Why define your company values?
Defining your company values and purpose brings bottom line benefits to your business.
As a company, your values are at the core of everything you do. They guide your actions and decision-making, and help you to maintain a consistent and positive culture within your business. But, could you easily articulate and define your company values if someone asked? And, why are they important?
Company values are the principles and beliefs that shape the way your company operates and interacts with its employees, customers, and the larger community. They serve as a compass, helping to guide all your business decisions and actions in a way that aligns with your company’s overall mission and goals. However it’s not that easy to demonstrate in practice, as much research from the likes of McKinsey highlights.
Why should you define your company values in a way that is easy to understand? Here are a few reasons:
- Values help to create a strong culture within the business. Your company values serve as a common language and understanding among employees, and help to build a sense of shared purpose and commitment to your business objectives.
- Values help to attract, recruit and retain top talent. Companies with strong, clearly-defined values attract employees who are looking for more than just a monthly salary. They want to work for an organisation that aligns with their own personal values and beliefs. In times of a talent crisis this is more important than ever.
- Values help to guide decision-making. When faced with a difficult decision, having a clear set of values can help to provide you with some guidance and a sense of which direction to take.
- Values help to build trust, authenticity and credibility with your clients. Clients are more likely to do business with a company that they perceive as being trustworthy and having strong values which chime with their own. Forrester have been showing this for some time.
- Demonstrating clear values has proven commercial benefits, with companies such as EY and Gallup highlighting increased productivity and profits of up to 21% per year.
Given the obvious benefits, as a business owner, what steps can you take for incorporating your company values into your operations?
- Define your values. This is the first step! Obvious perhaps, but it’s important to sit down and take the time to clearly define and articulate your company’s values.
- Communicate your values. Once you’ve defined your values, make sure to communicate them clearly to your employees, clients, and the larger business community. You can put them on your website, social media channels, marketing materials, and employee handbooks – if you have them.
- Incorporate your values into your hiring process. When hiring new employees, make sure to look for people who align with your company’s values. This will help to create a strong culture and ensure that new hires are a good fit for your organisation and cut down on money wasted in recruitment when you bring the wrong people onboard. Purpose the company values measurement tool from event:decision, costs less than a wasted recruitment fee if you get that hire wrong.
- Use your values to guide decision-making. When faced with a difficult decision, use your values as a guide. If you’re choosing between two courses of action, which is the one that most closely reinforces your values?
- Lead by example. As the owner or director of the business, it’s important to lead by example and demonstrate the importance of your company’s values in all your dealings both internally and externally. If sustainability is important for example, demonstrate you make sustainable choices personally. Remember, your teams will established their behavioural boundaries based on their leaders’ worst observed behaviours.
- Reflect your values in your event planning. Incorporate your company values into your event planning, make sure any events you are involved with reflect your company’s mission and goals.
- Measure your values. Many areas of businesses are measured, reported and monitored. As values are central and critical to your teams, decision-making and bottom-line, valued also should be measured to improve organisational performance.
Your values are essential to the success of any business, and event planning businesses are no exception. By making the choice to define your company values and communicate them clearly, incorporating them into your hiring process and decision-making, and leading by example, you can create a strong and distinctive company culture – easy to describe and communicate – and build trust and credibility with clients.
To find out more about company values tool purpose, and how it can help you measure and track whether you’re living up to your values, get in touch.