Integrity means you’re the same in public as you are in private. It can be difficult to define a business down to a couple of choice words, but it’s a key part of the process if you plan to successfully grow and scale. Your company values help you put out the image you want to your clients, prospective employees, and partners.
A company has to be more than just a name or a product. Making your values accessible to everyone isn’t really an option anymore — it’s a necessity. Why are they so important? For starters, your employees want to know who they’re working for — especially when we’re spending a majority of our adult lives at our jobs.
This doesn’t mean every single hire is going to fall in love with the company and stay forever, but creating a positive environment for each person who walks through your doors is a reasonable expectation to have. People are no longer working just to get paid, but instead want a company that will support and foster individual growth.
All for one and one for all
Brainstorming with employees as you grow can keep your progress humble and produce a company compromised of humans, not just workers. Feedback meetings are a great way to understand if your staff is growing the way you want it to. Managers can handle one-on-one meetings with their teams, then compile and discuss the feedback in a meeting with team leaders to make sure everyone feels like their opinion was heard.
Understanding what you’re not is a helpful part of this process. With growth comes different personalities, backgrounds, and experiences working under one roof, which is necessary for an innovative business. Defining which values you don’t express can help weed out those who won’t align with your mission.
Learn from groundbreakers
Learning from those who have paved the way before you is a good start. Check out brands you respect to see how they’ve built their businesses and kept a strong ethos in their office throughout the process.
Use your network to learn from other companies’ mistakes and how they grew from them. You don’t have to know or be connected to the CEO of a business to learn about how they got to where they are — anyone can have some insight about this. Ask your friends if they think their company upholds their values, or even if they know what they are! Most of the time people want to share their story, so grab a coffee and listen.
Values help you create a space people are proud to be a part of. When your employees have pride in where they work, they’ll be excited to come in and do their part. Gathering a multitude of personalities and backgrounds together for one unified mission statement can’t be done if people don’t know who or why they’re doing it.
