Company core values are more than just empty words stenciled across the break room walls and embedded into the background on a website. Crafted and implemented correctly, they can boost a company’s bottom line in numerous ways.
Whether you’re a new company in search of inspiration and direction or an existing company ready for a refresher, read on to learn the critical considerations for formulating (or re-formulating) your company’s core values.
Core values 101
Your company’s core values are the essential beliefs that act as guiding principles for your business practices, from C-level decision making to customer service from on-the-ground team members. They support your company mission and objectives and shape your company culture. Core values provide a common direction and purpose, empowering employees to work together toward the same end. They foster a sense of belonging, camaraderie, and teamwork.
Core values typically focus on areas vital to a company’s success, including:
- Employee experience These values highlight a business’s commitment to putting their team members’ well-being, professional development, morale, and cohesiveness at the forefront. The business trusts this commitment will pay off in job satisfaction that trickles down to its customers as happy employees function as brand ambassadors. An example of a core value grounded in the employee experience is retirement and investment planning behemoth TIAA’s “Champion Our People.” ESPN’s values also center on the employee experience, stating that “People are our most valuable resource.”
- Customer experience Some companies’ core values suggest they prize customer satisfaction and loyalty, earned through excellent service and product development focused on customer needs. Pet supply company Chewy is beloved by customers for gestures like sending flowers after a pet has passed. It lives up to the very top of its list of operating principles—“Customers first.” One of JPMorganChase’s “business principles” is “Exceptional client service.”
- Innovation The obvious examples of innovation-based core values come from pioneering technology companies that thrive on disruption and pushing boundaries. OpenAI includes “AGI focus” in its list of core values, and Facebook’s has long included “Move Fast” and “Build Awesome Things.” Nvidia gets right to the point with “Innovation.”
- Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) A company can emphasize social responsibility and its desire to have a positive impact on its community or the world with its core values and ideally appeal to those with shared values. Outdoor apparel company Patagonia’s core values include “Protect our home planet” and “Be just, equitable and antiracist as a company and in our community.”
Important: You’re not limited to a single focus when devising your company’s core values. Patagonia’s core values, for example, also include “Build the best product, provide the best service and constantly improve everything we do” and “Not bound by convention.”
Potential perks from core values
Some cynics may regard the creation and sharing of company core values as nothing more than another marketing campaign, but core values can have a powerful impact internally on employee recruitment and retention.
Top-notch performers are drawn to companies with concrete corporate values that they live up to every day. Moreover, research shows that, when team members feel strongly aligned with company culture, they’re more engaged, have higher levels of employee satisfaction, experience less burnout, and are less likely to be watching for job opportunities or actively looking for new jobs.
The significance of company core values to employees is particularly true of GenZ and Millennials, who are rapidly approaching half of the workforce. Deloitte’s Global Gen Z and Millennial survey found that the majority of Gen Zers (86%) and Millennials (89%) say having a sense of purpose is important to their overall job satisfaction and well-being. Notably, 39% of Gen Z and 34% of Millennials, respectively, have turned down employers that don’t align with their personal values. And two in 10 Gen Zers and Millennials have already changed jobs or industries to better align their work with their environmental values.
Of course, the cynics aren’t totally wrong about core values—they do also have potential marketing value and can provide a real competitive advantage. They give you the opportunity to highlight the unique corporate values that distinguish your brand from others, which is especially useful in industries with relatively fungible products.
Tips for selecting your company’s core values
There’s no shortage of long lists of suggested core values online, but you should tailor your values to your specific company mission, beliefs, and goals. When drafting your set of core values, keep in mind that the most effective are generally:
- Clear and memorable. Your core values should be easy to digest and readily understandable for every team member. Vague or ambiguous values are vulnerable to misinterpretation and distortion.
- Succinct. This isn’t the time to pontificate—brevity is critical. Keep it short and sweet. Some experts suggest using no more than four words.
- Active. Declarative and action-oriented words or phrases (such as “delivering results for clients” or “having the hard conversations”) generally are more suitable for implementation than passive or abstract terms (“performance” or “awareness”). Where possible, opt for verbs over nouns.
- Achievable. Aspirational corporate values (e.g., “spreading love”) are usually difficult to translate into real-life, daily actions in the workplace and the world.
- Connected to your offerings. Your core values should relate to your products and services. Innovation-based values, for instance, make sense for tech companies but maybe not for, say, cereal makers. A fitting core value of budget retailer H&M is “We are cost-conscious.”
You should avoid core values that employ generic terms, industry jargon, and terms of art. Stay away, too, from words and phrases that express basic-level ethics. If such terms are already an established part of your identity, find a better way to phrase them. Kraft Heinz doesn’t say the dry and remote “Accountability” but “We own it.” It expresses “Integrity” as “We do the right thing.”
With these guidelines in mind, begin developing your core values by gathering company leaders and executives to brainstorm. Their early involvement will increase the odds that your core values align with your company mission and long-term strategic plans.
You should consult the rest of your team members after you’ve generated and refined a list of suggestions from company leadership. Core values won’t do their job if they only strike a chord with the higher-ups and not those in the trenches every day. This type of collaboration makes organization-wide buy-in more likely, with the bonus of employees who feel like their opinions matter to the company.
It’s wise to consider external perceptions—how will the core values on the table play with stakeholders outside the company, including customers, suppliers, investors, and possibly media? Will they resonate, or will they seem disingenuous? The public might roll their eyes at core values related to sustainability and conservation, for example, if fossil fuels are a large and indispensable part of your production.
Making your company’s core values work for you
Adherence to your core values must start at the top of the company if all levels of employees are to embrace them. The good news is that research shows senior leaders tend to have a better understanding and sense of alignment with their company culture than most other team members do. The bad news is that only 37% of company leaders strongly agree they feel connected to their company’s culture, and fewer than 20% of managers and employees feel that way—not great.
These aren’t the only red flags. Gallup’s research shows that a mere 26% of American employees strongly agree that their company always delivers on its promises. Just 23% of American employees strongly agree that they can apply their organization’s core values to their work, and only 27% strongly agree that they “believe in” these values.
Part of the problem? Only 20% of employees strongly agree that their manager explains how the organization’s core values influence their work.
To improve on these numbers, you’ll need to integrate your core values into your operations. Once you’ve honed the list to your essential core values, communicate them broadly. Share them both inside and outside the company, making them a part of your:
- Employee handbook and onboarding process,
- Annual report,
- Website,
- Recruiting materials, and
- Appropriate marketing vehicles.
When issuing announcements of new products, services, or initiatives, highlight how they reflect your core values.
Images often work better than words when it comes to effectively communicating core values to your team members. You might express them as a ladder, pyramid, or a wheel with a hub (the company mission) and spokes (the core values). Get creative!
You can drive home the importance of core values even more by making them part of your employee recognition efforts. Rewarding team members who embody core values reinforces the values and proves they’re more than just words. Such recognition improves employee engagement and has been found to boost both productivity and loyalty to the company, in turn increasing retention rates.
You might even incorporate the core values into your performance evaluation process. That should leave no doubt about how serious the company is about them.
Remember that core values shouldn’t be static. Update them as the company, industry, customer base, or other factors change. Today’s values can become irrelevant or trite over time. Their effectiveness could wane as they develop into a general expectation for your industry rather than the differentiator they once were. Or maybe you haven’t been able to live up to them, so they’re actually undermining you. Don’t hesitate to go back to the drawing board—just don’t do it so often that your constantly shifting core values risk becoming a joke.
Core value examples
Need some inspiration? Here are some other companies’ core values to get the ball rolling:
1. Gusto
- Embody a service mindset. Never stop advocating for the needs of others.
- Dream big, then make it real. Be ambitious. Show and do, rather than tell and talk.
- Be proud of the how. Ensure deep integrity in everything you do.
- Embrace an ownership mentality. Take initiative to leave things better than you found them.
- Debate then commit. Share openly, question respectfully, and once a decision is made, commit fully.
2. Progressive
- Integrity. We revere honesty and adhere to high ethical standards to gain the trust and confidence of our customers. We value transparency, encourage disclosing bad news, and welcome disagreement.
- Golden Rule. We value and respect our differences, act with kindness and caring, and treat others as they want to be treated.
- Objectives. We set ambitious goals and evaluate our performance by measuring what we achieve and how we achieve it. We’re committed to an inclusive and equitable workplace where rewards and promotion are based on results and ability.
- Excellence. We strive to meet or exceed the expectations of our teammates, customers, partners, and investors by continuously improving and finding new ways to meet their needs.
- Profit. We have a responsibility to ourselves, our customers, agents, and investors to be a profitable and enduring company by offering products and services consumers value.
3. Wegmans
- We care about the well-being and success of every person.
- High standards are a way of life. We pursue excellence in everything we do.
- We make a difference in every community we serve.
- We respect and listen to our people.
- We empower our people to make decisions that improve their work and benefit our customers and our company.
