Establishing core values for a company is as important as having a brand because they define the company’s culture and character and hence the behaviour of its employees.
However, having established them, here comes the hard part – embedding these values into your employee culture. Explanation is not enough for creating a real community; employees must feel the values and understand how to truly live them in their daily working life.
What are they thinking about? What are they feeling? What would they change? Answering these questions will give you important insights.
The 5 steps to bring your core values to life
Discuss your values at meetings, through company’s newsletter etc. Show everyone in your organisation how important they are. If your employees really understand how these core values make a difference in their working life they will be more committed to the organisation and each other. Remember; values will be lived more fully if they are written as verbs!
Having announced and discussed them, it is important to keep the values at the forefront of employees’ minds in everything they do. Constant reminding such as posts or pictures will maintain the level of understanding.
Give your values a fun and interactive shape! As we mentioned in our latest blog post, there are a lot of benefits to using gamification – games allow people to genuinely feel the company’s culture because games are fun, engaging and can relate to real-life scenarios, which means that learning and retention are increased.
If you encourage people for living the values they will continue to do so. Even small breaks can increase productivity. Nowadays ‘out’ experience is getting more and more popular. If you organize outdoor fun events followed up with the opportunity to mingle socially – your employees will feel included and valued.
Constantly. Permanently. Getting feedback on your activities and policy is crucial for further business development. Asking staff such questions as “what do you think of our latest uniform policy?” or “what would you improve?” will increase loyalty because that means the company cares and thus unites teams.
To give you more inspiration about how to use games to truly deliver the message about your values, embed that message throughout your organisation and encourage changed behaviours to match your values, we’re organizing our FREE seminar to show you what a difference a game can make!
