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How to bring your company values to life?

23
Oct

Company values are crucial for positive organizational culture and maintaining a competitive business edge, but only if they’re properly integrated into the workplace. Many businesses take the time to define company values, but struggle to find meaningful ways to integrate them among their people. Yet if employees are genuinely connected to company values, teams become stronger, loyalty blossoms and individuals better understand how their roles directly contribute to the company’s core purpose.

Tips for Bringing your Company Values to Life

Have an Open Discussion

If your company hasn’t defined its values yet, get your employees together to talk about their understanding of the company’s values and what the business fundamentally represents. Values should apply to everyone, no matter their salary band or area of expertise. Even if your company already has values, getting people together to discuss their interpretation of those values is a brilliant exercise in helping employees visualize them and gain a deeper understanding of what they mean in practice.

Align Behaviors

Company values can be designed into organizational culture by the behaviors and attributes managers’ demand of their teams. Since company values are timeless and non-hierarchical, these behaviors should be applicable to staff members of all levels of seniority and roles.

Use Experiential Learning

Organizing practical activities to communicate company values and exploring their meaning as part of any professional development, will enhance the knowledge and understanding gained by the participants.

Incorporate Values into Recruitment, Training and Performance

Company values should be clearly and tangibly communicated from the recruitment stage to help them come alive in the workplace. Include company values in job descriptions and ensure interview questions give candidates the opportunity to describe their behaviors that align with your company values.

Reward and Recognize your People

Employee reward programs should be rooted in company values, ensuring staff are rewarded when they show demonstrable commitment to business values. A company’s behavior is important when asking employees to embody company values into their working lives.

Make them Visual

Company values are much more meaningful to employees when they’re reminded of them on a daily basis. They could be written on company branding in the office or on desktop calendars. It doesn’t just have to be the written descriptors either – inspiring photographs of company values in action can be even more memorable.

Bringing company values to life in a meaningful way can help employees feel more engaged and connected to a company. To the outside world, this translates into a company that knows its strengths and is worth doing business with.

You can read more on bringing company values to life on teamscapeslearning.com.