With competition for top talent high, how you showcase and promote your organizational values can make or break how well you connect with candidates, employees, and stakeholders.
It’s easy to lose sight of your values in the midst of recruiting and hiring employees. While it’s understandable, it can also result in missed opportunities to make sure your workforce is living out the core mission of your organization.
Fortunately, there are many ways to incorporate your values into your day-to-day operations and consistently remind employees about the standards your leadership team lives by. Consider the following ways to bring your organizational values to life.
Put them front and center.
If you forget to reinforce your values in company communications and decisions, it will be easy for your employees to forget the importance they play. Always highlight your company’s mission in employee communications including your employee handbook, company website, internal emails, and workplace signage.
Take any opportunity you can to remind your employees why and how your organization makes an impact. Most importantly, major leadership decisions should always connect to your organization’s values so they are continually reinforced and lived out by everyone on your team.
Make them a priority in the hiring process.
Too often, employers focus solely on hard skills and qualifications failing to pay attention to candidates’ ethics. Building a culture of high morale starts with the employees you bring onto your team.
As you evaluate new candidates, you’ll want to pay close attention to their character. For example, if your company values loyalty and commitment, you’ll want to assess candidates for these traits by asking more personalized questions. How committed would they be to the organization? Why did they apply in the first place? What inspires them to succeed?
Zeroing in on questions specifically related to ethics and values will help you get to the heart of each candidate and learn what they can bring to the table as individuals.
Reward employees who live out your values.
According to an article in Entrepreneur Magazine, you can’t expect employees to live out your company’s values if you don’t promote and reward behaviors that reflect them. Employees who exhibit values in their performance — whether it’s part of their jobs or simple acts of kindness — should be recognized for aligning their work with the company’s character.
You can recognize employees in many ways, such as office lunches and quarterly awards ceremonies, or through internal communications like a monthly employee newsletter. For significant employee accomplishments, you can also make recognitions public through your company website or news release announcements to the media.
These strategies not only build employee morale, but they also create positive community relationships for your organization. As pointed out in this article by Inc. Magazine, the more recognized your organization becomes as a premier place to work, the more your company’s reputation will flourish.
The key takeaway? The values of your company define its mission and, quite simply, why it exists. By defining and promoting them, your leadership team can affect how your company’s values are perceived and carried out both internally and externally.
Values are the backbone to any thriving company culture, and the future success of your organization depends in large part on the culture you build. Without a strategic plan to carry them out, you may end up neglecting critical components of your organization.