The ultimate checklist for operationalizing your company values
Did you roll out new values with an announcement only to find people forgot about them a few weeks later? Are your values not as embedded or utilized as you’d like them to be? Have you achieved growth and wondered how to bring new employees up to speed on values created before their time?
Successfully engaging and bringing employees together around a new or existing set of values requires more than a set of words or an announcement.
Lasting success and differentiation come from the “how”. It combines change management skills, effective communication and marketing, and education.
Whether you want to generate, refresh, or operationalize your company values, use this checklist to assess any gaps between the words on a wall and your working methods.
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Values Definition: what are our values
Step 1, Values Definition is often the part we spend the most amount of time on. And then, it’s all too easy to rush or forget the rest.
We have values
Each value has a clear why
Each value has a set of 2-4 behaviors
The behaviors are observable, measurable, and something every employee can do
Values come from our business strategy. How do we need to act or make decisions in order to achieve our mission and purpose?
While many organizations seek to make values definition a democratic process and survey all employees for help, this process doesn’t scale above a certain company size of ~150. Furthermore, values are most importantly upheld by leadership. Therefore I always advise it is the CEO and executive team who leads the definition of the values versus it being entirely employee-led.
Values Awareness: education and clear communication
We know what values are for
We know what our values are
We know what good looks like in each value
We know the edge cases of each value
Before you spend time educating employees on your values, ensure they understand what values as a construct even mean, perhaps starting with personal values and how they are useful. Values thrive on specificity and clarity. Confusion and its associated negative effects come from not clearly articulating what good looks like or what too much (and edge case) of a value is, for example, “What is good ownership in a meeting versus too much ownership?”.
Values clarity: specificity and meaning to drive personal connection
We know why we chose these values and not others
Our values help new hires navigate how things are done here
We can clearly identify when someone is not living up to these values
Our values help employees make decisions in a consistent way.
Make your values mean something. Consider this section your values litmus test. The harsher, the better. Create more specificity by crafting or recalling a story to tell all new hires about your company and how you work. Not only do stories help us learn and retain information but they also act as change management secret weapons so that others can share your story to increase its shelf life.
Values activation: a strategy to bring people together around the change and reduce resistance
Do you have a script for your CEO to introduce your new values?
It is said humans don’t resist change. They resist being changed.
The way we communicate change affects our employees’ motivation to join us in the change we seek.
Ensure you have these elements of your values activation plan including a script and talk tracks for company leadership
Change management and comms plan
1-3 rituals to embed values in
We have real-life examples and data to introduce the values from
We have values artifacts and assets
We have pre-communicated values to people managers
Values reinforcement: Embedded in our every day to make it easier to keep the values alive
Values are embedded into our hiring practices
Values are embedded into onboarding
Values are embedded into feedback, promotions, and performance
Values are embedded into leadership and management training
Values are embedded into communication practices ex) Town Hall
Values are embedded into external communication, ex: ESG
Values are embedded into leadership behavior
Plants need soil, water, air, and nutrients to stay alive. Values too need certain conditions to keep them upheld and strong. If your values are not embedded and reinforced in every part of your business, people, and most of all your leadership practices then your values are in danger of not being successful and sustaining.
Both our challenge and our opportunity are to get values off our walls and into the organization - it’s only then that they can function as the tool to achieve what it is organizations want: to increase connection in hybrid or distributed workforces, manage through uncertainty, or re-build culture.
When done well, values give us a compass to help us all move in the same direction. But if you’re getting lost or can’t find the lighthouse, use this checklist as a starting point to assess the current state of your values.
“I cannot recommend Lindsey enough for her exceptional work in helping us engage our employees around our new core values. With Lindsey’s expertise in marketing/communications and learning and development, she provided us with a strategic plan that enabled us to effectively position our values within the company in a way that resonated with our employees. It’s rare to find a consultant that has such a deep understanding of both HR and marketing, and her ability to bridge the gap between the two was truly impressive. Lindsey is a must-have for any company looking for new and effective ways to engage their employees on a meaningful level”
Lindsey Caplan is a screenwriter turned organizational psychologist who helps HR & business leaders create experiences that boost motivation, engagement, and performance