10. 8 Ways to Bring Your Company Values to Life: The Success Stories!

Hello and welcome to this episode of Ways to Change the Workplace with myself Prina Shah. I love what I do. I'm a global leadership coach, a consultant, a trainer, a keynote speaker, a podcaster. I help you to develop your leaders, your teams, and I help you to optimize your organizational cultures. I'm here to help you find ways to change your workplace. Why? Because we spend more time in our waking day at work than we do with our loved ones. It has to be a good place to be. So in this podcast, you can expect a mix of interviews with amazing thought leaders and then some solo episodes from myself as well. Get ready. Let's talk about how crappy your values are and why they are so. I want to talk to you today about ditching your values posters. I want to give you eight ways to bring your company values to life. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, I'd say that your values may well eat your vision for brunch. Values are an integral part of your organization's culture. Your values ideally should be the guiding principles in which everyone in your company behaves, how people serve their customers, and how everyone achieves your vision. I have supported organizations that either live their values and those that don't. Let's discuss the latter first, those that don't. Let's talk more about the organization that sweeps their values under the carpet. The issue. People either don't know your company's values or they simply don't like them. There are potential reasons for this. Either your staff weren't included in the creation of your values. In my experience, the values that are the most successful are the ones which have been co-created. People feel a sense of shared ownership, pride, and belonging to those values. Your values relate to the external facing elements of the company. I've seen so many crappy values like this on how you will serve your customers rather than internal facing elements of how you within the company is expected to behave, to act, and to live your values. External facing values are exactly that. They ain't gonna do anything for your internal company culture. The other reason could be that your values are not in your the CEO, leaders, or HR team's vernacular. If you're not living your values, why should anyone else? Another reason could be is that your values are too wordy or too simple. Yes, there's a dichotomy there. Either way, your values are not sitting well with your employees. If your values are too wordy, they won't be memorable. If your values are too simple, they may come across as patronizing. Another reason that your values might not be being lived is that your value posters are all over the place, but your values are still not being applied. So it's just tokenism, really. So what to do? How can we bring your company values to life? Let's share some success stories with you. I've had the pleasure of supporting companies that live and apply their own values, and here's what I've seen works. Consider if you've done any of these ideas that I'm going to talk about now for your company. You had an official launch and rollout of your values. Yes, led by your head honcho, the CEO, I hope. Followed by interactive workshops on how each team applies their values in their roles. Ideally, it's facilitated by your internal culture or your organizational development or HR team, or an external specialist. These conversations are so so important to have early on in the piece when you have just launched your values. Each team and person can therefore understand the values and see how it applies to them. This is the massive missing piece in a lot of organizations when organizations roll out values or refresh their values. Point number two, your values are at the forefront of your recruitment. Good organizations do this. Values-based recruitment is amazing. Recruiting to your values allows you to recruit for the right culture fit. Then your values should be re-reinforced in your induction to these new joiners. Tip number three: your leaders and your HR team should live the values. Simple, I know. But hey, I have to say it because that often does not happen. And that's where organizations fail. Your values are in your the CEO, the leaders, and the HR team's spoken and written communications, as well as being evident in the way in which you operate. This has a trickle-down effect. Monkey see, monkey do. Hey, if you are behaving in complete disassociation to your values, how's the rest of your organization going to feel? They're certainly not going to practice your values either if you're not. Point number four, business decisions should be based on your values, as well as the usual factors such as cost, time, resourcing, being evidence informed, etc. But do you link your business decisions to your values? That's an easy one to do. Consider whether in your organization if that's happening. Point number five. Your values are in your performance and development plan. I hope they are. Some go one more step further and link compensation or bonuses to these ratings. Some organizations are in fact moving towards the behavioural aspect of reviewing employees' performance and development in how they meet their key performance indicators. We've all learned from Enron's Tale of Two Cultures. If you haven't heard about the Enron saga, where their values were just thrown out of the window and a lot of corporate fraud happened, read the details in the show note to really swat up on what happened at Enron so you don't go there. Point number six, you have quarterly staff awards for those who go over and beyond your values. Recognizing your star performance against your values reinforces the expectations and it rewards the right people. Honestly, it doesn't need to cost a lot or be complicated. Point number seven, you'll develop your leaders continually and link your values to it. Whether it be via stretch targets on the roll, or in training sessions where you share your values with the facilitator, or via coaching. Lastly, and definitely not least, if people don't live true to your values, do something about it. Ditch plastering posters of your values around the workplace in the hope that your message will stick. Live your values, apply your values, own your values. So here's two happy employees, formidable leaders, and good company cultures where if you've got values, you live 'em. Thanks for tuning in. Check out the show notes and join my ways to change your workplace Facebook group. It's full of useful material. Ciao for now.