In the first part, we spoke of how flawed the use of KPI alone was. In this blog, we’ll focus on how core values can improve the working experience of your employees and in turn lead to long-term success. You need to think long and hard about the core values you want your company to become known for. Remember, you need no external justification because core values should have an essential value to those within the company.
For example, Hewlett-Packard’s core ideology involves affordable quality and reliability, respect for the individual and a commitment to community responsibility. Nordstrom believes in placing the customer on a pedestal while Proctor & Gamble are all about product quality. You can choose customer service, teamwork, market focus or anything else, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the fact that you have a set of core values to begin with.
What Are Your Core Values?
Rather than pretending that business practices and strategies are core values, be honest and analyse what your company stands for. Remember, your core values must be permanent and are not something that can be changed as and when it suits you. At E-Web Marketing, we have 5 core values that define who we are and what we do:
– Act With Integrity: We always do what we say and will always be held accountable for the actions of our staff. We expect integrity from our staff and from those whom we do business with. Our core values always trumps the pursuit for cash and we believe this attitude helps foster a better working relationship with clients.
– Be Passionate About Learning: We believe in having a growth mindset, a natural curiosity to everything in the area of online marketing and business. Our staff are constantly setting targets, reaching them and setting new ones in an effort to raise the bar. All staff are encouraged to dedicate time each day where they are focus on doing research or self-improvement.
– Commitment to Excellence: Mediocrity is not tolerated within E-Web because we believe in pushing ourselves to the best that we can be. Our goal is to be the very best in our industry so we can better serve our customers and set new standards for the business world to follow.
– Create Raving Fans: We believe in giving 100% to help our clients achieve their goals and when this occurs, we get to share in their happiness. There are no greater reward than knowing that you have made a positive impact on someone’s life. Our objective is to do it on a consistent basis that not only do we have happy customers, we have raving fans clients, whom we consider as part of the extended E-Web family!
– Build A Positive Team: We know that teamwork is the foundation of success which is why it is such an important part of our work culture. Amongst all the business awards we have been recognised with over the years, being selected as as one of the best places to work bring us the greatest joy. ! Each team member respects what others bring to the table and all ideas and opinions are welcomed while cynicism is rejected in favour of positivity.
While sales figures will always be important, they do not define what we stand for. Instead of focusing on a handful of figures, we carefully analyse a host of different criteria including intangible, behind the scenes activity. Our team knows when a colleague is down and will help pick them up again. If someone is sick, we help them regain their health and so on.
At E-Web Marketing, our team don’t view themselves as being ‘at work’ in the traditional sense, because they are having too much fun! They are making a living from their passion and derive genuine pleasure from producing high quality work to satisfy our customers. When KPI is used as the sole measure of what an employee contributes, the work that goes above and beyond what is stipulated in the employment contract is seen as not being important.
When employees believe this to be the case, you see an almost unconscious fall in work standards as camaraderie and passion is replaced by cold hard numbers and calculations. Without core values and all the intangible benefits they bring, a company’s foundations will begin to crumble; slowly people will start hating coming to work and even if the business is profitable, it will not fully realise its human and profit potential. With core values, staff feel more empower to grow as an employee and as a person.
There is an old saying: “What you measure, you improve.” Therefore, if you use KPI to measure a few stock statistics, you will only get better in a handful of areas. With core values, you can measure everything that is important to the success of your company thus giving it a greater scope for growth.
It is high time you asked yourself the following, is it time for you to focus more on your core values?