Shared Values Are The Foundation Of A Great Workplace Culture

An organization’s culture should always be evolving

Creating and maintaining a vibrant, collaborative, and effective workplace culture wasn’t an easy tasks when everyone was in the office. Now with team members working in hybrid or remote environments, the challenge has grown, but so has the importance of sustaining a great culture. There has been a learning curve for most organizations when translating company culture in this fashion, some have thrived and some struggled.

As a people leader of a rapidly growing organization, that is both hybrid and global, I understand this challenge deeply and it excites me every day. Like most aspects of any business, an organization’s culture is never set in stone - it should always be evolving to best serve the business goals and teams. However, my belief is that company culture should be built upon a set of shared values. Determining these values is the most important place for any organization to start building its culture.

Throughout my career, I’ve coached numerous organizations on the importance of incorporating core values into every aspect of their culture to make it shine. At Trulioo, we have a high-performance culture that is all about learning, growing, and working together to achieve greatness. The core values that guide us as we create and cultivate that culture is: Collaboration, Adaptability, Open Communication, Accountability, Customer Driven, Inclusion and Impact.

As we’ve gone from start-up to scale up with immense growth and global expansion, our goal is to fuse these values into everything we do to create a great workplace culture, no matter where any member of our team is located. It is important to be intentional about your company culture and build your goals to support larger organizational objectives. Three key areas that we are prioritizing this year to support our culture are first impressions, employee engagement, and training and development.

I firmly believe that the employee experience starts long before someone logs on for their first day of work. These days, prospective employees are able to get a sense of what it is like to work at your organization before they even apply. Ensure your website, social media channels, any employee review sites, and careers page tell a similar story and share important information about what it means to be on your team.

This is equally important in the hiring process. When interviewing candidates, you should include your values. Incorporate questions that allow you to get a clear understanding that this person not only has the right skills for the job but is also a great fit from a cultural perspective. It is crucial that your company’s values are prioritized throughout all of the initial onboarding and training meetings as well. These first impressions set the stage for a happy, productive new employee to join the team.

We all like to and want to have a nice time with the people we spend our days working with - lean into this. Employee engagement is so much more than sending around periodic surveys. It is important to understand what your employee base cares about in terms of being recognized, how they like to be rewarded, as well as how they celebrate their diverse backgrounds. Creating a values-based reward and recognition program is extremely important for an organization. As is creating experiences that resonate with your employees - celebrate holidays, milestones, personal or professional achievements, and more. This doesn’t always have to be a huge party, smaller recognitions and acknowledgments go a long way in creating the a-ha moments when your team realizes how much they are appreciated. Incorporating intentional, values-based experiences will lead to engagement every time.  

Just as your organization grows and evolves, so should your team. It is important to create a workplace where everyone is constantly learning and developing their skill sets. As our team has grown at a rapid rate, we’ve doubled down on investing in our employees and ensuring we are providing opportunities for growth within our organization. For many team members, this has been within their departments and for others, this has included moving to a new department to try something new. We have made it a priority to re-recruit within the organization in order to retain our employees.

To support employee growth, we provide a professional development education fund and are in the process of laying out clear career paths so everyone can chart their course to support their goals. Investing in your team must also include prioritizing promotions and recognizing the talent you have already on your team. Ultimately, companies should look to their values to create a space to help everyone further develop their skills, gain experience and love their jobs.

When it comes to growing and retaining a high-performing team, company culture is key and more important than ever. The building blocks of any great place to work can be found in an organization’s values. As we’ve seen over the past two years, there are likely going to be unexpected situations that arise and cannot be factored into any organization’s future-looking plans. This can be a daunting prospect. However, if there is a strong foundation - built upon shared values - an organization can be sure it will be able to weather any storm that comes its way while preserving the talent and culture that has been so carefully created.