If you are a small business owner or executive, your company’s values are at the heart of everything you do. But your employees and customers may not share the same value-based mindset. Clearly communicating your company’s values are key to developing a healthy workplace culture and attracting the kinds of customers you and your employees want to work with.
Identify Your Company’s Values During Strategic Planning
Your company’s core values are the principles that drive it forward. They establish the boundaries of your business and help you identify the type of people you want to work with – as employees – and for – as customers.
Clearly communicating your company’s values depends on having a clear vision of them yourself. While many small business owners and executives have an intuitive sense of their top priorities, they may never have done the work to clearly identify and articulate those values. When asked to communicate their values, these business leaders may have no good answer, or find themselves going on about general ideas or beliefs, rather than core values.
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The best way to engage in value-based leadership is to center your strategic planning process around identifying and documenting your company’s values. These values should be baked into everything produced in your strategic planning workshops including the company’s vision statements, mission statement, and guiding principles. Taking the steps to actively define your company’s values can help you to focus your business practices and attract workers and clients that share your core beliefs and priorities.
Communicating Your Company’s Values in Hiring and Onboarding
Your company’s mission statement and core values should be clearly included in the job descriptions. By clearly communicating your company’s values in its hiring materials, you can attract workers who share your business’s goals and are motivated by the same priorities. By including your core values in identifying, describing, and advertising your job openings, you will attract a talent pool friendly to your beliefs and priorities.
Your core values will tell the story of your company, drawing people to it who will help embody the business’s vision. For example, if your business leaders are making a point to build diversity into the workforce, your core value may be inclusion. Your job descriptions can center on collaborative involvement of a diverse workforce and include descriptions of your company’s commitment to hiring a broad spectrum of employees. Job seekers with diverse backgrounds and an interest in collaborative work will be drawn to your positions, making it easier to select and hire employees who are as committed to inclusion as you are.
To reaffirm your company’s commitment to its core values, you should also be communicating your company’s values in your onboarding process. Integrating your values into your employees’ initial training materials and programs will reinforce your business’s ideals and ensure they are built into every part of your company infrastructure. New hires should be educated about the company’s values and priorities, including how they were developed and why they are important to the business’s owners and executives.
Reinforce Company Values Through Check-ins and Feedback
Communicating your company’s values to your employees isn’t a one-time event. Instead, you should continue to reinforce your core values throughout the year and over the course of their entire employment. Reminding your employees of your company’s values can be as simple as including the mission and vision statements in company meetings. However, personalizing the messaging will make it even more effective. For example, employees can be asked to reflect on how well their work reflects company values in periodic reviews. Supervisors can discuss the core values as part of their check-ins with staff. Executives and supervisors can provide incentives, rewards, and praise for employees who embody the company’s core values.
Executives and supervisors can also go further in reinforcing company values by sharing inspirational stories and examples of what the company’s values look like in action. For example, you could provide templates of letters, messaging, and even emojis that can demonstrate preferred language and tone, along with things to avoid. This can bridge the gap between communicating company values to your employees and ensuring that same messaging makes its way to potential customers and existing clients.
Recruit High-Quality Customers by Advertising Company Values
Value-based business depends on working with customers who appreciate and share your company values. So how do you attract the right kind of customers to your business? The process starts with the design and content of your website and other marketing materials. This goes back to the story your company values tell. By developing a marketing strategy around your company’s values, you can communicate the type of company you are running and attract customers who are similarly aligned with your business’s priorities.
David Stanislaw is an organizational development specialist with over 25 years’ experience in creating value-based business practices. Through business consulting and facilitation, David helps businesses identify their priorities and communicate their company values to their teams and customers. Contact us to meet with David and begin prioritizing your company values today.
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