Do you have a culture of values in your company? Does your company ensure that the values not only exist on paper, but are actively practiced? In this blog article, I will show you why it is important for the further development of the company not to stop at developing the value culture, but to actively live it. You can specifically identify the blind spots in your corporate culture and make them workable.

Do you have a culture of values in the company?

In this article, I am assuming that you have already developed a value culture in your company. Many companies have developed their own corporate culture with the involvement of a larger team of managers. In some companies, selected employees, stakeholders and partners were also included in the development process. In any case, the development of the value culture was a longer process for the company, which then also resulted in the communication and publication of the corporate values.

I visit many companies where the value culture is displayed on a large wall in the entrance area to remind employees of the values on a daily basis and to inform visitors about the corporate culture. However, as soon as I leave the entrance area, there is often no sign of the announced values culture.

We no longer talk about employees, who are the most valuable asset in the company, but about FTEs, co-workers or the workforce as an anonymous mass. We no longer pay attention to the strengths of each individual, but to costs, productivity or performance and discover deficits. By developing a culture of values, you want to build a framework to which everyone can orient themselves, don’t you?

Developing a culture of values

When I talk to managers, in most cases they know the values, and many have also been involved in developing them. They are proud of this, but they can no longer give me an example of how they experience these values in practice in the company. This is at the very least thought-provoking and often also concerning.

In conversations with employees, I often find that there is very little knowledge of the value culture. They tend to give examples of how they applied for a job because of the attractive corporate culture, but don’t find it reflected in their day-to-day work. This causes stress among employees, as the framework they are guided by and want to hold on to does not work.

The culture of values in the company on paper?

A culture of values in the company has been defined, but not integrated into processes such as recruitment, performance appraisals, decision-making and team activities.

Managers, who were often involved in its creation, do not live the values as role models for employees to follow or to experience how the value culture has a concrete impact on decisions in the company.

Employees often even experience the opposite effect, with managers making decisions that are not based on the value culture or even run counter to it.

The consequence of not living a culture of values?

If employees often experience on a daily basis, or at least repeatedly, that they cannot orient themselves to the predetermined corporate or value culture, which was often decisive for applying to or working in a company, they experience alienation. Employees have to bend every day by experiencing a culture that has nothing to do with the advertised values.

Bending costs energy, which is not available for work performance but is used by the brain to compensate for the discrepancy between expectation and reality.

However, the inequality experienced also has an impact on loyalty to the company and the trust that people place in their manager. We know that it takes a long time to build up trust and loyalty, the experienced break between BEING and APPEARANCE occurs quickly and in many cases can no longer be compensated for. The consequence: employees are no longer willing to deliver top performance and have already resigned internally.

In times when there is a shortage of skilled workers, this is a fatal picture; evaluation portals no longer rate your company as “the place to be”.

Stressors in a corporate culture that is not lived

I will show you how to uncover the blind spots in your corporate culture where values are not being practiced and how to turn your value culture into a driver of employee engagement.

An alarm signal for your company should be when typical internal company indicators change.

Typical stressors of a values culture that is not practiced in the company can be

• Lack of cooperation among employees
• Frequent conflicts between employees
• Lack of communication culture
• Low motivation among employees
• Low employee loyalty and increased fluctuation
• High sick leave rates or an increased number of burnout cases
• Lack of innovative strength

If these indicators change in your company or are generally not high, you should look at the broader level of corporate values to see whether there are hidden causes of increased stress in the company. A low level of identification with the company’s values or a lack of transparent communication block the further development of your company, as employees focus on their own area of responsibility and the overall picture of the company fades into the background.

What can you do/how can you support your employees?

You can support your employees in using open and active communication to improve the corporate culture in the company so that everyone enjoys working there. The best way to achieve this is to involve all employees equally in finding solutions. Employees from different departments have a differentiated view of the corporate culture and can create an objective picture of the corporate culture by looking at your company’s value system from different perspectives.

An anonymous communication platform on which all employees can exchange ideas serves as a “safe space” for internal company exchange and the identification of causes and effects of the stressor – the lack of implementation of the value culture.

They can see which values are particularly important or are particularly disregarded and can also uncover underlying levels where it would be particularly important to sharpen or further develop the corporate culture. A positive corporate culture in which all employees participate helps to increase commitment and give their best for the company goal.

Conclusion

If you are working with a value culture in your company that is only reflected on paper and internal company values are changing, there is most likely a hidden connection between the lack of implementation of the value culture and the decline in productivity, innovative strength or increasing fluctuation and high sickness rates.

However, to ensure that you as a company manager or executive do not simply make adjustments to one or other area of your company on suspicion, you should seek professional support and work together – with the involvement of a large group of employees – to find the source of the stressor and thus achieve a significant difference in the further development of your company. The employees involved will feel valued and listened to and will in any case actively support the implementation of a sustainable value system.