Core Values of a Company: The Steps and the Ideologies behind it

core values of a company

The companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc., have always focused on their core values and identity that they represent to the outer world and their customers. None of them would have gained much attraction until today if they only looked after methods to improve and increase the marketing and balance sheets.

The company’s identity is what it highlights through their deeds and support to its customers. And such an identity comes right from the core values of the company.

What are the Core Values of the Company?

The core values of the company represent the it’s identity, and it comes right through the leaders. It forms a base to the deeds, culture, and work environment, which helps them to get closer towards their goals and missions. These values are the principles that speak for company behavior with the customers and binds people together to create something worthy.

core values

Steve Jobs, CEO, co-founder, and chairman of Apple, once said, ‘Great things in the business are never done by one person. They are done by the team of people’. And these people could be customers, employees, and society.

What is the Need For Core Values?

Almost every company has its mission, vision, and goals, which the company ensures to follow. Therefore, core values are essential to help any company achieve its missions and visions.

The accurate formulated core values support the company in making the best decisions for its customers and the community’s well-being. So whether you develop a business or culture, these core values will help build personality, growth, and business strategy.

Moreover, your company’s core values help you in conquering many essential requirements other than branding and identity building. These can include developing employee engagement strategies, healthy interaction between the workforce, employee retention, customer satisfaction, and business practices.

What are the Steps to Define the Core Values of the Company?

Core values don’t come from the first day of the business. It is the regular practice that helps make your behaviors mutual and customers happy. And leadership plays an essential role in idealizing the values of the company.

As we have discussed, values represent the company’s behavior; copying ideas from other companies and competitors is not acceptable. As a company, the values must include what you and your employees will follow to make it count.

Here are the steps required to design your core values.

steps to define core values of the company

Step 1: Buildup a Team

The first step in designing your core values that intrigue the community is to gather a representative team. This team should be able to think logically and creatively to develop the values that help present an interactive behavior and a growing culture. In addition, a group of people can have a wider area of thinking and processes.

Every person in the team should continuously think, create, and assess the core values’ ideas. Conscious thoughts on defining the core values may be restricted to a particular mindset if a single person handles the planning. Teamwork always comes in handy while developing such matters.

Step 2: Plan and Brief Out

The further step for the team formed is to try and suggest some fresh ideas that will be able to represent the company identity and narrow them down to the best fit. You can also use anonymous voting.

Every team member must present their thoughts about the ideas if it fits the role or not. It will be a time-consuming process, and one must make sure to invest a reasonable amount of time into it. Also, the company’s missions, visions, and goals must be followed by the core values.

You can survey the values with your employees as they are used-to to the culture and surroundings. Leaders and management can also be observed about the same. It will help you with a broader dimension of the thinking process.

Step 3: Summarize

After gathering suggestions from all over, the next thing is to finalize your unique core values to connect to your organization and your community.

Make sure they don’t represent similarities. Then, the similar ones can be merged while the extra can be removed to reduce the quantity to the unique ones.

Moreover, the core values must not be more significant in number. The ones selected must be a fewer, thoughtful, and exact representation of your goals. Many renowned companies have a limited number of values that are enough to represent the company.

Once summarized, you can review them with the employees, human resources, and leaders about what they think of the core values.

Step 4: Broadcast

The core values are not just designed to be in the files and documents. They should be shared with the whole company to ensure they are followed.

The employees must be aware about how you’ve selected the core values and what, as an individual, they must strive for achieving the values and the goals. They must ensure the same through their roles and responsibilities throughout their employment. The customer must be treated the same way you tell them about the core values.

What are the Ideologies Behind Setting up Core Values?

Until now, we discussed that core values must be able to represent what the company does and how it supports the customers. Every core value must be supported with a specific unique ideology you follow to ensure this. Here are some of the ideologies it should reflect.

Represent the Culture of the Company

percentage for improvement

The company’s core values must set up a cultural environment where the employees feel safe to stay in the long run. The working environment must provide professional growth and future advancement. The company should focus on developing diversity to reduce the effects of discrimination among peers.

Represent the Mission and Vision

It must follow your mission and vision towards the community, making this ideology the prime one. Your mission and vision are what the customers and employees notice the most. What you work and how you work to represent your company’s identity.

Help in Talent Acquisition

When you hire a candidate, they always find some instinct about the culture and values you work upon. And the culture and environment are always linked to how your core values are. Therefore, the positive representation of these values will help develop trust in candidates to join the company.

Increase the Respect

When you do what you say, the employees and the customers will trust in investing in you and respect what you do. It will also increase attraction and retention, and reduce the employee turnover ratio. And a company following this goes a long way.

Drives Innovation

Following innovative ideas and theories for your organization, every new service or lead helps to develop more customer trust. Employees also find it interesting to work with a company that generates innovation. These core values help a lot for driving such innovation.

Improves Customer Success

It will help, if your primary goal is to gain customers’ trust by giving and supporting what your customers ask. However, the core values must also reflect the same to improve customer success and reach.

Improve the Decision-Making Process

The core values designed help very much in the decision-making process. As a result, it might not seem time-consuming to come down to a suitable final decision.

Mind-Blowing Stats That Emphasize The Company’s Values Importance

  • More than 50% of the C-level managers believe that the company’s core values have a direct influence on productivity, profitability, creativity, and the overall growth rate.
  • Above 45% of job-seeking candidates state that the company’s culture and values are essential even to apply to the company.
  • 88% of the workforce cite that strong company culture and value is the crucial aspect of the business’s success.
  • More than 90% of the managers are convinced that the aligning of the company’s and the candidate’s values is as essential as the candidate’s skills.
  • About 35% of the employees are willing to give up the job even if it’s their passion, just to relieve themselves from the company that lacks fundamental values.

Examples of Core Values of Some Renowned Companies

Every small, medium, or large company must have its core values that help them create a company brand and unique identity in the market.

And as LinkedIn says, it would be interesting to look around the core values of some renowned companies. Here are some examples.

Apple

  • We believe that we’re on the face of the Earth to make great products.
  • We believe in the simple, not the complex.
  • We participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.
  • We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make.
  • We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot.
  • We don’t settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we’re wrong and the courage to change.
  • We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.

LinkedIn

  • Members first.
  • Relationship matter.
  • Be open, honest, and constructive.
  • Demand excellence.
  • Take intelligent risks.
  • Act like an owner.

Microsoft

  • Innovation.
  • Diversity and Inclusion.
  • Corporate social responsibility.
  • Philanthropies.
  • Environment.
  • Trustworthy computing.

Facebook

  • Be bold.
  • Focus on the impact.
  • Move fast.
  • Be open.
  • Build social values.

Uber

  • Super-pumpedness.
  • Always be hustlin’.
  • Let builders build.
  • Meritocracy and toe-stepping.
  • Principled confrontation.
  • Making bold bets.
  • Celebrate cities.
  • Make magic.
  • Inside out.
  • Optimistic leadership.
  • Bring yourself.
  • Own don’t rent.
  • Champion’s mindset.
  • Obsession with the customer.

Conclusion

Core values help the company build a reputation that will stay longer in faster-changing market trends. In addition, it is the base to develop trust and integrity towards the employees and customers. Moreover, core values that must be created from the start help develop an environment where employees and customers feel worthy of being a part of the company.

The core values of being unique also help differentiate from the competitors and develop a better identity.

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