Every business has a set of values by which they operate each day. In business with solid leadership, these values are consistent day after day and do not change in times of financial trouble, business difficulties, or employee turnover. The best leaders make these values known to the organization and work to promote them every day building a strong corporate culture around them. These are your company’s “core values” and can be very beneficial to your culture and attracting the right employees for your organization.
Sounds simple right? Actually, defining your core values can be a difficult process because you need to determine what things are actually “core” to your success as an organization. You need to work with the team and determine what makes your culture unique and why people would want to work there. Some organizations take this to an extreme, Zappos created their core values and would tell job applicants to review them before applying. If they didn’t think they could live by them, don’t apply. To take this further, they would pay employees to leave after a certain amount of time working there if they found they were not a fit for the values of the company.
Here are a few more examples of other organizations core values:
These are just some examples but your core values should be unique to your organization and what is important to you. Remember, a core value does not change with the business atmosphere or current employee roster. It is what makes your organization unique and successful. By defining this properly, prospective employees will know what type of organization they are joining which will likely lead to less employee turnover and more profitable businesses.
Mike Giuffrida from Southington CT has been operating businesses since 1997. He is an experienced entrepreneur in business management, profitable growth, business valuation, mergers and acquisitions, and information technology managed services.
Good advice Mike. The first thing that is reinforced at our new agent training classes are the companies core values…it was reinforced daily at the start of each session.
Core values are key for fit and function of all employees and it starts at the top. All too often leaders forget that everyone is watching them and this is where employees take their clues: if it is condoned, it is promoted. As Mike states, “these values are consistent day after day and do not change”, for it is these core values that see you through the difficulties.
Most of the places I’ve worked had core values. However, most of them provided boring training seminars but didn’t implement the values in a practical way. The core values just became a time-waster. I did have the privilege of working at one company where everyone took the core values seriously and it was a really great place to work! #HaveFunDoingWhatYouDo