Company Core Values

How Do You Identify and Communicate Company Core Values?

What are corporate values?

Company values are the north star of your company. They are the values, principles or overarching philosophies that employees at all levels should follow when making decisions or acting in the interests of your company. In short, they are the way your employees work, collaborate, or perceive themselves at work.

How do you define core values?

The first thing you need to do is distinguish a value from a goal. While goals change over time due to competition or market changes, company values should only change when an organization decides to reevaluate them.

Why are company values important?

Company values are important because they are an authentic reflection of your company culture. They also define the conditions under which your employees work with each other, how they work with competitors, and even how they work with or serve your customers. They are important because they impact almost every work relationship.

How do you come up with company values?

Here’s the first rule: never copy from a competitor. Even if it sounds good or is completely correct, copying the values of the competition won’t get you very far. They must emerge naturally and from within your team, as part of your overall business development strategy.

Example of corporate values: The IceHrm Code

After five years and having grown the company to over 500 employees in multiple countries in that short time, 2020 presented the perfect opportunity to rethink what defines IceHrm’s culture.

In fact, that’s often what draws people to IceHrm in the first place. The majority of new applicants cited IceHrm’s culture as the main reason they applied and joined the company.

“100% of our new employees say our company culture is one of the reasons they applied to IceHrm,” says Cassandra Hoermann, Team Lead, People Experience.

So we had to dig deep and continue to hone what makes us great. It started from the top, with CEO and founder Hanno Renner.

He had the idea to take our company values established in 2017 and have a company-wide conversation with a particular focus on employees to ensure that IceHrm is still living these values (or if they need to be changed).

Culture by Design helped IceHrm identify and expand the company values so that everyone in the company could identify with them.

The four steps that help define your company values

Let’s take IceHrm’s processes as an example to illustrate the step-by-step process for identifying and sharpening corporate values in your own organization…

1.Choose a productive setting

Andrea Strohmayr: “Values are a very emotional topic…that’s why we decided on a co-creation workshop with a lot of storytelling. The process has already helped to bring the newly sharpened values to life.”

As the team went through the process, things changed quickly. The rise of COVID-19 meant the workshop could not take place in the office as planned.

Instead, the team set up a five-hour online workshop. This required more preparation but also resulted in a more organized process.

Basically you want an environment that looks like this

• Collaborative – Everyone has the opportunity to feel included and contribute.

• Honest – Participants are expected and encouraged to be honest (without consequences).

• Iterative – ideas can be tried over and over again, not just once and never again.

• Productive – Every workshop must produce concrete results that can be celebrated.

Let the “CHIP” model guide you when it comes to choosing the right setting for a corporate values workshop your organization may be planning.

2.Involve the right stakeholders

Since your company’s core values are ultimately lived by employees, it is important that they remain as active as possible throughout the entire process.

Company values are not something you think up in the executive suite. They are a shared process with employees.

Stephanie Berger, culture through design

A total of 40 people took part, with representatives from all locations and departments. The result was diverse representation at all levels.

3.Emphasize listening and storytelling

In a recent study by Glassdoor, 65% of over a thousand participants said that an attractive company mission made them more motivated and engaged (2019).

But a strong culture needs moving and engaging stories. Stephanie Berger mentions that “it was important for us to get a feel for the people, so we had them tell stories about IceHrm. Things they experienced together and the things that defined IceHrm for them.”

To facilitate discussions, participants in the online workshops always shared their ideas in smaller groups (which we called “breakout rooms”). The stories shared there helped convey the essence of IceHrm.

4.Define your company’s DNA

Using all of these collected materials, Andreas and Stephanie formulated the core values that could be derived from the participants’ stories.

“IceHrm already has an incredibly strong culture, so we only had to make small adjustments. We also wanted to know whether there were additional values that had not yet been defined – for example, the value of transparency came to light here.”

However, values should never stand alone. They deserve to be associated with working examples to bring them to life. This results in a list of specific behaviors that is intended to serve as a guide for current and future employees.

How do you live your company’s core values?

It’s not enough to just talk about your company’s values or even write them down. Values must be lived, every day: that is the importance of basic values in a company. It’s not about simply existing, but about being implementable and lived by every employee.

If you look at a company that has a very successful and strong culture, it’s because nothing has been left to chance. Everything is done with care and intention.

This is because culture is ultimately reflected in the day-to-day activities, priorities and general mood of a company.

Examples of company values: 12 popular values for inspiration

So what core values should all great companies have? Below we have listed some examples of company values to help you get started.

These are all good core values for a company. However, remember that a company’s core values are an authentic reflection of your culture.

They cannot be forced and must develop organically. So make sure the values you choose are both desirable and reflect your current vibe.

• Trust

• Independence

• Passion

• Enthusiasm

• Innovation

• Teamwork

• Diversity

• Satisfaction

• Experience

• Growth

• Responsiveness

• Sense of responsibility

How many core values should a company have? That depends on your culture! However, remember that employees need to be able to remember your company’s values.

If you choose 100 values, require your employees to remember (and live by) each one. Values must be memorable, but they must also be memorable.

How do you bring your company values to life?

“We took IceHrm’s fifth birthday as an opportunity to present our revised values and business principles to our employees – as the ‘IceHrm Code’,” says Cassandra.

If you’re looking for company values examples, we can help you start the conversation!

Below you will find IceHrm’s core values and how we live them every day:

• CustomerEmpathy – We are constantly researching to better understand our customers and their problems and to be able to help them.
• Personal Responsibility – Everyone in the company is encouraged to be responsible for their projects and their success (by setting clear goals).
• Transparency – Whether it’s our all-team meeting or other internal updates, everyone at IceHrm knows the “why” behind all our decisions.
• TeamSpirit – We strongly believe in supporting each other whenever we can and being available to our colleagues.
• Social Responsibility – For us, there is no “Planet B”, and things like our Sustainability Committee help ensure we leave the world in a better state than we found it.
• Fun – Because work should be fun! We want to celebrate successes and progress within the team to encourage our employees to always do their best.

When it comes to hiring employees at IceHrm, cultural fit is absolutely crucial. Our onboarding processes are designed to ensure that all new employees are familiarized with our values right from the start.

“We end each All-Hands with an employee telling us a particular example of one of our values or operating principle. Basically, how that value was applied in a particular case,” explains Cassandra.

Stephanie and Andrea have also found that IceHrm’s employees truly live the company’s core values. “We saw how much enthusiasm there was for the workshop. The employees were proud to be part of the team and they told their stories with passion. That made our work a lot easier.”