Why Your Values Aren't Fluffy - They're Your Foundation

Shona Hamilton
Feb 2
4 min read

When people hear "Company Values" they think of the cheesy slogans on the wall in the Boardroom and buzzword posters dotted around by HR. We get it. Most companies have values to check a box and don't actually follow through on anything, hence why it feels like a big fluffy waste of time.

But values only ever feel "fluffy" when they're unused. You have to go beyond writing "Live, Laugh Love" on the wall and actually start to live it.

What Company Values Actually Are (and Aren't)

Company values are not:

Aspirational slogans - "Team work makes the dream work" on the wall does nothing.
Marketing copy - everyone's team should value their customers, it doesn't make your company special.
A cultural "perk" - treating people with respect should happen naturally, it shouldn't need to be a company perk!

Company values are actually:

Decision filters - how do you determine what the best solution is to a problem?
Behavioural standards - beyond the "please be nice and don't steal from us" baseline
Trade offs made explicitly clear - "customer first" can mean different things when it costs time, money or speed.

Values as Decision Making Tool

Company values have great power when it comes to helping staff make decisions in your business. When priorities conflict, pressure is high and leaders aren't in the room, values guide your employees as to what the next step should be. If your values encompass a "done is better than perfect" approach, your team will make fast decisions and handle any fall out later. If your values are aligned to putting your customers first, this will encourage your staff to prioritise client work and do what is best for the customer (although this might not always be what is best for the business). But you can see how values can become a shortcut to aligned decision making across your business, because they become the reference point when leaders are absent. They help employees to think "which option best reflects who we say we are?".

The Cost of Weak or Undefined Values

When values are not clear and not strongly embedded in the business, this creates ambiguity and disjointedness across the board. When it comes to decision making, there is no clear guideline as to how the company is expected to respond; employees become unable to make decisions and instead turn to leaders who then become bottlenecks in the business. As the company grows, the entire culture can then become further fragmented leading to hiring problems, high turnover rates and poor employee experiences.

These things alone sound like small issues, but over time they compound and have a massive negative impact on productivity. If the company values aren't clear, people invent their own - and they won't match!

Values in Action: Where They Actually Show Up

Hiring & Firing

Your values will determine who you hire into your business - because you won't want to hire people who can't align with how you work. You can teach someone how to do the job or use the system, but you can't always teach them how to behave in the correct way for your business. Having clear values will also help you to quickly identify employees who aren't the right fit for the business and exit them out efficiently before any harm is done to the culture of the team.

Performance Reviews

Values should always factor into performance reviews to help make them tangible for employees. It's a great way to positively reward the right values and to proactively manage the behaviours that can be tolerated but don't require an exit from the business.

Product Decisions

Your values should be a clear representation of how you work, both with your employees and your customers and this will naturally feed into what you decide to sell. If one of the values of your business is around reducing carbon emissions, you're more likely to discontinue products with high carbon emissions in favour of low emission products.

Customer Relationships

Your values should also relate to how you interact with your customers/clients. If your core value is "trust" then you need to ensure you're delivering trust to your customers. It means that if a customer asks a difficult question, your answer should deliver honesty and trust to them.

Your values are about how you show up when things get tough.

Values Are a Foundation, Not a Finish Line

Strategy changes; values shouldn’t. They form the basis for your strategy, for product development, for team development and for the future of your business.
Values create stability during growth, crisis, or change. Whatever is happening around you, revert back to your values and go from there. You don't notice the foundation until it cracks - but everything depends on it.
They scale culture faster than policies. Policies are the rules you should follow. Values are how you show up.

How to Tell If Your Values Are Real

Here's a quick check to see how well embedded your values are in your company.

Can employees name them without looking?
Do they guide tough decisions, not just celebrations?
Are leaders held to them first and foremost?
Would you lose revenue to uphold them?

If the answer is no - your values are decorative at this stage and there is more work to be done.

From Words to Standards

Values aren't about sounding good to your clients, or even about attracting new employees; they're about acting consistently. They're the road-map for your team to navigate difficult decisions in a way that reflects what the company stands for.

Values don't make your company nicer. They make it clearer.

Here's how we help our clients with their values at Lilac HR:

Retained HR clients can ask our team for support in reviewing and embedding their company values with engagement strategies.
We work with clients on a project basis to help them identify, set and embed their company values. Get in touch today if you feel you need a Culture Overhaul.