Get 3 Big Advantages with Strong Core Values

At a glance 

• Main takeaway: Core values guide day-to-day behaviors both within your organization as well as interactions with clients and customers. Collectively, they create the desired culture of your organization.
• Impact on your business: Core values are what support the company vision, shape the culture of the organization and reflect what a company values. They are the essence of a company’s identity.
• Next steps: Contact Aprio’s HR & Payroll Outsourcing Team to explore more information about how to establish strong core values at your organization. 

Schedule a consultation with Aprio today

 
The full story: 

Core values guide day-to-day behaviors both within your organization as well as interactions with clients and customers. Collectively, they create the desired culture of your organization. These are often called our beliefs and philosophies.

Core values meet specific criteria

Core Values tend to be few in number and meet the following criteria:

1. They form a collective company-wide belief. An organization requires values shared as a unit regardless of the values held separately by each individual.
2. They determine the standards of acceptable behavior concerning how to approach your work.
3. They are enduring and consistent over time. They are one of the last things you would want to give up no matter what is happening with or within the company.
4. They are driven by, and crystallized from, the top leadership in the company and telegraphed all the way through the organization.

Leaders must be an example to others in your organization. Team members will learn the company core values from the leaders who exemplify and instill these values in everything they do, supported by the things that they say.

Core values are the essence of a company’s identity

Core values are what support the company vision, shape the culture of the organization and reflect what a company values.

They are the essence of the company’s identity – the principles, beliefs or philosophy of values. Many companies focus mostly on their primary product, service or technical competencies and forget what the underlying competencies are that make their companies run smoothly – core values.

Advantages of establishing strong core values

Establishing strong core values provides both internal and external advantages to the company, including:

• Helping companies in every decision-making process. For example, if one of your core values is to respond to a client issue within 24 hours, your company should build systems to support this performance standard.
• Educating clients and prospects about what the company is about and clarify the identity of the company. Our competitive world today almost demands having a set of specific core values that speak to the public. All companies that wish to maintain a competitive advantage must do this.
• Aiding recruiting and retention. Job seekers do their homework on companies. They are applying for and weighing whether these companies hold the values that the job seekers consider as important.

At the end of the day, progressive companies must be open-minded, growth-oriented and flexible. In business, great entrepreneurs know that they must be open to new ideas. Success comes from knowing your strengths and weaknesses.

Get help with your core values

Aprio has proven participatory facilitation core value exercises and has worked with organizations that have built 100% consensus among key management groups.

We believe that core values are one of the key ingredients needed for every organization that aspires to grow and thrive in this ever-changing dynamic world. The truth is that great visionary companies began with a set of strong core values and a relentless drive for progress.

Most importantly, they had a remarkable ability to translate these core values into concrete mechanisms.

Schedule a consultation with Aprio today to learn more about establishing strong core values at your organization.