Shaping your values…
Organisations create values at team builds or a leadership team impose them on employees. The most effective are the ones designed by key members of an organisation, it is not an HR initiative or purely Director level. A selection of people at all levels with the view to reaching a consensus will give you a good standpoint of your culture.
If the group work with a structure the Values can reflect the heart of your culture if you take the time to think where they are positioned.
- Core – select a core value that is the cornerstone of your culture. For instance “the HP way…” or Apple’s “Think different…” A key message that gets across all you want to achieve but has a core value message within it. This may well be the fact you support an environmental issue or education for others.
- Aspirational – to choose something that you wish everyone to aspire to and will lead the company in a new direction. Examples “we are innovative” or “dedicated to our clients and our service”
- Permission to play – a value that reflects how you work with each other, the minimal behavioural standards you expect. Integrity is possibly the most common.
- Accidental – you can often fall upon a value in the way the culture of your company has evolved. This can be unique to how you all work with each other and can reflect a personality of the business. “Cool”, “Warm”, “Exciting” or “Iluminating”. It may well have been identified from client feedback.
To reflect your values ensure that they are authentic that you style them out. A common value is “professionalism” this might mean not a frivolous culture, an organisation to be taken seriously. Therefore professionalism means acting it out all the time, good dress code, no eating at desks and being on time.
To embed your values is not about having them on mugs in the kitchen, it is about making them come to life at recruitment, induction and regular one to one meetings. Customer satisfaction should be measured against your values. Whilst the mugs and visuals keep them fresh in peoples minds it should be played out on a daily basis.
Please do get in touch for a workshop to put values in place bev@nuggetsoflearning.co.uk
