Values and valuable moments
Take part in our Making Values Matter Survey and tell us what you think. As a thank you, we’ll invite you to an exclusive webinar to discuss the findings with fellow people, culture and comms leaders.
Company values have become more valuable than ever during the pandemic as organisations seek to find ways to connect, energise and refocus their teams. We’ve had more conversations and helped more organisations than ever discover (or refresh) and embed company values in meaningful ways.
Of course, having values means nothing without action. The value of values is what you do with them and how they steer behaviours within the organisation. That’s a tall ask, and for many organisations embracing the idea of values for the first time, such statements can be hard to do anything with.
We like to be pragmatic, so let’s think about key moments in the organisation life and employee experience where values can meaningfully be put to work (find out more about these moments below):
Discovering new values
Welcoming new values
Onboarding new employees
Recognising team members
Managing a good exit
Do you agree these are critical moments for company values? Are they are a useful starting point for activating values and keeping them alive? Take part in our Making Values Matter Survey and have your chance to tell us what you think.
Discovering new values
Authentic and helpful company values are not the product of a purely creative process. They can’t be magicked up by designers or wordsmiths. Rather, values should be discovered or surfaced through dialogue – up, down and across the organisation. Leaders will always ultimately have the say on what the organisation cares about and how it needs to be in pursuit of strategic aims and objectives (and to deliver on its purpose), but finding and expressing values should not be the sole domain of leaders. Employees across the organisation can and should have a strong perspective on what the organisation does and what it should care about in order to deliver on corporate goals. Involve your people in the values discovery process and your values will not only be more authentic, you will be further along the activation path.
Welcoming new values
The idea of ‘launching’ values – whether that’s new values or a values refresh – is problematic in many ways. It makes the values something of a product or a commodity to be released with a fanfare and little in the way of conversation. In reality, authentic company values should be a living and breathing component of organisational life and the language around them should reflect that. How you welcome your values matters. Beware a fanfare or celebration which can close down conversation and render challenge or dialogue difficult. Values are always on a spectrum of lived and aspirational. Continually exploring the gap between those two is a very rich and meaningful conversation that will help to keep the values front of mind and, yes, lived. So rather than ‘launching’, think instead about welcoming the new values, and with them the conversations they will unlock.
Onboarding new employees
New recruits only get one chance at a first impression. So make it values-rich. We’ve recently helped redesign the onboarding process for a hospitality industry client and values have been central to that. It’s not about copy and pasting the values into every touchpoint (ie recruitment ads, welcome packs etc), rather it's about delivering on the values at every touchpoint. So, if one of your values is about openness or feedback, make sure your new recruit is asked to share their thoughts on their recruitment and onboarding experience. Or if you have a value of connectedness or collaboration, ensure they get to meet their team as early in the process as possible (pre joining) and they experience many parts of the organisation, not just the department they are joining.
Recognising team members
There is much debate about the value of performance management. And when we think about recognition, we’re thinking way beyond the limits of a formal performance process. Leaders have a hugely important role in modelling a culture of recognition. Simply making a habit of identifying people who have helped and saying thank you, is a good place to start. Make these moments value rich by recognising people for how they are living the values every day, in both small and large ways.
Managing a good exit
The close of an experience has as much of an impact as its highest points as explained by behavioural scientist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman ‘s documenting of the ‘peak–end rule’. This holds that people judge an experience largely by how they felt at its peak – its most intense point – and at its end, rather than measuring the sum total of their experience. This means that employees may pay more attention to how companies manage exits than to how they welcome new hires. Goodwill between a departing employee and an employer can instantly be undone by a poorly handled offboarding. So make the end count. Infuse your departing colleagues’ experience with your values and their experience will not only be value-rich, it will also impact their entire employee experience. For example, if you say you value individuality, ensure that every departing employee is celebrated for who they are and their unique time with the organisation, rather than a standard handshake and card.
We’d love to hear how your organisation has benefited from its company values during the pandemic. Sign up to our newsletter below (in the footer at the bottom of the page) or leave a comment to get involved.
