When people leave one company for another, a major success or failure factor in their new assimilation is how well they match the existing culture. Bad fits rarely make it. Alignment of these core values is important for a number of reasons.
From the company perspective
Companies are nothing more than a collection of people ostensibly pursuing a common purpose. As with any collection of individuals, some will get it and some will not. Some will care, others will not. Some will add equity to the brand while others detract.
Workers typically fall into four categories—disengaged, somewhat disengaged, somewhat engaged, and fully engaged—so it is in a company’s best interest to maximize its number of engaged workers while minimizing the number who really don’t care.
Maximizing sustained loyalty is a process; and that process begins at the point of attraction. Hiring people who are a good fit for organizational values is smart, because people who share a common vision will assimilate quicker, work together better, and be more likely to stick around — which begs the question, “How do we attract and vet those like-minded potential hires?”
In general terms companies have three broad ways to present themselves to the marketplace:
- Product and brand identification. Starbucks is Starbucks. Walk in and you know what you’ll get: expensive hot coffee efficiently served.
- Marketing and advertising messages. Big companies, especially those in consumer products, telecommunications, automotive, media, and pharmaceutical industries, spend staggering amounts on advertising to keep brands top-of-mind among consumers. Procter & Gamble spends the most — over $4 billion a year — to tout flagship brands like Gillette, Olay, Cover Girl, Pantene, and Tide.
- Core values and culture. Companies like Nordstrom’s and Zappos rocketed to billions by managing the customer experience. Nordstrom’s does it in person; Zappos does it invisibly. Both get the job done. Products come and go but customers return – because of the way they are treated, both face-to-face and over the telephone.
From an employee hiring perspective all three corporate approaches offer different culture propositions.
For Nordie’s and Zappos, the need to find happy, like-minded, service-centric people is mandatory. Neither can role model its famed customer experience continuity without loyal legions who reflect their brand’s core values.
Profits, of course, are important — but secondary to brand protection. Service-centric cultures like these trust that delivering the promise also delivers the profits.
From a personal perspective
More companies talk about values (and post them on their website) than live them. Allegiance fluctuates, often misaligned with the the workforce conscience. Saboteurs include corporate politics and short-term financial targets, both capable of bending and breaking stated values.
A tip-off on what lies ahead comes during the interview phase. Interviews based on core values help companies vet the right individuals and weed out those who likely won’t fit. This is important because culture, not skills, usually determines how quickly a person will thrive or depart. Turnover is expensive, so it’s smarter to make careful front-end decisions than reactionary back-fill ones.
Culture-centric hiring organizations tend to find what they are looking for, which is great when a company’s values align with yours. Alignment helps the work come easy; and once hired, few find it difficult to be held accountable for values they signed up to protect.
The test of values in action
All companies face challenges. Values are easy to live by when things are good but tested when pressure exists. It is here – when things get difficult – where the character of people and companies is revealed because, as I often coach, “The right thing and the easy thing aren’t always the same thing.”
Trying times test the strength of values. Values should be protected, not situationally compromised. They should be the electric current of daily execution, always there and never wavering under duress.
Interviewing for values takes a bit of courage because doing so means you are gauging an employer’s culture and business practices for personal alignment while they are doing the same to you.
Values-based organizations tend to:
- Define their core values in clearly understandable terms.
- Explain how these values are communicated and reinforced throughout the organization.
- Ask questions about areas such as change, creativity, open-mindedness, improvement suggestions, and problem solving.
- Be open and honest about how current employees demonstrate these values. (tip: Speaking with top performers about their experiences is particularly helpful.)
- Build values-based questions into the interview process – something you should see reinforced at every level of the interview process.
- Explain how these value-based behaviors are incorporated into job expectations and performance reviews.
Because ours is now a connected world, unhappy customers have an immediate bully pulpit from which to express dissatisfaction. Because of this it’s smart business to assemble a service-centric workforce to deliver a shared promise.
After all — it is never the company that creates the bond with the customer – it is the company’s people. Customers have options and will exercise them. So too should workers.
Work where you are proud and be proud of the work you do. When we do that, everyone benefits.