As HR professionals, we play a critical role in helping to create cultures where people can bring their value set to work and utilize their skills to deliver the strategy in a way that aligns with the organizational values. And that’s no easy task, so let me share with you some thoughts on how we can do this. Let’s start with a reality check. Whether you’re an organization of 10 or 10k people it would be impossible for every employee’s value set to be the same as the organization’s. That’s just not how humans work, and if you tried to do it, you’d likely be creating an uninspiring, universe, and unsuccessful organization—and none of us want to be famous for that!
Values get ignored or even create more problems than they solve when they’re meaningless words written on a wall. Or when they’re shouted about as if they’re magical pieces of your organization’s amazing culture, but in real life people do the exact opposite. Behaviors are how we experience values, yet often, we don’t go into this much detail; instead hoping that everyone will simply get what we really mean by ‘customer focused’ or have the exact approach to ‘teamwork’ that we personally expect. Values can be passive. Behaviors are always active. If you’ve currently just got words, or a sentence, I strongly encourage you to go to the next level and define what behaviors are expected under each of your values (and what’s not ok too), it will make the alignment plan sing.
Chart the Course
Your first task is making sure you’ve got the organizational level stuff in place—mission, vision, strategy and/or plan. If you’ve already got values—fantastic, let’s get to work. If you’re working on developing them – brilliant, you get a chance to do it from scratch. Whatever your starting point, you need to be ready to invest a significant amount of time, resources, and energy into this process. It’s not a one-hit wonder, and it goes way beyond having a policy. This is a hearts and minds quest. I like to think about it as a web of connected activity that is embedded across every element of the employee lifecycle and your job is to chart the course. When this web is working, values and behaviors are so ingrained, that they really do define the culture.
Content
The ongoing task is to build a toolkit that allows your people to utilize all the content and resources you create. From videos of employees talking about the culture for your careers portal to conversation starters for one-on-one’s, your content should help people feel excited about getting on board with the values and behaviors (and allow people who are not keen on your culture to rule themselves out). Three resource essentials I would start with are:
- A presentation deck on how the values were created
- A one-page values and behaviors framework
- A selection of behavior-based interview questions
Collaborate
Nobody has ever been thrilled by HR initiatives, so this is not the time to gung-ho it alone as an HR function. Anything you can do to get other people to lead, advocate, and support the values will equal greater alignment. Make sure your leaders are ready and raring to go, and if they’re not, press pause – it will fall flat on its face without them. Get a group of colleagues to become values champions, helping to feedback on what’s working locally, sharing communications, and generally being on-the-ground advocates. Regularly share success stories of values in action—in your town halls, newsletters, team meetings, one-on-one’s. If you haven’t already, get your comms and marketing people on board. Think of yourself as the team coach and use all those influencing skills you’ve been building for years.
Calibrate
Make sure you complete an inclusion review of all your values and behaviors, including the resources, for potential bias built in. And there will be bias—don’t hide from it. We’re all human, and knowing what it is becomes the first step to resolving it before it gets built into your cultural norms. Always ensure there’s diversity of thinking, experience, and background in the room when plans and decisions are made about values. The great thing about values and behaviors is that they’re not static, they can (and should) continue to evolve and change as the organization matures. Make plans to complete a full process on an annual basis.
Celebrate
Catch people doing things well. This isn’t about the outcomes, it’s about the behaviors. Your reward and recognition schemes can seriously help with the alignment process. Creating ways for colleagues to recognize each other without manager intervention or lengthy processes always builds momentum. I’ve seen hard-copy postcards, digital stickers, and shout-outs in meetings work well. Where you have them, making your colleague awards categories align with the values really highlights their importance. Including values and behaviors in any performance and pay programs you offer puts them at the core of performance and, if possible, makes it equal value to the other performance factors. This makes people sit up and take notice.
Challenge
Train everyone on what’s expected of them behaviourally—especially if your values are new. Don’t expect people to just ‘get it’ from a piece of paper or a fancy brand. Make sure every people manager (first line to CEO) is up to speed on how to give behavioral feedback and is supported to do it by your team. Embed values into every L&D activity in your curriculum. Ensure every person has a conversation about their behavioral performance at each stage of your performance processes. If they’re off track, then they should be supported to understand what needs to change. Values work best when they’re a positive intervention that encourages growth and support.
The Bottom Line
Be prepared to feel sick and tired of thinking about, talking about, and working on values. Because it’s only when you cannot bear it anymore, that everyone else will be starting to get it. This was the advice given to me over a decade ago by a very wise CPO, and she was right!
Beth Stallwood is a coach, facilitator, speaker, consultant, author, and the founder of Create WorkJoy. She’s spent 20 years developing her signature practical, passionate approach, and excels at getting to the heart of what’s actually going on – whether that’s for an individual client stuck in WorkGloom or an organisation with a people challenge to solve. Beth is also the author of WorkJoy: A Toolkit for a Better Working Life.