BUILDING AN ORGANISATION BASED ON VALUES

Why Identify and Establish Values?

Effective organizations identify and develop a clear, concise and shared meaning of values/beliefs, priorities, and direction so that everyone understands and can contribute. Values are traits or qualities that are considered worthwhile; they represent an individual’s highest priorities and deeply held driving forces. Thus value statements are grounded in values and define how people want to behave with each other in the organization. They are statements about how the organization will value customers, suppliers, and the internal community. Value statements describe actions which are the living enactment of the fundamental values held by most individuals within the organization. The following are examples of values… competency, individuality, equality, integrity, empathy…. Once defined, values impact every aspect of your organization. We must support and nurture this impact or identifying values will have been a wasted exercise. People will feel fooled and misled unless they see the impact of the exercise within your organization. Values form the foundation for everything that happens in our workplace - the leader’s values permeate the organisation. We naturally hire people who share our values. Whatever we value, will largely govern the actions of our workforce. If we value and care about the people in our organization, we will pay for health insurance, employee recreation, and provide regular raises and bonuses for dedicated staff. If we value equality and a sense of family, we will wipe out the physical trappings of power, status, and inequality such as executive parking places and offices that grow larger by a foot with every promotion.

Whatever You Value Is What You Live in Your Organization

Most of us work in organizations that have already operated for many years. The values, and the subsequent culture created by those values, are in place, for better or worse. If we are generally happy with our work environment, we undoubtedly selected an organization with values congruent with our own. If you're not, watch out for a disconnect between - what you value and the actions of different people in your organization. As HR professionals, we will want to influence our larger organization to identify its core values, and make them the foundation for its interactions with its employees, customers, and suppliers. Minimally, we will want to work within our own HR organization to identify a strategic framework for serving the customers that is firmly value-based.

- Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net