Here is our guide to the best examples of company core values in the workplace.
Company core values are a company’s declared philosophy concerning its vision, purpose, and values. Values and culture are both about a company’s loftier goals. Examples of core values are innovation, excellence, and responsibility. The purpose of these ideals is to unite the company’s workforce, customers, and the community under a guiding principle.
These principles relate to corporate social responsibility, company culture and employee engagement best practices.
This guide includes:
- organizational core values examples
- examples of companies with core values
- importance of core values in the workplace
- how to promote core values in the workplace
Here is what you need to know.
Organizational core values examples
Making a prioritized list of core principles might help keep the company on track. Some of the examples of company core values include:
1. Commitment
This value means taking responsibility for actions and sticking to principles. Making business decisions is rarely straightforward. When businesses face challenges, the organization undergoes an ultimate test to stick to or abandon its values. However, it is vital to stay unwavering to the company ideals to maintain a brand reputation and keep the loyalty, trust, and respect of employees and clients.
Learn more about how to increase employee loyalty.
2. Excellence
Excellence means completing tasks to perfection. The saying goes, “whatever is worth doing is worth doing right.” Recognizing your employees for a job well done will encourage them to do even greater work in the future. Your customers, suppliers, and other business associates will notice and appreciate your company’s dedication to providing excellent service. A high level of customer service sets your company apart from the competition. Organizations are often content to do the bare minimum, yet those companies who strive to do more may reap great rewards.
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3. Respect
When it comes to developing trust in a company’s values, respect and integrity are essential. This value means appreciating others’ opinions, viewpoints, thoughts, and ideas. The practice entails building relationships on the altar of mutual respect and trust. Each team member brings unique skills and perspectives to the table, and intelligent leaders take pride in this fact and act accordingly. Communicating openly and honestly makes teammates feel appreciated and valued. Treating people with respect is a logical extension of the concept of kindness and decency.
4. Social Responsibility
The public often looks for a commitment to social change in a company’s core principles. You can make it easier for employees to become involved in the surrounding community by providing staff with volunteer opportunities. As part of the firm’s Corporate Social Responsibility, employees need to understand how the company accomplishes its CSR fully. A company’s contribution to the social objectives of philanthropy, activism, or charity could mean backing volunteerism and ethically-driven practices.
5. Communication
People place a high value on being able to communicate effectively. Conversation binds us all together, helps us to connect, and is the building block of any society. Your interactions with customers and other businesses should reflect a commitment to this value. An example might be providing professional translation services for foreign investors and overseas clients.
For more tips, check out these books on communication.
6. Diversity
Diversity and inclusion are hot topics in the current climate, and it is time to recognize and reward these values. A diverse team generates more ideas and solutions. When you combine a diverse team with great communication and decision-making skills, you get a proactive and result-driven team. Furthermore, promoting a culture of inclusivity sends a powerful statement to the wider world that the firm devotes itself to defending the interests of individuals, regardless of their background.
Check out this list of diversity and inclusion books.
7. Creativity
Creativity is a powerful source of motivation and a natural human instinct. Getting the chance to build and invent can be highly motivating. Creativity is an ingrained and fundamental value. Creativity as a core value reflects a company’s tremendous desire to develop new and attractive methods of growing, finding answers, and breaking beyond conventional thought patterns.
Here is a list of books on creativity.
8. Customer service
Taking care of others is a sign of compassion and empathy. Humans have a deep-seated desire to help others. Keeping folks happy is a wonderful thing, and it attracts individuals with good intentions. A company that values customer service is more likely to have high customer retention. Employees like working with a company that cares and is able to contribute to the greater good.
Being customer-oriented or service-minded indicates a commitment to making your customers happy. This value also includes aiding your local community. You must value service if you want to make a difference in the lives of those you serve and assist.
Here are lists of customer service books and customer experience books.
9. Quality
Working for a reputable company with high-quality standards fills employees with a sense of company pride and satisfaction. Few folks want to promote a defective product. Quality products advertise themselves. High service standards make people want to patronize your business, and earn customer loyalty and repeat business.
10. Learning and growth
An organization’s capacity to develop and learn is undeniable. Businesses grow when they encourage learning in the workplace. As employees gain knowledge and experience, their credentials and capabilities expand. Every team member can know more about their area of discipline. This education may positively impact their career progress and work-life balance.
Allowing you and your employees to learn from successes and mistakes can improve your business. Investing in employee development may substantially impact employee morale and productivity. Professional development is a critical factor in the job search. When deciding on a workplace, many candidates look for jobs that offer opportunities to increase knowledge and abilities by taking on new tasks within the company.
People often attribute a company’s growth to the professional development of its workers. Growth as a personal core value shows a strong desire to better yourself and your firm. Mutual success drives growth. Companies that encourage personal and professional development are more likely to attract talents that also value growth.
11. Autonomy
Employees often want the freedom to act independently and make decisions. Therefore, many organizations opt to provide the liberty to work at your own speed and approach, so long as you accomplish your performance objectives. Employees with the freedom to act often do their best to deliver high-quality work. This dedication helps them prove they deserve the trust given to them.
12. Fun
Employees spend a third of their lives at work, and having a positive experience matters. Fun is a bond that holds teams together and keeps businesses running in many ways. A fun workplace fosters deep ties that serve as the cornerstone of engaged company culture. Others feel more at ease when they work with other people having fun, which may positively impact productivity.
13. Integrity
Integrity means doing the right thing even if no one is watching. Integrity also translates to valuing honesty, transparency, and a dedication to doing what is best for your consumers. The core value must reflect in how you handle your employees, customers, suppliers, and corporate property. Integrity in a firm promotes a great work environment for everyone.
Trust lies in customers’ faith in a company’s high-quality products and services. Companies that emphasize customer trust want clients to know how much they respect and care about them.
Customers can rely on companies that place high importance on integrity. In other words, when the company errs, they take responsibility and commit to correcting the mistake
14. Innovation
This value means pushing for better ways to serve your employees, clients, and the organization. Innovative companies think outside the box to develop unique solutions to complex challenges. This trait means not being afraid to take calculated risks. A company grows faster when everyone commits to devising new solutions to old problems.
A company’s success depends on how far ahead of the competition it is and how quickly it can introduce new concepts to the market. This goal is pivotal for organizations that aim to be trendsetters and provide new and novel items that improve the lives of customers. Those who work for these firms are driven to be dynamic and develop new ideas that might lead to profitable products for the company.
Here is a list of books on innovation.
15. Connection
Teamwork and mutual trust are the foundations of connection in the workplace. Connection is the acknowledgment of similarities and the sense of working toward the same goal.
Connection means different things to different companies. The concept is also about finding common ground amid others’ ideas, ambitions, histories, and beliefs. The first step in creating a more cohesive workplace is to help your employees relate to one another better.
There is a chance another team member may have an emotional connection to the values or mission of the business, giving their work a new degree of significance.
Check out this list of connection games for work.
16. Drive
Drive means refusing to be content with the status quo and embracing a desire to improve. The primary purpose of this value is to push employees and organizations to reach their full potential.
For organizations with ambition, it is unacceptable to sit back and be complacent about triumphs. Some organizations consistently outperform their competitors because they recognize the opportunities to be better. Companies can benefit from a team member who is ready to go above and beyond the call of duty.
Examples of companies with strong core values
Here is a list of examples of companies with their core values.
1. teambuilding.com
We have five important company core values:
- Operate at Level 10 Integrity – We make every decision, action, and belief through honest effort, good intentions, and high moral and ethical standards. You can trust us to do what we say we will do. Always.
- Get Sh*t Done [Right] – We operate with a premium mentality, and while speed matters, so does doing things right.
- Defy Expectations – We take a fresh approach to everything we do. Get ready to be surprised, delighted, and to have the most fun you’ve ever had at work!
- “I’ve got your back” Mindset -Your success is our success. We make intentional choices to support our clients, team members, and communities professionally and personally.
- Raise the Bar: Big and Small – We constantly strive for improvements. You will see us tackling challenges, making our client, participant, and employee experiences better, and learning from feedback to level up.
2. Google
Value: “You can make money without doing evil.”
Unlike other businesses that tout integrity, Google talks about its strategic measures to avoid violating its commitments and avoiding “evil” while doing business. For instance, “We don’t allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they are relevant where they are shown … We don’t accept pop–up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you’ve requested … [and] Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a ‘Sponsored Link,’ so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results.”
The impact of a core value diminishes if your firm cannot demonstrate its deliberate and determined steps to prioritize values above profits.
3. Coca Cola
Value: Diversity: “As inclusive as our brands.”
Coca Cola shows its commitment to diversity on their Mission page that details the company’s various diversity-related initiatives, such as “[collecting employee] feedback through formal surveys and informally through their participation in our business resource groups, various diversity education programs and our Resolution Resources Program, where associates can work to resolve issues they face in our Company.”
4. Whole Foods
Value: “We Care About Our Communities and The Environment”
A local experience is what Whole Foods strive to provide and support. Each store shows the community’s people, culture, and food. A good example of Whole Foods’ dedication to the local community is its Local Producer Loan Program, which offers low-interest loans of up to $25 million to small-scale local farmers and food artisans.
As part of its environmental efforts since 1980, Whole Foods lists “printing and packaging using recycled paper and water- or vegetable-based, composting to decrease landfill waste, and no single-use plastic bags at checkout since 2008”.
5. Amazon
Value: Customer Obsession
This company’s mission is to give the most outstanding customer service and provide the highest quality items to customers. Their core values show their skills and drive to be the greatest in their field. An example of customer obsession is Amazon Prime, which offers automatic next-day delivery.
6. Spotify
Value: Collaboration
Spotify has worked with a wide range of musicians from all over the world and represents many different ethnic groups. The platform provides a stage for artists to flourish and share their distinctive musical voices with the rest of the world. This provision demonstrates the sincerity with which Spotify adheres to its central beliefs.
7. Facebook
Value: Build Social Value
“Build Social Value” is one of Facebook’s most important fundamental principles. As the organization strives to connect the globe, its workers learn to develop innovative methods to bring people closer together. A perfect example of this is Facebook groups, a platform for people who share common interests to initiate discussions and ask for help.
8. American Express
Core value: “We develop relationships that make a positive difference in our customers’ lives.”
This value means that there are no set rules for client interactions, and the company allows their customer care representatives discretion to do right by the customer. This empowerment is enabling. Employees that go above and above to support customers get awards, and the company shares their experiences across the board.
This value reflects the devotion of American Express employees to their customers. For instance, to provide exceptional customer experiences, the company ensures customers’ security during the payment process. The organizationl also combines simple business tools and secure payments to transform customers’ payment experience abroad.
Important of core values in the workplace
Employees may rally behind a common cause if they have a strong feeling of belonging to the company’s basic principles. Organizational culture and employee retention tend to be positive when there is a strong sense of community in the workplace. The results show the significance of exhibiting one’s ideals at work.
The company’s culture thrives if your employees prioritize adhering to core principles.
How to promote core values in the workplace
Establishing your company’s core values is a crucial first step in improving the company’s culture.
To effectively promote these principles across your company, you must include these ideas in every employee-related activity, from hiring and training to performance evaluations and even dismissal procedures. Paying attention to how the day-to-day operations of your company reflect your core values will make your workers aware of priorities and the role these principles play in the overall success of your organization.
Conclusion
It is possible to offer your business and the individuals who work there a sense of direction and purpose by establishing organizational core values. When creating your company core values, gather as much input from your employees as possible, and remember that these ideas can evolve.
A strong set of core values will help you find and attract your core audience and earn lifelong customer loyalty. Creating and living by a set of unwavering business principles can also help your organization find long-term success and keep your employees on board.
Next, check out these books on company culture, this guide on creating a robust remote work culture and this guide to starting a company culture committee.
Grace He
