Last week I sent an email about how your organization’s vision, mission, and core values can drive employee engagement and performance. I mentioned that one thing organizations with bullying have in common is that they don’t focus on these very important concepts.
I thought I better send out some ideas on how to bring your vision, mission, and core values to life if I was going to tell you that ignoring them can create room for bullying.
Easy Ways to Bring Core Values to Life
They are fairly easy action steps!
- Share your vision, mission and core values in your job postings when recruiting new employees.
- Include questions about core values in your interviews during hiring.
- Include core values on your annual performance evaluation form, so that employees are measured against them.
- Create a peer reward system around your values. When someone exemplifies them, they should be acknowledged or even rewarded. (When someone violates them, they should be disciplined, up to and including termination.)
- Choose a value each month, and during that month, make that value a part of daily staff meetings, fun activities, and training programs.
More Ways..
- At the start of each staff meeting, share a story about a customer you have helped or an incident that occurred that has brought your business one step closer to solving that problem laid out in your vision.
- Ask employees to create a 30-second video on their phone about why the vision and mission are important to them, and/or how they live the core values every day. String them together into one video, and hold a viewing party.
- Ask each employee (or department as a whole) to review, or self-audit” their own practices, policies and procedures against the vision, mission and values. What changes can they make to realign themselves?
- Ask each department to choose a core value and create a 40-minute training around it. Provide a lunch n’ learn program for each department to deliver their training. (This is more about having fun and keeping the values top of mind than it is about really learning.)
- Ask employees to brainstorm how they can share the core values with new employees when they’re hired on. What steps will they take personally in order to engrain new hires in the culture?
I’d love to hear other things you are doing in your own organization to bring your vision, mission and core values to life. Shoot me an email and get them all on my blog!
