Core values, also known as company values, are the shared beliefs and behaviours that guide the way that your employees behave. It can help employees understand and differentiate between right and wrong and ultimately sets expectations.
They are the behaviours and attitudes that come naturally to the people that just ‘fit’ in your business, and form a huge part of a company’s culture and identity.
Fearless Culture sums up core values by saying: “Values are how you expect people to behave; they bring your ‘why’ to life.”
Great core values mutually benefit both the company and the employee. Unfortunately, many businesses have a set of values that either don’t mean very much or aren’t enacted by the majority of their team.
Firstly, core values can aid faster decision making. At accessplanit, it's not uncommon to hear the accessplanit team asking one another - “Is that the accessplanit thing to do?” Using your core values as a sounding board instead of your line manager allows for faster decisions and increases self-sufficiency among staff.
Second, they're useful at helping you hire new staff. All of our job candidates at accessplanit have a pre-interview call where we qualify whether they’re a 'values fit'. Core values questions then make up around half of the main interview. For us, core values and culture fit is much more important than skills, experience or talent.
Following a successful hire, values can help you to assess the ongoing development and performance of your employees, and allow for feedback in reviews. And yes, it’s not nice, but ultimately if someone isn’t a values fit, not only do they underperform in their role, they also damage your culture! Therefore, core values have their place in firing employees, too.
Core values can also be effective at keeping employees motivated and engaged, as well as improving performance. By knowing what the company is trying to achieve, and what they can contribute in their role, they are able to contribute more effectively. By creating a culture and shared mission that everyone believes in and can work towards with a group of likeminded individuals, core values can also contribute to increased employee satisfaction and morale.
Core values come in all shapes and sizes. Some values might be detailed and specific to the particular industry, product or service, however there's many more that are simply generic, relying on single words over statements or beliefs. Here's some of our favourite core values from a number of well-known brands:
Headspace are an organisation committed to educating the world on the benefits of meditation through their app, animations, guided meditations, articles and videos. They started up in 2010 and have grown considerably in that time, and at the heart are three powerful core values:
CRM giants Salesforce need no introduction. They sum up the following 4 values as "our guiding compass, helping us venture into new places and reach great heights." What I particularly love about their values is their inclusion of equality and their aim of creating a more equal workplace and world.
Xero, an online accountancy business based in New Zealand have 5 values that create what they call 'a special culture' and 'Xero magic'. The use of hashtags is an interesting take, and we think their choice of words is powerful.
Of course, Google had to feature on the list with their 10 values, or rather, 10 statements that they know to be true. It's easy to see how each of the below could be used to dictate behaviour and drive company culture.
Australian software company Atlassian have a refreshing unapologetic attitude to company values and expected behaviour, without any frills. It's direct, it's passionate and it's concise.
1. Open company, no bullshit
2. Build with heart and balance
3. Don’t#@!% the customer
4. Play, as a team
5. Be the change you seek
Along with their delicious ice cream, Ben & Jerry's are also well known for prioritising and embedding their core values right from the off. There's a shared belief that all 3 components below must thrive equally. I can personally confirm their first value is on the money!
Slack is a well-known business communications platform, with 6 core values at it's heart. What's interesting about Slack his that they've opted for emoji's to accompany each of their values (we we're unable to display them below). We also love their choice of words, particularly craftsmanship and playfulness - words encountered less frequently in the digital space.
There’s many different approaches to defining your company’s core values. Business leaders may already have a very clear idea on what they should be, however sometimes it's not always so clear.
At accessplanit, our leadership team each chose an employee who we believed embodied our core values. We then explored what they had in common. It was actually pretty simple!
There was some back and forth about our fourth value (see below) and how appropriate it was, but in the end, it sums up who we are perfectly.
However you define yours, we believe that the #1 rule is that they are true, and that your business is committed to living them every day.
It's a useful idea to get down on paper everything that comes to mind when you think of your identity, then decide what doesn't make the cut. A good strategy when you've got your full list is to decide whether to 'keep, kill or combine' ideas - essentially a process of elimination that should ultimately help you to get down to 5-10 core values.
At accessplanit, we have four core values:
At accessplanit we're not the kind of people who rest on our laurels, assume we know everything or shy away from change. We're curious, open minded and we enjoy seeking out ways to learn and improve.
We have a real thirst for knowledge and are passionate about being the best we can be. We attend conferences and sign up for courses. We read, watch webinars and learn from each other.
This value is crucial to ensure that we are continuously learning from our mistakes (yes, they happen!) and that we’re always getting better at what we do.
This means we get things done, whatever it takes. Our accessplanit team takes pride in our work, we have a can do attitude, we do what we say we'll do and we take personal responsibility for our actions, results and mistakes.
We're not the type of people who need micromanaging, who let others pick up the slack or who are quick to make excuses and blame others. That's just not who we are at accessplanit.
When things don't go as expected, we stay calm and level-headed, we persevere and we persist. At accessplanit we succeed because we keep trying.
If you're the type of person who wants an easy ride, who gets down then they hit a setback or quits at the first sign of trouble we're not the place for you.
When you’re with the accessplanit team you get a feeling that you’re with the good guys and part of something special. We're team players, we’re humble, there's no attitude. Everyone at accessplanit really cares, we care about our colleagues and our product and we're passionate our helping our customers.
To put it another way, people who don't give a sh!t, who put themselves above the team, are arrogant or have an ego just won't fit in.
Core values can (very) easily fade in to the background of busy organisations who don't prioritise the embedding and reinforcing of values in to company culture. If it's not directly connected to your employees day to day or business operations, it's easy to see how that disconnect can occur. We've taken a number of steps at accessplanit to help ensure our core values to stay fresh in the minds of employees and that we live and breathe them daily:
Here's a few of our team playing a values game of Jenga!
Our passion and dedication to celebrating our core values and fostering a great company culture has earned accessplanit a place on Breathe's Culture Leaders List 2021.
Over 150 organisations entered, demonstrating their company culture in action across a range of topics including company values, support initiatives for employees, opportunities for learning and development and engagement.
If accessplanit sounds like an organisation you'd like to be a part of, why not check out our careers page?
The impact the right (or wrong!) core values can have on company culture cannot be understated.
All great brands know what they and their employees stand for, and are united in their mission and purpose. The exercise of defining your company values is step 1 of a much bigger process, which relies on reinforcing these values and integrating it in to business operations to aid decision making, hiring & firing, performance, motivation and team work.
By embracing and living your values each day, you can ensure everyone in the business remains on the same path, understands what is expected of them and are united on a common goal.
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