Talking about values within a company is particularly fashionable at the moment. And like all things “fashionable”, this phenomenon has its good and bad sides.
The good : more than ever, an organization’s values are put forward. They help define the company’s personality, but also connect more humanly with employees and customers.
The bad : “Values” and “corporate culture” are terms that are often perverted in order to be recovered for HR marketing and recruitment purposes.
It is no longer possible to think that an employee puts his or her personal values and principles on hold at 9 a.m. when he or she arrives at the office, only to reactivate them 8 hours later when he or she leaves. We spend far too many hours of our lives at work for our values not to be aligned with those of the organization we work for .
Since this is a topic that is frequently addressed in the conferences we give, the discussions we have and the events we organize, I will allow myself to express myself on the subject. My objective: to clearly identify what defines organizational values and their recent popularity.
Let’s start by defining what corporate values and culture are NOT:
Inspirational words stuck on a wall
A table football or ping pong table
A barrel of beer
An “open space” office
While we’re at it: a ball pool
If I tell you about a cool and trendy development agency whose connected, passionate and innovative employees believe in quality and customer satisfaction as a lithuania mobile phone numbers database priority, are you able to guess exactly the one I am describing to you? The sad reality is that it is difficult since it could be any web and mobile company in Quebec… or even in the world! Honestly, it would be easy to put a values manifesto like the following on any office wall:
Passion, Quality, Surpassing and Innovation!
If these are the words we rehiring “boomerang” employees: winning conditions use to define our values, it means we really haven’t looked very far! Nobody calls themselves an “asshole”, everyone’s fundamental driving forces are passion and quality. In fact, this should be the basis of all organizations.
Now, what the company values and culture are:
Identity and distinctiveness
Coming from the personality not only of the organization, but also of the employees
Priorities for the company
To get there, we must dig a little deeper. Values and culture must strongly define an organization and its team. Without all the values being tattooed on everyone’s heart, these values must still have an identity value at the organizational and individual level to varying degrees.
Most of the values and cultures promoted in today’s companies could be interchangeable with each other. We read platitudes and minimum requirements that are disguised as “unique” values.
We often talk about values, but I also like to talk about attitude.
An attitude is emotion and authenticity. By having an authentic attitude , which comes from our values, I think it is impossible to please everyone! That’s a bit of diversity, right?! We are not all born in the same mold and we do not all think the same thing. So, why not assume our opinions, our values and our attitude, even in our company.
One of the qualities that is most praised in entrepreneurs is courage , and I have the impression that when it comes to talking about values and culture, the majority of them are fearful.
The challenges of establishing a strong culture and values
The truth is that the more people there are in an organization, the harder it is to have a strong and distinct culture. That’s normal. The larger the group, the harder it is to reach consensus. A more demanding challenge, but not impossible to overcome. The crux of the matter is to maintain strong values within your team, no matter its size.
In the case of Spektrum, we had the luxury of having strong values in mind from the beginning. The company was therefore built with a concern for respecting these intrinsic values. This is also one of the reasons why we refuse to exceed the 20 employee mark and why we maintain a “small team”.
The second challenge is the consistency between the actions taken and the values advocated.
For example, if one of the organization’s values is to be “human” and during salary negotiations, we tried to pay as little as possible or proposed a generic grid for the salary scale, we would clearly be in dissonance.
Why claim to be human when we treat our employees as resources? Because of the values we affirm, we must be consistent through the decisions we make, at all times and regardless of the situation, even at the risk of losing a client, an employee or a partner.
The third challenge is to ensure that the whole thing is a collective approach. No one, not even the owner, should have full control. The values of an organization should be maintained first and foremost by the employees and not the other way around. Otherwise, they are imposed and authenticity is no longer really there. It becomes an organizational policy.
A good recent example of this dimension is when Vincent and I proposed to the whole team to open everyone’s salaries in order to stick to our value of transparency. After a long discussion, the team decided against the idea.
Not out of protectionism, but rather conduit china because they did not see how it would be useful, what problem it would solve (this subject deserves a whole article just for it). However, this discussion allowed us to address other questions and notably led to a complete revision of the individual evaluation process applied until then. To my great dismay, salaries remain private to this day… except for Vincent’s and mine!
“Actions speak louder than words”
Beyond all the beautiful values that could be listed, even if an organization has officially defined them or not, it is ultimately the actions of organizations that define its personality and attitude. The latter have greater social responsibilities than ever and I think that they should all take a public stand on the issues that are important to them. A company does not have the duty, nor the obligation, to please as many people as possible