What are intrinsic values and why are they meaningful?

What are some ways to make company core values meaningful to employees?

• Most companies has core values but usually, they are a meaningless sentences that employees don't care about and can't even recall. What are some strategies on making core values meaningful.

• Answer:

  This answer is a summary from our recent blog post: http://blog.7geese.com/2013/03/15/how-to-communicate-and-integrate-your-core-values-into-your-organization/ According to http://michaelhyatt.com/question-7-how-do-you-communicate-your-core-values.html, the author of the New York Times bestseller, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World,  it is crucial to translate the core values into behaviors that are  easy to understand by your employees. He has identified 6 ways to  communicate the core values to every member of the organization as I  have elaborated on below. Living the values – Leading by example is the best communication tool any leader possesses. A http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/About/Leadership/1fe8be4ad25e7310VgnVCM1000001956f00aRCRD.htm conducted by Deloitte has found that 70% of the employees who agreed  that their companies had performed well financially said their executive  management team speaks to them often about the core values associated  with the culture of the company. http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bandura.html,  a famous psychologist, coined the term “observational learning” – human  beings are social and learn by observing others. Therefore, it is  important for you and others in your organization that have influence to  live the values so that others can learn. Teaching the values – Integrating the values into  new employees’ orientation training program. It is helpful to tell the  story behind each value chosen and what your organization expects in  terms of behaviours related to the values. An interesting data from “http://www.recognizethisblog.com/index.php/2012/12/fall-2012-workforce-mood-tracker-recognition-linked-to-core-values-delivers-increased-roi/” shows that 88% of employees who know their core values say they are  engaged compared to 54% of respondents who say they did not know any of  their company’s core values. Recognizing the values – Reinforcing the behaviours  of people who are demonstrating the core values by rewarding them in  real time. Based on the article “Recognition Linked to Core Values Delivers Increased ROI”,  79% of employees say recognition tied to core values gave them a  stronger sense of company goals and objectives. Some companies would  have the “Core Value Employee of the Month” where every member of the  organization vote for the person they view as endorsing the core values  of the company the most, and this person is recognized company wide. Hiring new people based on the values – Recruiting people who already have values that are in alignment with the company’s core values. This point is linked to the http://www.managementstudyguide.com/competency-iceberg-model.htm model which demonstrates that 20% of an individual (above the surface  of an iceberg) is mostly the technical competencies i.e. education, work  experience, whereas 80% (the hidden/below the surface of an iceberg) is  all about the essence of the individual i.e. values and beliefs.  Competency-based recruiting has been focusing on hiring people based on  the “below the surface” competencies as those cannot be trained. You can  always easily train a person on how to do a job, but it becomes much  harder to train a person to have the same values as your organization. Reviewing people based on the values –  Incorporating core values as part of your performance management  process. Each core value comes with a set of behaviors that are  measurable and specific that forms part of performance review. For  example, one feature of 7Geese is to https://www.7geese.com/product/recognition/ whenever they behave in alignment with a core value. Our customers then  use this data during an employee’s performance review to measure  alignment to core values. Reviewing people based on values is  interrelated with rewarding people for demonstrating the values. During  performance reviews, your managers can coach and support employees on  how to demonstrate the core values which eventually lead to recognition  and rewards. Letting people go based on values – As mentioned  above, it is very hard to train a person to behave consistently  in alignment with core values if they don’t truly have those values  themselves. No matter how good of a performer that employee is, at the  end of the day, your organization needs to maintain its credibility and  commitment to its core values. It is important to make a distinction  here as I am not suggesting letting people go based on their personal  values and beliefs. Rather, we want to ensure that people who stay in  the company have the ability to demonstrate behaviors related to the  core values. For example, if being ethical is one of your core values,  it would be detrimental to keep an employee who is cooking the books, no  matter how well he is doing his job.