When it comes to aligning your company’s actions with your stated values and mission, are you actually doing what you say you set out to do? Part of employee engagement is ensuring that everyone is working towards the same goals and hold the same values. If yours are not clearly understood and relatable then this will be very difficult to achieve.
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Podcast Transcription
Establish Your Brand
You may not see this as an important part of increasing engagement and retention if you’re a well-established company, but branding is more than just your social media pages, color scheme, logo, and customer interactions. The brand is you are to your employees.
Think of it this way, every single employee is a brand ambassador whether you hired them to be that or not. If you don’t have a unified brand all throughout your company, then you can only guess at what impression your employees have of you and what impression they leave outside the office.
The first part of establishing, or re-establishing your brand, is to assess your mission statement and core values. These are your written promises, promises you’ve about what you’re in business to do (your mission) and how you’ll do it (the values).
The biggest mistake we make when creating our mission statement and core values are to overcomplicate them and make them a little too ambitious. Don’t get me wrong, ambition is not a bad thing, but spilling it into your mission statement and core values can over complicate them and cause confusion amongst your team. Your team is your group of interpreters for your mission and values. If they don’t understand them, it’s not because of them, it’s because you’re not speaking clearly enough.
Keep your mission statement simple and to the point. What are you in business to do? Are you in business to be the best cleaners in the city? Is your desire to elevate cleaning standards? Your mission statement can be one sentence. If you overcomplicate it, for one it won’t be heard and two you’re more likely to create a mission that isn’t relatable to your teams.
Talk to your team when creating the mission statement and core values. Once you’ve grown, it’s no longer just about the CEO’s vision when he created the business. It’s about who you are as a collective and you need buy-in from employees for your mission to matter.
What Do You Value?
In the same way, you need to take a look at your mission statement, you also need to assess your core values. These should also be part of a shortlist and straight forward. This isn’t a classroom. You’re not trying to out your team members for not being at an accelerated level or trying to challenge them to better. You’re creating unifying factors to drive your team’s success.
Potential values could be:
- Communication
- Diversity
- Collaboration
- Attention to Detail
- Health
- A Positive Attitude
- Reliability
- Honesty
- Dedication
You wouldn’t need all of these values. In fact, taking four or five or identifying a few of your own is a great approach. Establish your values by getting to know your team. Your values are already tucked in there and opening the floor to discussion and input you can figure them out.
Allow your values to guide how you hire, train, and make decisions. They shouldn’t just be something that comes up in company meetings. They should be present when establishing a new process when marketing your company, interacting with clients, and anytime you have a development or performance based meeting.
Always Reevaluate
Naturally, your company is going to change over time and so will your brand. Maybe the foundation of it doesn’t change, it just grows bigger or maybe it shifts entirely. Don’t be afraid or upset about these changes. They’re going to happen and if you embrace them properly you can grow with them.
You reevaluate your mission statement and core values over time. Always keep them in mind, of course, but every so often look at their fit within your company. What do they say about you? Is that what you are naturally communicating as a brand? What do you want them and your employees to say to the world?