The Importance of Values in The Company

Values in the company is a set of guiding principles, which can help employees to understand the workplace area and make clear vision about the company’s purposes. It allows creating strong relationships in teams, overall vision in the organization and mechanism for easier management of employees. The values should reflect and support the organizational culture and align with the employee’s values. Due to the alignment of values, the company as a whole can achieve its core mission. ("Understanding Workplace Values: Finding the Best Cultural Fit," n.d.) People create a good working relationship when people understand one another and each pursues a common goal. The current corporate culture allows some new employees to immediately feel ‘at home’ and join a group of enthusiastic like-minded people. Conversely, no matter how valuable the specialist officer is, if she does not close or does not like the present values and principles of the company, she will suffer internal contradictions and not be able to realize talent in this organization. Writing the paper, I would like to answer several questions such as how strong does the match between organizational culture and employee values need to be to achieve successful workplace dynamic? What risks does a weak match bring to employee engagement? Should hiring employees with identical values be a part of the organizational strategy?

A set of corporate values defines the culture and character of the organization itself. Moreover, as the vision and mission of the company are unique, the corporate values of the different companies may not be the same. However, there are many core values, which can be adopted in most organizations, such as integrity, accountability, diligence, perseverance and discipline. (Dilenschneider, 2013) All characteristics make organizational culture stronger if all workers satisfy and follow on the workplace. Certainly, there are many other values, which create specific culture for specific goals, such as ‘be funny’ or ‘fewer words, more deeds.’ Moreover, companies are looking for new employees with particular values, for example, Twitter a service of microblogging, where everyone can write a short message in your news feed. There is a mission on their official website “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” ("Company | About", n.d.) This sentence quickly creates a small vision about the company and their purposes. I sympathized with their hiring framework, such as we are creative and curious people, that feel comfortable being yourself creating an atmosphere to express thoughts and improve our service. It means to compare to others; we are looking for the same people as we are. Twitter is not only a blog kind of communication and obtaining new information, is a powerful tool to talk about yourself, your hobbies and opinion about the world to millions and millions of users worldwide. However, not only tell, but also to make those people as partners, associates and friends. Compare social network and people who are working in the company, and it is hard to see any difference because organizational values fully reflect the main destination of the company.

Based on Twitter, I consider that the match between organizational culture and employees should be strong because it creates successful workforce dynamic. If employees align their values, they ultimately become a part of the company and can understand the mission and vision. The strong relationship between employee’s values and organizational culture leads to the foundation of the successful business performance. It is not necessary to write values on paper or the walls because it is something intangible in the organization. It is the invisible side of the iceberg. The company creates a specific set of behaviors based on particularly management department and their vision. I consider that similar values and well-organized culture can help people at the top to achieve success. In addition, based on herd mentality effect, in another words group thinking, people feel more satisfactory and safety in teams and they become more manageable. The facts show that 5 percent can affect the crowd and “other 95 percent follow without realizing it”. (Nauert, 2016) By these examples, I demonstrate that it is necessary to arrange culture because it helps to coordinate, motivate and manage people in business. In my opinion, the establishment of organizational values makes a specific area or atmosphere where workers can feel essential to the company. Where they can operate and achieve common goals and fulfill missions of the company.

Strong match between organizational values and employees values creates a strong engagement in what people do on a daily basis. (Lecture: Introduction to Organizational Culture and Values, 2010) From the other hand, the weak match between culture and values leads to increase of individuals in the company. It is hard to arrange employees in strong teams because the majority of people have their own values, principals and ideas. Possibly, in some ways individual’s interests do not match company’s vision. I would like to make an analogy with football or hockey teams. For example, there is a team, which has several leaders, instead of a coach, and other players, which are very similar to each other based on skills and abilities. They all pursue the same goal - to prove to everyone that they can succeed, like national team of Wales or Iceland. Another example is a team where the majority of players are leaders, and each has its own vision of the game. I am not saying that such team cannot succeed, but they are not fully engaged in the process. The minority, the newcomers are people who want to proof something, but they also follow their own interests - to be noticed.

From my point of view, a close relationship of values and working team, no matter it is just IT department or company as whole; it leads to “well-oiled mechanism.” Everyone in the organization knows what to do and how, and they gradually achieve the objectives. Certainly, it is a perfect dream for every leader or a businessperson to own such company. However, today’s world with new technologies, which are implementing every day, and the huge growth of competitiveness. The organization can lose talented and prominent individuals because sometimes they cannot fit the company’s values. However, if the person joins the company, I think that he or she in nearest future voluntarily leave the job because this individual cannot totally open up and show the talent a hundred percent. Diversity is another example of loss because different nations have different values. It is necessary to observe the situation from different perspectives because there are different kinds of business, is its private bank, bakery or consulting company.

Specific business requires particular people, which reflect their working orientations. It is common sense, that unemployed, who wants to get a job in the banking industry, cannot be undisciplined and irresponsible. Also, the boss or the owner of the bank do not sit on flow or yellow beanbag during the negotiating. Sometimes people hide their values and principles to get well-paid jobs, which harmful for both sides because they just waste time and the company spends money. Therefore, hiring employees with identical values should be a part of the organizational strategy, because for example employees should not have a relaxed attitude towards the deadline of the company when it is experiencing critical target. The hiring of new people should also depend on the organizational goals.

How to determine the importance of the individual for the company, if he or she mismatch organizational and personal values? It depends on the purposes, current situation and other external factors of the business. For example, the corporation is experiencing financial problems, and the top managers decide to get a specialist for the financial sector. He may not fit the values of the company, but based on his knowledge and expertise possibly be adopted. However, it is difficult for such person to cooperate with the team in particular organization, but he will be useful for the short-term. Another example is refreshing the company with new employees or creating a new concept. In this case, talented people and diversity groups are helpful because they engender absolutely new vision and bring new ideas that can change the current situation. The main question should be: “What we need quality or quantity?” By answering and analyzing this question, it is easier to make a conclusion about the importance of the individual.

In the end, I would like to make some recommendations, based on the article Startup Culture: Values vs. Vibe. (Feld, 2012) The first advice is to split organizational values and emotional atmosphere in the company. Not implement too many core values and do not change for a long time. During the hiring process, personal values should align the corporate values; therefore, it is necessary to determine the questions that should be asked in the interview, which will be able to identify similarities. In the development of corporate values, it is important to remember that values must be directed inside the organization and outside - the value of the company itself, its partners, its attitude to customers and staff. When the company is experiencing problems, it is necessary to specialize on new people and not on the match between organizational and employee’s values.

In conclusion, the relationship between corporate and worker’s values should be strong, and hiring process should be specialized on employees with identical values and be a part of company’s strategy. The weak match between values leads to the decrease of engagement because people mismatch with corporate goals, traditions and attitudes. Loss of talents is a risk for the company, but every business follows its own interests, is it meet the deadlines or earn money. It is necessary to find a balance and start from the situation because sometimes individuals who cannot fit the corporate values can bring much more than those who do.