Do you have a clear set of company values?

To run a successful business, offering a great service or selling the ultimate product is not enough. Every successful company has a clear set of values they live by, values that are clear and shared throughout the company; values that give every employee a common goal and bigger purpose. Defining your company values (or core values) will have your teams work better together and distinguish you from other businesses in the Maltese market.

Why are company values important?

As we have briefly mentioned in our introduction, company values are essential to give your employees a sense of community, an end goal, ultimately a high purpose. Having a set of clear values, will highlight that all of your employees, from minor roles to executives, are on the same boat. Advertising your core values, and making sure that employees at every level embrace them, especially with those front end employees, will also help build customer trust and loyalty. Some core company values include: integrity, honesty, trust, accountability, passion, quality and constant improvement, amongst many others.

Do you have a set of Company Values? If yes; are all your employees aware of what these values are? If not, here are some pointers on how to get started.

Consult your Team

Chances are your company already has a mission statement that your executives follow and a vision for the company values. Chances are that a core set of beliefs will emerge when your employees are solving day to day problems, so get a team meeting going and extract what these beliefs are.

Feedback and Implementation

Chances are that the beliefs are different for every hierarchy, so now that you have a solid outline you must reach out to all your employees. Don't be afraid to ask more specific and direct questions, make the survey anonymous to encourage employees to be truthful. Be happy with your positive feedback but also focus on the negative ones and see if those can be tackled. All this feedback will show you understand the values that your company already has and allow you to build on that. Once you have all the feedback, look for patterns, list those changes you'd like to implement and jot down a plan on how you want to do so.

Be Unique

Now that you have a set of beliefs, you must change those beliefs into company values that are unique to your company. Focus on how to make these values easy to remember, whether they are relevant to the whole team and if they are inspirational; asking yourself all of this will help you refine core values that are unique to you and your team.

Always remember that the only constant in life is change, chances are that trends, social norms and values will change with time. That means that your company values may need to evolve when these changes set in; revisit your core values, see if there are any changes in the way your business applies this belief, make changes to reflect the new process and ask for feedback before implementing these changes.

If you feel that you need help on getting your core values set up get in touch with us on bernice@bailogik.com and we can help.