Your company values are a strategic business driver: if you use them to encourage the right culture among your employees, clients, and business partners.
I founded and lead an HR consultancy for small businesses. Our company, Inspiring HR, does the things that small business leaders need to do, but don’t want to do, don’t know how to do, or don’t have time for.
We also consult with our clients on the “bigger picture” needs: like fostering a thriving culture. A company’s values are essential to maintaining and encouraging a thriving culture. But for many companies, the values are wallpaper in the lobby. I hope after reading this, you’ll reconsider the potential or significance of your company values. It can be the difference-maker in reaching your strategic goals.
Company Values: Keep Them Simple and Make Sure They’re Relevant
When I founded Inspiring HR, I knew I wanted my company’s values to be authentic in that what we recommend for our clients we believe in and follow ourselves. I also knew my company’s values would serve as a road map and help guide:
- Hiring the right people
- Evaluating performance effectively
- Coaching up my employees as needed
- Encouraging a positive “ripple effect” culture from our team members that spilled into the client experience
I wanted our values to be easy to remember: who has time to recall five pages’ worth of company values! I also knew the values needed to be woven into how I engaged my employees, clients, and business partners.
In other words, your company values need to be living, breathing tools for driving your business forward. If your employees only read your values during their annual performance review, your values are not contributing to your company’s bottom line!
Inspiring HR’s first core values made up the acronym SURE.
SURE stands for:
- Simple
- Understandable
- Relevant
- Empowering
We like to say that Inspiring HR is HR Done Differently. We uncomplicate HR and empower small businesses. That’s why our core values reflected our brand proposition to prospective clients.
If you lead a small business, you know that your front-line leaders must be multi-talented. They handle many things and can’t get bogged down by complex “HR speak.” That’s why we wanted our values to reflect being Simple, Understandable, and Relevant. At Inspiring HR, we also want our HR counsel to Empower our clients to make better decisions to run their businesses.
Why We Updated Our Core Values
I encourage our small business clients to review their company values periodically. I am sure your business has evolved in the last few years, especially since the pandemic. Are your values still the best representation of the people and culture you want to foster?
Recently, I hosted an all-company retreat. It was the first time many of us had been together since the pandemic. It was an opportunity for us to reflect on our company’s values and ask: do they best represent the kind of company we are today?
After all, the pandemic has “turned the volume up” on the challenges our clients lean on us to solve. We’ve hired new, amazing employees and are working with clients across the country … so much has changed for our company. We realized our company values should reflect who we are today and where we are headed next.
I facilitated a discussion with my team, and we developed new values. Because I prefer company values to be simple and memorable, we developed a new acronym for our values: CURES.
Our values have a dual purpose: they remind us what we stand for and how we want the experience to be with our clients.
At Inspiring HR, we:
- Caretake
- Understand
- Relate
- Educate
- Simplify
Each of these values provides an opportunity to reflect on how we want to work with and engage our team members, business partners, and our clients.
Caretake: Often, our clients are unsure how to ask for help. We never want our clients to feel bad for asking for help. We’re here to take care of our clients.
Understand: We commit to being great listeners and affirm what we heard before we propose solutions. Many of us have walked in our clients’ shoes. We understand their challenges because we’ve repeatedly dealt with and solved similar challenges.
Relate: To truly caretake, we need to understand where our clients are coming from and relate to them in ways that resonate. We speak our clients’ language and tailor our approach to their preferences. We also strive to relate to and empathize with our co-workers and colleagues. That way, they know we have their “back” when something unexpected comes up or a colleague needs to step in and add value.
Educate: We study HR daily from many sources and tailor how we educate our clients based on their unique needs and learning styles. A good example of this is the state law tracker tool we built. This tool keeps our clients on top of labor laws. Not just that, but the tool turns legalese into plain English, so our clients know what they need to do and know what to do.
Simplify: We want to uncomplicate HR and empower small businesses. HR can be complicated. That’s why we act as a filter and look for ways to simplify our clients’ lives. As you know, keeping things simple is not easy! As Einstein once said, “Be simple, but not simplistic.” HR can be complicated for our small business leaders.
Work Your Company Values, So They Work For You
Your company values do you no good if they are locked away in an employee handbook and never used. That’s why we made an inventory of every possible touchpoint where our employees, clients, and business partners can see and engage with our core values.
My leaders and I ensure we are “high-fiving” employees who live the values. Every week, we acknowledge a team member demonstrating one or more of our core values. As you know, emotions are contagious. That’s why we look for and encourage our employees to celebrate each other when they live Inspiring HR’s core values. This builds a thriving culture where the right-fit employees want to stay and participate.
Your Company Values Are a Rallying Cry for the Road Ahead
It’s easier to manage people when everyone has a shared language for success. Your company values can become a rallying cry for the company culture and success you want. Decision-making gets much easier when everyone knows what the values are. When your company values are clear, communicated, and encouraged, people are worried about the right things and make decisions that are aligned with the values. As the saying goes, you want your employees rowing in the same direction. You want your company values to be easy to remember: when they are easy to remember, they become easier to commit to and live by.
At Inspiring HR, we uncomplicate HR and empower small businesses. Visit our Resources page for instant access to Labor Law Reference Guides, Remote Work Reference Guides, and more! Ready for friendly and helpful HR consultation? Contact Us today!
