The Hindu Business Line : Values that bind

Most executives in companies are parents of one or more children. If you were to ask them about the methods they use to instil in their children family values to give them a strong foundation, they would probably think hard and tell you that there really is no method. They just lead by example. They show through their actions, words, and behaviour that they are worth emulating. They are real-life role models for their kids.

Now, let us turn to the corporate world occupied by the same executives. Each company would have a set of corporate values that should be embraced whole-heartedly. Leaders are also responsible for ensuring that their staff embrace these values equally whole-heartedly. The best way to do this would be to act as role models to their team members just as they are role models to their children.

Corporate values

Easily done, one would think. Yet, why is it that in most companies corporate values languish as an intangible concept on boardroom walls and bulletin boards? Why is it that staff are rarely even aware of them? In reality, the values of a company should lie at the heart of its brand – in its very soul because they are a reflection of the company’s core beliefs. They stand as a collective commitment to colleagues, to their customers, shareholders and to the community of which the company is a part. The values live in the way a company works, in the solutions it offers, in the employment environment it provides, and in the way it partners with the community. All these actions, which are key touch-points for the company with its various stakeholders, convey the spirit and personality of its brand. These experiences and touchpoints shape perceptions about it in the minds of the stakeholders. The brand is, therefore, a collection of these perceptions; emotional connections that these stakeholders have with the company, its product and services.

Every company needs to invest time and effort in building a robust and healthy brand – a process in which every staff member has an important role to play and often, the only defining feature of success. But to achieve this success, one has to first take a step back and look at the essence of the brand itself, the brand promise, which then will define the company’s business strategy, its operational decisions, staff actions, interactions, and transactions. It is the foundation for everything the company wishes to do, its raison d’etre.

To thus live the brand promise and reinforce the image of the brand itself, the company has to successfully embed its values amongst its staff – the people who make up its brand. Leadership has to develop and implement an effective strategy to bring these values to life and to ensure that their employees live them on an everyday basis.

They have to first determine if the people on the ground clearly understand what the values mean. Do they know what the values look like everyday? Are they transparent and tangible to them? Are they clear about what it means to live the values of the company in everything they do? Many different tools can be used to effectively disseminate this information – e-mails, quizzes, theme weeks, trivia night, and even workshops.

Building a unique corporate culture centred on personal accountability and core values and espousing the brand promise, is best achieved by a committed and ethical leadership. It is important for the top team to explicitly state the corporate code of conduct, talk about it at forums, and share it with all staff — may be even give out a book to every employee on the diverse corporate standards and value yardsticks — gender diversity, property rights, purchasing practices, environment, among others.

They should make the values clearly visible in all the key functions of the company – from hiring to performance reviews to compensation, from training to the design of employee policies and support programmes. And most important of all, leadership, as role models, should walk the talk. Shared visible values help to positively affect performance and impact business. They guide employee decisions and actions and form an integral part of an organisation’s value proposition. Even more significant, they make employees proud of the company.

Integral to this strategy are measures and an index that leadership can use to periodically evaluate how effectively values have percolated down the organisation. Of late, many companies have started including values ratings in their annual performance appraisals to reinforce the importance of living the corporate values.

In an era of poor investor confidence, plummeting stock prices, questionable practices, unethical conduct, and scandals, leadership has to feel responsible for nurturing and building an ethical workforce that fully embraces the values the company stands for. Enron is a famous example in recent times of how public confidence in a brand can be eroded by unethical business practices and leadership.

Values provide a common language for global companies with diverse workforces. A successful and effective strategy to embed the values within the organisation will ensure that employees understand and convey the spirit and personality of the corporate brand and its values, irrespective of geographic or language differences — the only sure fire way for a company to differentiate itself from the competition.

(The author is Head, Corporate Affairs, Scope International Pvt Ltd, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank, UK.)