Crafting company values to drive excitement and excellence
Creation of strong, authentic company values is more than just a feel-good exercise—it’s a crucial driver of business success. But how do you create values that truly resonate with your team, reflect the way you do business authentically, and propel your organisational success?
The importance of authentic values
Authentic values are the bedrock of a thriving company culture. When values align with your company’s true DNA, they become a powerful force that guides decision-making, shapes behaviour and drives success. We discuss in our previous blog the hidden ROI of company values.
Who to involve
Creating impactful values is a collaborative process. While leadership plays a crucial role in setting the direction, involving employees at various levels ensures that the values resonate throughout the organisation. And before you even start thinking about your values, you should consider who in your organisation should play a part in crafting them. Think about including:
Senior leadership team members
Key influencers from different departments
A cross-section of employees representing diverse roles, tenures, ages, and experiences
This inclusive approach ensures that your values capture the essence of what makes your company unique and appealing to both colleagues and customers. After this team has been formed, it’s time to start gathering the information needed to create your values.
Four valuable research steps
Conduct one-on-one interviews: Start with in-depth conversations with senior leadership and key influencers. Explore what company attributes attract and retain talent, what makes people proud to work at the company, and what motivates team members to excel.
Identify key themes: Analyse the interview data to uncover recurring themes that define your company’s culture and ethos.
Test with wider team: Organise interactive workshops with a diverse group of employees to explore how the identified themes resonate across the organisation.
Gather additional insights: Use these sessions to understand which values are most important at various stages of an employee’s journey and collect ideas for enhancing the overall employee experience.
Creating bold, brave values aligned to your experience
Once you’ve constructed your research and distilled the core themes, it’s time to craft them into compelling value statements. Remember:
Make values authentic and ownable to your company
Tie closely to both your customer mission and employee experience
Consider giving them a creative treatment that reflects your brand personality
Before your values are finalised, you should test them with colleagues and leadership to help ensure they are reflective of your initial research and a true representation of your company culture.
Launching with Impact
The launch of your new values is a critical moment to help embed them within your team. Consider planning a company-wide event to unveil the values. As well as presenting each value, you could plan a series of activities where colleagues can think about how they will use each value in their work.
You could also create engaging materials such as a handout or a short animation to help explain the values to new and existing employees.
Remember, crafting and launching compelling values is just the beginning. The real challenge—and opportunity—lies in bringing them to life every day. In our next blog we’ll explore how you can activate your values effectively.
Book a values exploration springboard with our MD
Why now?
Businesses worldwide have had to change and evolve their ways of working since the pandemic, with colleague and customer expectations changing dramatically. If your business and ways of working have changed, it’s likely your values should too. It may well be time to get creative, be bolder, and create ownable values that drive happier employees, more productivity, and better business performance.
Stay tuned throughout October for more insights and best practice to help you bring your company values to life:
From beige to brave: discover the hidden ROI of creative company values
