Most organizations would agree that there is a critical relationship between a company's culture and its core values.
By aligning these two essential elements, companies can boost employee engagement, strengthen branding and identity, improve performance, and sustain a high-functioning workplace culture.
In this article, we will explore key strategies for integrating your corporate culture with your core values, examining critical components like communication methods, leadership development, organizational structure adjustments, and measurement techniques to ensure alignment over time.
Introduction to Corporate Culture and Values
Corporate culture refers to the beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors that shape how employees interact and conduct business. A company's culture is a key determinant of everything from productivity and engagement to innovation and growth.
Aligning culture with clearly defined values provides several benefits:
Understanding the Characteristics of Corporate Culture
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Corporate culture is comprised of both formal and informal elements. Formal components include mission statements, policies, leadership style, organizational structure and hierarchy. Informal elements consist of unwritten norms, communication styles and office rituals.
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A company's culture reflects its values. Values such as integrity, excellence, accountability and respect manifest through daily interactions and operations.
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Cultures can evolve over time as companies grow. It's important to periodically revisit cultural elements to ensure alignment with values and business strategy.
The Role of Company Values: Examples and Importance
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Company values provide guiding principles for decision making at all levels. Some examples include customer obsession, innovation, integrity and inclusion.
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Shared values allow leadership to model desired behaviors. Employees take cues from what is recognized and rewarded.
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Clearly defined values facilitate cultural cohesion, even with a dispersed, global workforce. They foster a sense of organizational identity.
Examining the Relationship Between Corporate Culture and Values
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A disconnect between espoused values and actual culture creates distrust and confusion. Leadership must walk the talk.
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Intentional culture shaping requires integrating values into every HR practice - from hiring and onboarding to training, compensation and promotion.
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Surveys help assess alignment of values and culture. Data insights allow course correcting as needed.
Culture and Values in the Workplace: Real-World Applications
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Zappos built a billion dollar business around its cultural commitment to world-class customer service. This value permeates all roles and activities.
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Southwest Airlines credits its culture of fun and empathy as key to delivering low-cost, high-quality air travel with excellent customer satisfaction.
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Patagonia's culture of environmental conservation informs everything from product materials to supply chain practices to activism campaigns.
Fostering strong culture-values congruence requires clarity, consistency and conscious reinforcement from leadership at all levels over time. The result is an engaged, aligned workforce powering business success.
What are the 4 C's of corporate culture?
The Four C's—Cooperation, Collaboration, Contribution, and Community—represent key pillars for building a strong corporate culture.
Cooperation
Cooperation refers to the willingness of employees across all levels and departments to work together effectively towards common goals. Leaders should promote a cooperative spirit by:
- Fostering open communication and transparency around objectives
- Breaking down silos and encouraging interdepartmental partnerships
- Providing clarity around individual roles and responsibilities
Collaboration
Collaboration builds on cooperation by enabling fluid teamwork, brainstorming, and collective problem-solving. Ways leaders can nurture collaboration include:
- Creating cross-functional teams and projects
- Designing workspaces that spark creativity and dialogue
- Rewarding group achievements over individual ones
Contribution
Contribution refers to employees' sense of meaning and impact. Leaders can maximize contribution by:
- Connecting day-to-day tasks to the company's overarching vision
- Offering professional development opportunities
- Empowering people to share ideas and innovations
Community
Community is the feeling of belonging, inclusion, and interconnectivity. Leaders should focus on:
- Building personal connections between team members
- Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Organizing team-building activities and social events
By instilling these 4 C's into the workplace, leaders can drive higher engagement, productivity, and retention.
How important is a company's culture and core values to you?
A company's culture and core values are extremely important for both employees and the organization as a whole. Studies show that employees who feel aligned with their company's culture and values are more engaged, productive, and likely to stay at the company longer.
Here are three key reasons why a company's culture and values matter:
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Sense of Purpose: Employees want to feel like their work has meaning and purpose beyond just a paycheck. When a company's values resonate with us personally, we feel more motivated and fulfilled in our roles. Aligning with the culture gives us a sense that we're working towards something bigger than ourselves.
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Common Ground: Strong values provide a unifying force across all levels of an organization, bringing people together around shared beliefs. This facilitates better communication, collaboration, and connection between team members. Especially in distributed or hybrid work environments, having that common ground is crucial.
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Support and Inclusion: The right culture fosters psychological safety, belonging, and empowerment. Employees should feel comfortable being their authentic selves at work, supported by an inclusive environment where diverse perspectives are valued. This level of support enables people to thrive.
In summary, without shared values and an engaging culture that makes people feel purposeful, connected, and valued, an organization will struggle to attract and retain top talent in today's market. As an employee, ensuring alignment on these fronts is pivotal to your job satisfaction and performance.
What is the difference between culture and value?
Perhaps one of the best ways to distinguish between values and culture is to think about our favorite quote from Jay Schein: “This is what we are really about: A concern for people and a concern for results.” “A concern for people” – that's our values. “A concern for results” – that's our culture.
Values refer to the core beliefs and guiding principles that shape a company's identity. They reflect what an organization cares about and guide decision-making at all levels. Examples of common company values include integrity, excellence, accountability, respect, and teamwork.
Culture, on the other hand, refers to the shared assumptions, norms, artifacts, and behaviors that emerge from a company's values being put into action. Culture manifests through the attitudes, communication styles, rituals, policies, physical workspace, and work-life balance that employees experience.
While values provide the foundation, culture reflects how those values translate into everyday actions and interactions. Strong alignment between espoused values and culture leads to engaged employees who feel their work has meaning and purpose. Misalignment causes confusion, cynicism, and disengagement.
As such, leaders must consciously shape culture by modeling values consistently through their own behaviors. This "values-based leadership" helps ingrain desired mindsets and practices company-wide. Regular measurement via culture assessments also allows leaders to course-correct when subcultures form that stray from the intended cultural identity.
In summary, corporate values signify what an organization cares about, while corporate culture reflects how those values come to life through behaviors, norms, and experiences in the workplace. Aligning the two is key for organizations seeking to unite and inspire their workforce around a shared sense of purpose.
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What is the relationship between organizational culture and core values?
Organizational culture refers to the beliefs, assumptions, and values that shape how employees think, feel, and behave in the workplace. An organization's culture is made up of both formal and informal elements, including:
- Leadership and management style
- Policies, procedures, and structures
- Unwritten norms and expectations
- Stories and myths about the company
An organization's core values are the fundamental beliefs and guiding principles that dictate its behavior. Core values define what an organization stands for. Examples of common organizational values include:
- Integrity
- Innovation
- Customer focus
- Collaboration
- Accountability
Organizational culture and core values are deeply intertwined. An organization's core values inform and shape its culture. The culture, in turn, reinforces those values through the norms, assumptions, and behaviors exhibited by leaders and employees.
For example, if an organization claims “innovation” as a core value but does not provide resources or rewards for creative thinking, then innovation will not be an integral part of the culture. Similarly, a culture that does not demonstrate accountability as a norm will struggle to uphold accountability as a core value.
There must be alignment between espoused values and actual cultural behaviors for an organization’s values to truly resonate. Misalignment leads to cynicism and disengagement among employees.
To nurture alignment, leaders should consciously communicate values, model them appropriately, reinforce them through formal and informal rewards, and regularly measure the cultural health of the organization with respect to those values. This creates a self-reinforcing loop between core values and organizational culture.
Assessing and Understanding Your Current Corporate Culture
To align culture and values, you first need to objectively evaluate your existing culture relative to your values and business strategy.
Deploying Employee Surveys to Gauge Culture and Behaviors
Employee surveys are a useful tool for gathering insights into the current state of your company's culture from the employee perspective. Consider asking questions about:
- How employees perceive leadership behaviors and modeling of company values
- If employees feel the culture encourages behaviors aligned with values like collaboration, innovation, accountability etc.
- The level of trust, inclusivity, and psychological safety experienced
- How culture impacts satisfaction and engagement
Anonymous surveys encourage open and honest feedback. Follow up with focus groups to dive deeper into survey results. This highlights potential misalignments between espoused and actual lived values.
Analyzing Policies and Employee Benefits for Value Reflection
Examine your current policies and employee benefits offerings through the lens of your cultural values:
- Innovation: Do creativity and risk-taking receive recognition and rewards?
- Collaboration: Do policies encourage teamwork and collective success?
- Inclusivity: Do benefits offer equitable support to diverse needs?
Any discrepancies indicate areas for realignment. For example, an exclusionary parental leave policy contradicts values of inclusivity.
Direct Observation: Leadership and Team Interactions
Observe actual behaviors and interactions of leaders and teams first-hand:
- Leadership: Do executives model values consistently via actions and decisions?
- Teams: Do you see collaboration, creativity, accountability in daily work?
This helps you accurately assess the lived experience of your culture. Behaviors conflicting with values highlight areas needing realignment.
Cross-Culture Considerations in a Diverse Workforce
Recognize that a mosaic of cultural backgrounds exists within your company's culture. Ensure your analysis accounts for:
- Cultural differences in communication styles, etiquette, norms
- Inclusive language and behaviors accommodating all groups
- Values-alignment across diverse cultural perspectives
Understand sub-cultures before concluding misalignment between overall culture and formal values.
Alignment Strategies: Integrating Culture and Values
Once you've assessed your culture, implement changes to bridge gaps between culture and values.
Revising Organizational Structure to Reflect Core Values
To ensure your organizational structure aligns with and supports your core values:
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Evaluate current organizational frameworks like reporting lines, decision-making processes, and collaboration models. Identify areas of misalignment with values.
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Make structural changes to address misalignments. For example, adopt flatter organization models with fewer management layers to enable transparency and accountability.
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Create cross-functional teams and open communication channels to encourage inclusivity, diversity of thought, and psychological safety.
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Institute participative decision-making models involving employees across levels to reflect values of empowerment and respect.
Leadership Development: Guided by Ethics and Core Beliefs
Leaders significantly impact culture. Develop leaders who role model values through:
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Leadership training programs focused building self-awareness of biases and modeling inclusive behaviors.
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Mentorship initiatives that reinforce making ethical choices guided by company values and beliefs.
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Succession planning prioritizing candidates demonstrating values in decisions and actions vs. solely performance metrics.
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Leader communication emphasizing mission and values, explaining "why" behind decisions transparently.
Communication Style and Strategy for Value Dissemination
Communicate values effectively through:
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Multi-channel campaigns clearly defining expected behaviors representing core values.
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Value integration into performance reviews, evaluating how well employees live the values.
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Storytelling sharing examples of employees demonstrating values in their work for inspiration.
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Surveys checking what values employees associate with company culture to address gaps.
Promoting a High-Performance Culture Through Value Alignment
Connect values to performance by:
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Linking goal-setting and OKRs to behaviors reflecting core values.
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Incentivizing and recognizing employees exhibiting values while achieving results.
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Hiring and promoting based on culture add, not just role qualifications, to sustain values.
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Defining and measuring performance metrics focused on outcomes achieved through ethical, inclusive means.
Measuring and Maintaining Culture-Values Alignment
To sustain alignment, continuously gather data and make adjustments as needed.
Utilizing Pulse Surveys for Ongoing Culture Checks
Implementing regular short surveys to keep a finger on the pulse of the organization's cultural health.
Pulse surveys are a great way to regularly check in on how well the company's culture and values align. These short, simple surveys ask employees questions related to the company's values, culture, leadership, communication, recognition, and overall employee experience.
The key is to keep the surveys brief, sending them out frequently, such as monthly or quarterly. This provides ongoing monitoring of the cultural environment rather than just an annual snapshot. HR can analyze the survey results to quickly identify areas where employees feel the lived culture diverges from the aspirational culture defined by leadership. Action plans can then be developed to realign any components that may have drifted.
Some examples of pulse survey questions that test culture-values fit:
- How well do you feel the company lives up to its stated values?
- How satisfied are you with the recognition you receive for embodying the company's values?
- How confident are you that leadership's decisions align with the company's values?
- How well does your day-to-day work experience reflect the cultural aspirations stated by leadership?
Keeping a finger on the pulse of organizational culture is key to maintaining alignment with values over time as companies scale and evolve.
Linking Cultural Initiatives to Business Essentials
Connecting cultural alignment efforts to fundamental business metrics and outcomes.
To continually justify investing in culture-building initiatives, HR needs to tie cultural efforts directly to essential business metrics that executives care about. Some examples are:
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Employee retention: Track voluntary turnover rates over time after cultural interventions to quantify impact. Demonstrate how enhancing culture-values fit reduces attrition risk.
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Productivity: Link projects that boost employee engagement and workplace satisfaction to productivity gains through analyses of output data.
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Revenue: Correlate employee NPS and culture survey scores to customer NPS to demonstrate how culture cascades into improved revenue.
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Innovation: Connect values-alignment efforts around autonomy, mastery and purpose to increases in patent applications.
When cultural initiatives can be quantitatively tied to tangible upsides in essential performance indicators, executives are more likely to provide support and resources to scale this work.
Feedback Loops: Ensuring Employee Voice in Culture Shaping
Cultivating an environment where employee feedback is actively sought and valued for continuous cultural improvement.
The people actually living the culture day-to-day need to have a structured way to participate in shaping that culture over time. Establishing open feedback loops allows insights to surface about where values alignment may be falling short.
This starts by destigmatizing critical feedback and communicating it is welcome. But it also requires actively collecting input through focus groups, advisory panels, anonymous surveys, staff interviews, and suggestion boxes.
Ideally, this feedback should connect to real initiatives. For example, if multiple employees surface a need around work-life balance, workshops can be held to co-create solutions and pilot new policies. Closing the loop by responding to feedback with action plans signals employee perspectives truly steer cultural evolution.
This facilitates a culture continuously refined through the unique lens of diverse employees. With strong feedback channels, the lived culture can stay lockstep with ever-changing workplace dynamics.
The Role of Human Resources in Sustaining Organizational Culture
Exploring how the HR department can play a pivotal role in maintaining the alignment between corporate culture and values.
While culture lives through every employee, HR plays an especially vital part in nurturing it. From the candidate screening process through ongoing talent development programs, HR policies bring values to life—or fail to.
HR carries the torch of culture in practices like:
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Recruiting and onboarding: Ensuring candidates selected reflect stated values and then receiving immersive cultural onboarding.
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Learning and development: Offering regular training on how to apply company values to everyday decisions and interactions.
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Performance management: Incorporating values-alignment into goal setting and evaluation criteria.
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Compensation and promotion: Demonstrably rewarding those who best embody company values, not just financial results.
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Retention and engagement: Relying on pulse surveys and feedback channels to address misalignments between culture and values.
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Succession planning: Embedding values as a key factor in advancement, signaling what behaviors get rewarded.
With culture intrinsic to so many talent management processes, HR has both immense responsibility and opportunity to lock arms with leadership in nurturing an ethical, inclusive and engaging workplace where espoused values manifest in day-to-day experiences.
Conclusion: The Symbiosis of Culture and Values
Aligning culture with values requires assessment, targeted interventions, and continuous tracking. When done effectively, it can significantly boost performance.
Recap: The Six Components of a Great Corporate Culture
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Leadership and Accountability - Leaders must model desired behaviors and hold employees accountable.
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Values and Ethics - Core values guide decision making at all levels. Ethics establish acceptable behaviors.
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Employee Experience - The daily experiences of employees shape the culture. Ensure experiences align with values.
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Diversity and Inclusion - Embrace diverse perspectives and foster inclusivity.
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Communication and Transparency - Open communication builds trust and transparency reinforces authenticity.
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Recognition and Rewards - Recognize and reward behaviors that exhibit company values.
Final Thoughts on Creating a Supportive Company Culture
A supportive culture where employees feel valued enables companies to attract and retain top talent. Assessing alignment of culture and values provides insight into areas for improvement. Targeted strategies address misalignments, like updating policies, incentives, training programs and more. Continuously track progress with pulse surveys. An aligned culture drives productivity, innovation and growth.
