Given how important the language is, it can be surprising to clients when Tribe recommends against writing articles about values.
The cultural construct – mission, vision and values language– is a critical bedrock in establishing and building an intentional culture. The language helps employees understand who the organization is, where it’s headed and how employees should handle themselves along the journey.
Appreciating what your company stands for (mission) and that leadership has a plan in place to reach its goals (vison) are two extremely important aspects of employee engagement. Understanding how one’s individual role contributes to company success rounds out Tribe’s top three factors for employee engagement. And keeping teams motivated and engaged is a major factor in organizational success.
But employees are busy, and they don’t tend to have a lot of time to think about culture. We don’t think it’s terribly valuable to have them memorize the cultural language that’s posted on the website. What’s valuable is for employees to be motivated by the organization’s mission and vision. And it’s valuable for them to understand how the company’s stated values should guide their behavior.
So instead of writing articles and developing content specifically about values, we recommend writing about the business. Celebrating recent successes.Identifying the challenges and headwinds facing the business. And helping employees understand how their roles will help the company navigate through issues and achieve its goals.
We map out a calendar that incorporates the various pillars of the business strategy as themes. We work with our clients to identify stories that support the strategy. Business leaders point us toward the teams doing the work.
Then we figure out how to weave the appropriate values into each of those conversations. The result is real-world examples that help employees visualize what it looks like to embody company values in their day-to-day roles.
Of course, if the mission, vision or values have changed in some significant way, it’s a great idea to build a campaign to help employees understand the change. But that’s more of an exception to the rule.
