People
- Make it easy for people to access, understand, remember and act on the values
- Use storytelling to humanise the values and make them memorable – real-life examples create emotional connection and clarity
- People need affiliation, social cohesion, purpose, and meaning – consider how the values provide this (a sense of belonging and being part of something greater than oneself) and share it
- Create values team/ culture champions allowing star people to lead culture creation amongst their teams and develop their own careers through access to top leadership
- Encourage team members to consider ways to bring values to the fore in daily life
- Add behavioural guidelines to each value to contextualise it for team members: specifically related to job/ role descriptions and accessible across the team, ideally
- Recruit people based on values and use values to find ways to understand the fit (rather than just a question) – job ads, interviews, trial days, proper induction, contracts – the works
- Consider culture add (for helpfully diverse growth) rather than just culture fit (can result in homogeneity and impede progress)
- … however, do enquire which of your values speaks to them and why, and see how their perspective can add to what you are already doing
- You may prefer to ask people about their own values and come to your own conclusions about fit
- Encourage people to score themselves on values-driven behaviour in development meetings/reviews
- Similarly give feedback: this also helps to ensure your view of the meaning of the values aligns with theirs and vice versa
- Find ways for people to connect corporate values with their own motivations and concerns
- Build values into performance reviews inc 360s and personal development plans
- Consider a peer recognition system – can be very old school (box in the canteen) and shared at weekly/monthly meetings
- Build values guide of expected behaviours into code of conduct for board members (“companies that have enduring success have core values and purpose that remain fixed while their business strategies and practices adapt endlessly to a changing world” Jim Collins)
- Check yourself and your senior colleagues to ensure you are all the exemplars of values-driven behaviour (the higher up you are, the greater impact a transgression from values will have: if you’re owner/CEO/Chair it will be the narrative formed about you)
- Consider interests of owners, stakeholders, external partners when drawing up activation plans
Publicity
- Draw up a clear Values Set and publish it in a range of places so it is easy for anyone to find
- Launch actions around values, not the values themselves. Values are not a campaign; they need to be woven into the business.
- Connect your values externally to wider cultural needs and changes, positioning them in social and business contexts
- Build values into briefs for marketing teams and external agencies to ensure they are threaded into all communications materials, brand TOV, colours, fonts etc all speak of your culture
- Build values explicitly into external communications eg #knowwhatmatters, PR boilerplate
- Your website is a great opportunity to go into detail about values and culture – you’re not paying* for space – so share the background, meaning and application. *Do consider carbon footprint.
- Align community/ charitable support projects, and how you deliver them, with your values
- Internally tie values into announcements, updates, regular catch ups and in presenting updates on company progress to help everyone understand impact of values on function
- Create private and public recognition of exemplar values-led behaviour from team members eg awards, mentions in updates, social media profiles and simply in emails
- Focus on one value a month and build activities and comms around it: nominate a team from within the organisation to head up each month
- Although values are not JUST about mugs, reception decals and stickers, you do need to do that stuff! Be creative and find ways to build them into the fabric of everyone’s lives
- Remember that culture (like brand) is what people perceive not what you think it should be, so communicating actions is a vital part of the process
Partners
- Anyone you work with who isn’t on PAYE or equivalent
- Build into the supply chain: draw up formal checklists, including values.
- MOU/ contract / SLA / Ts & Cs sign agreement of respecting values
- Include in briefs for quotes as an expectation and in proposals as a promise
- Include your values in sales decks and other partner information
- Audit suppliers against values: letter AND spirit of the values. Do their staff have a voice?
- Values-based collaboration (product and service innovation: about 25% of revenues for 65% of business across Europe)
- Encourage co-branding or partnership campaigns based on shared values – this creates consistency and credibility.
- Involve key partners in values reviews, inviting them to reflect on how the partnership is working and where improvements can align more closely with values.
- Identify values conflicts early , have a clear process for resolving situations where partners’ practices conflict with your values.
- Create an external recognition programme to highlight values-driven partners.
Processes
- Select business model to reflect your values: complexity/simplicity, measures of success, focus
- Consider where you are already deploying values (you will be) and formalise it
- Make values and culture a board responsibility – build into agendas/ dashboards
- Apply values test to any recommendations/ sign off inc line managers, team leaders, board
- Audit procedures to include reflection on behavioural alignment with values,+ impact on culture
- Regular values reviews with team members – their own priorities, how the company lives by them, which are important for the future
- Formally tie in rewards and recognition with values delivery
- Find quirky memorable ways to demonstrate values (Amazon 2 pizza rule: small decisive teams)
- Tie values into daily life: starting meetings, reporting, use of email etc
- Build values into customer service policies, frontline staff can make decisions using values.
- Ensure that your values guide how you respond to difficult situations: have a plan in place.
- Hold regular values reviews with teams; which values are most relevant and how being lived.
- When priorities conflict, let values shape the resolution.
Performance is the combined impact of the other activities! Companies with a strong culture deliver 3x higher value to shareholders than without. (McKinsey)