The Power of Oral History

Cultivating Employee Alignment with Company Values

When examining why employees might not fully adopt a company's values, understanding how these values have been introduced and reinforced takes centre stage. While common methods like town hall meetings, PowerPoint presentations, posters, and branded items can offer support, they might not effectively foster a personal understanding and connection to the values throughout the organization. Genuine human connections are pivotal. To genuinely absorb and enact these behaviours, employees must see these values in action, notably demonstrated by their leaders and immediate managers.

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Throughout history, oral storytelling has proven to be a potent tool for communicating messages and establishing personal connections. Stories illustrating the positive outcomes of embracing the company's values can deeply resonate with employees. Personal interactions between employees and their immediate supervisors help establish shared meanings, allowing individuals to personalize the values and understand their relevance to their work and the organization's overall success. Without a personal touch, values communicated solely by HR or the CEO might lack profound resonance. Similarly, when leaders' decisions do not align with the stated values, employees might perceive them as superficial gestures.

Small Group Meetings

Conducting small, focused discussions across all levels and locations is crucial to bringing company values to life. These conversations should encourage reflection, questioning, and a deeper understanding of how the values play out in employees' roles. Employees should be prompted to consider actions that genuinely embody the company's values. These dialogues should

not be one-off events but rather ongoing and structured, enabling employees to progressively internalize the values, making them personally relevant and practical. Occasional reflections and acknowledging those exemplifying the values further emphasize their significance.

Additionally, embedding the values across different organizational levels is essential. Employees grasp the value's significance when discussing it with their immediate managers. While top-down communication holds weight, it's genuinely impactful when employees perceive their managers are endorsing these values, demonstrating them daily, and holding others accountable. This alignment of understanding between managers and their teams is pivotal for the values to genuinely influence the organization's day-to-day operations.

It's crucial to emphasize that introducing and reinforcing values should not be a one-time effort. Continuous dialogues about values must persist over months to shape employees' behaviours and decision-making. These conversations should evolve into ongoing discussions highlighting the values' relevance and application within the organization. Through this continuous dialogue, employees develop a profound understanding of the values, integrating them into the organizational culture and guiding their actions across all levels.

A notable example involves a CEO who shared personal stories of how embracing the company's values positively impacted his work and differentiated the organization. He met new employees, ensuring they understood the values and heard first-hand accounts of individuals embodying these values during orientation. Encouraging team members to share stories of those exemplifying the values and discussing ways to reinforce these behaviours further solidified the values within the organizational culture.

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Fostering human-to-human understanding through meaningful dialogues and consistent leadership accountability is essential in bringing company values to life. These interactions and regular reinforcement are necessary for values to avoid becoming mere symbols, lacking the important context for meaningful application in the workplace. Leadership at all levels must actively engage in ongoing dialogue to ensure the values are ingrained and not merely showcased.

In summary, oral history and personal interactions play critical roles in helping employees comprehend and integrate company values. Through these authentic experiences, employees can internalize and apply the values in their daily work, fostering a thriving organizational culture aligned with its core beliefs.