Establish a clear set of values

Simon Hay, CEO, dunnhumbyUSA

Simon Hay’s key to a successful culture
includes establishing a core set of values.
Creating these values and making them an
integral part of the culture shapes the way
employees work and interact each day and
also helps them better understand the company and its culture.

“Values tend to get overlooked,” the CEO
of dunnhumbyUSA says. “So find out what
are the things that differentiate you,
describe what’s important to you and your
employees, and what they can act upon.”

Talk with employees and clients about
what they see in you. Hay, who was featured in the June edition of Smart Business,
got feedback from external partners, clients
and employees to determine the company’s
values. He says getting feedback from others was the best way to find out what made
dunnhumby, a relevance marketing company, different from others.

Once you have that information, summarize
it into the few things that define your company and are believable, realistic and truthful.

“If your employees look at your values
and go, ‘I’ve never seen that here,’ obviously
there’s no connection between your aspiration and reality,” Hay says. “Values have to
be recognizable and inspirational, something that people believe and are important
to the organization.”

The values also need to be simple and relevant for employees to understand them.

“Sometimes, there is a tendency to list 10 or 12 things, but if you don’t distill
them down, how are people going to
remember them well enough to act on
them?” Hay says.

Once you have the values in place, you
need to communicate them so your
employees understand them and live them
each day.

Regardless of how you try to integrate
your values into your culture, be consistent.

“Values are something we talk about every
day, they’re not rolled out for the annual
business presentation and put away in a
cupboard for the rest of the year,” Hay says.
“You’ve got to continually highlight great
examples of people living those values,
reward those people, and consistently communicate (those values) so that they
absolutely, 100 percent become embedded
in everyone’s daily thoughts and actions.”