In Times of Crisis, Your Values are More Important Than Ever
We have one client, First Stop Health, that is a pretty remarkable company. They are doing amazing things in the telehealth space — which is suddenly more crucial and fundamental to our general well being than it has ever been — and they have managed to build a thriving employee experience and culture these past few years.
One of the things that has struck me about FSH is how strong their corporate values are and how much they celebrate them. They have a nickname, “CUTT”, which stands for their four values: Caring, Unrelenting, Trusted and Transparent. And they make sure that their values are core to their business.
Caring
Unrelenting
Trusted
Transparent
Every month, they start of their team staff meeting by handing out “values awards” — they have a traveling trophy for each of the four values and the winner from the previous month gets to give it to anyone they’d like. One month, when we were there at their staff meeting, the same guy won two awards! Our professional advice? Don’t let him leave. 😉 They have poker chips with the values on them that they bring to events so they can take pictures and put them on social media.
The result is pretty much what you’d expect — their values are important to them and the employees have an extremely high understanding and relationship to them.
When asked, “How clear are First Stop Health’s values?” Employees responded with an 8.9 out of 10
Here’s the thing: values are more important right now than they have ever been in corporate America. In times of crisis, anything that is going to provide stability, structure, consistency, calm, support — this is what we want. And values are, at their very essence, about nothing other than doing these exact things. So they are extremely valuable.
Here are some tips for all of us to consider about our values as we move forward:
If you have values, remind yourselves of them and check how they are holding up.
Auditing your values, especially in stressful times, can be valuable. This can be done individually, it can be done as a small conversation, however.
If you don’t have values, now is the time to write them.
You’ve got time on your hands right now. I know it. Spend a bit of it putting some words on paper. Get these done.
Every team meeting should start with a celebration of values in one fashion or another.
Even if it’s as simple as putting your values up on display on the wall for everyone to read, or just reciting them aloud, starting meetings with a recitation of values makes a ton of sense. At Holistic, we invite teammates to give shout-outs to one another to start our meetings, but we do so by focusing on our values and who among us exemplified them.
Your performance reviews need to have a heavy influence from your values.
We have gone to a values-driven performance review system at Holistic, and we recommend it for our clients. (Interestingly, FSH, the company I mentioned above, does the same thing). By doing this, and by being forthright with employees about what you’re doing, you’ll really cement that these values are core to your operation.
Display your values! In the office, online, everywhere.
It’s important for your customers and clients to know what your values are. They should be accessible and open. Clients should have every opportunity to relate to them, to understand them, to see if they fit with their own values, and the like.
You must measure and see if you are living up to your values
One of the things that we do at Holistic is we can actually evaluate how well a company is living up to its values. If “trust” is a stated value but our research indicates that there is distrust between employees and leadership, now you’ve got two problems — the lack of trust itself and the failure on meeting your values. Similarly, even in companies facing challenges, a strong accessibility to values can be a stalwart during tough times.
Your values are forever, but that doesn’t mean they are permanent.
Finally, although your values last forever, it doesn’t mean that they are permanent. They can change, evolve, grow, expand, adapt — and they should. Build a schedule or a plan for values review. Keep them current. Cultivate them. They are a living, breathing thing, or at least they can be, if you let them.
Now is a pretty good time for all of us to get to some of these bigger picture issues that so often get pushed to the side. So why not take a look at your values, today, and see where they stand? Every second we can spend building out our values is going to pay off ten-fold down the road.
Need some inspiration? Check out Holistic’s mission and values here.
