question though and the challenge is many people actually do not know their own personal values!

So rather than jumping right in and trying to connect the company values, you need to start with helping people understand what their values are, and how they understand their own values and why.

In previous companies I ran "Values Workshops" to help leaders and employees understand what was important to them and why. Once your people have a better understanding about themselves you can start to connect the company values with their own values.

In the interview process as well you don’t just blurt out “Our 3 values are Clear, Care and Commit, tell me about a time when you were clear, cared or were committed”…

That’s just dumb! 

You need to get to know the individual and ask questions that elicit their values, and then look for connections to how they think, how they behave and try to connect what you learn about them with your own company culture, your company values… You should also invest time into explaining who you are, your corporate DNA, not to sell it, but see how they react, be open and honest about who you are and give examples of people who are successful and why. Also talk about potential gaps or challenges they may have due to very different values or behaviors. 

Its a lot better for both parties to agree this isn’t going to work rather than trying to force a square brick through a round hole…

Harvard Graduate School of Education researchers found that often “employees have suspended their own values temporarily” to act in accordance with their organizations core values rather than living their own. That’s terrible! They are basically slaves to how the company behaves and cannot be true to what is important to them in their own lives and that is just going to lead to short tenure and poor work quality, you might just as well just hire robots!

So start with the “Elicitation of Employee Values” first hold sessions to help them understand themselves and what is most important to them in their personal lives right now, because values change based on our own personal circumstances.

Then start to help them to understand why your organization has these values and how they connect with what they think and feel, with the values of the company. And it doesn’t have to be a perfect fit, or match word for word. But we do need to try and strive for some cohesiveness but not exact words. Its about creating a feeling of how they connect and this sometimes cannot be even verbalized…

This can take time so do not rush this process, remember if you have these values for the next 10 years which is highly likely, then why do you need to rush something so important?

And if you don’t see the financial reward of this then consider that a report by Grant Thornton where they noted that “public companies with extremely healthy cultures are 2.5X more likely to report significant stock price increase”…

Let’s face it great company cultures drive everyone to do their best to be their best.

Another component to driving values into the hearts and minds of everyone is to make sure you create goals around the values. Such as the Clear, Care and Commit above (which were the values when I worked at ING), have your managers, teams and individuals create goals around these, like how they will be committed to the clients success, or as a leader how will you demonstrate clearly to the team about their performance etc…

Get your people to think about career development and how they can create goals, or take part in training and development programs that enhance their skills and help to strengthen the company values etc.

There are so many ways to do this and it will take time and money. The worst thing you can do is try to embed these in a few weeks or months. It ain’t gonna happen!

So start with these approaches:

1. Help you employees understand their own values and how they behave and why?
2. Run leadership and Team value sessions not just on mass programs for the whole company.
3. Run Corporate values sessions of the back of the personal values, and make sure you help people connect in their own way!
4. Set goals around these values, make sure every manager has a value goal!
5. Hold people accountable for not living the values and that includes performance and how they are paid! 

And share these values publicly especially with your clients, ask them to hold you accountable, get feedback on your service levels and tie this into the values and how your employees behave.

And build your Employee Brand around these values, it is about who you are, what you do and how you do it!

You will then have people knocking at your door, people who want to work for you because they feel a deep connection with your values! 

As Glassdoor CEO Christian Sutherland-Wong explains, today’s job seekers “want to work for a company whose values align with their own and whose mission they can fully get behind.”

I hope you found VALUE in this article ;)

Article by: Simon Cropper

If you need help or support on rolling out values please contact me ??