The Process Towards Defining Our Core Values
Over the past year, WorkPoint has continued its journey of transformation - not only in what we do, but in who we are. After redefining our purpose, we turned our attention to the foundation of our culture: our core values. This time, we chose a different approach, one that invited the entire organization to help shape the values that will guide us forward.
By Claus Jul Christiansen, CEO at WorkPoint & Sina Feldborg Mortensen, People & Culture Manager at WorkPoint
Four Important Takeaways
- Involve the whole organization. Values are lived every day by everyone, not just articulated by a few.
- Build on what already exists. The strongest values are those that resonate with the lived experiences of your people.
- Make values actionable. Values must be discussed, challenged, and brought to life in daily work.
- Keep revisiting the values. Address the values in individual and team meetings but also use them actively when starting a new task, project, or collaboration.
Our Need for Articulating and Clearly Defining Our Values
At WorkPoint, our culture has always been shaped by the values we live, whether they are spoken aloud or simply felt in our everyday interactions. As our organization continues to evolve, we recognize the importance of bringing these lived values to light. Not only to make them visible and explicit, but also to ensure that they truly support the direction we want to move in as a company.
For us, working with values is not just about putting words on a poster. It’s about understanding the culture we already have, and - if needed - being able to shape it in a direction that supports our ambitions and wellbeing as an organization.
Our intention was never to radically change who we are. Rather, we wanted to create a shared understanding of the values that unite us, and to make sure that these values are the ones we want to carry forward. By making our values explicit, we can better reinforce the positive aspects of our culture - and, if necessary, model it in a more purposeful direction.
Our Approach to Defining Core Values
Unlike the process of developing our purpose - which was primarily a leadership task - we decided that defining our core values required broader involvement. Values, whether articulated or not, are always present in an organization. They are embedded in the beliefs, feelings, and perspectives that shape our culture.
We knew from the beginning that values are not something you simply decide on - they already exist in the organization. Our task was to uncover and articulate them together
It was important for us to understand which values were already seen as fundamental by both employees and leaders, and which values people wanted to see guiding us in the future. We wanted to ensure that our formulated values would truly resonate across the organization.
Listening to the Organization
We started with a company-wide survey, asking everyone to describe both the values they experienced in their daily work and the values they wished to see in the future. This proved to be an eye-opening exercise. While some values appeared both as current experiences and future aspirations, others were seen as less desirable to carry forward as defining values.
Leaders were then asked to propose and justify their three most important values. Together with the insights from the employee survey, this formed the basis for a thorough process where all inputs were discussed. Some values were merged into broader concepts that could encompass several relevant value words.
It was inspiring to see how much thought and reflection people put into describing what matters most to them at WorkPoint. The process gave us a real sense of what unites us, and where we want to go together.
Arriving at Our Three Core Values
Through this collaborative process, we distilled our values down to three core values:
Passionate, Accountable, and Collaborative.
We didn’t stop here though. Through extensive discussions, we discovered that the values sparked a variety of interpretations and perspectives. To support the implementation, we decided it would be helpful to expand on each of the three values. Each value is therefore accompanied by a short definition, along with a description of how it is reflected in our work with employees, customers/partners, and the wider community. Because values are such a fundamental thing, they only work when they are applied across the board. We can’t isolate them to apply only externally or internally – if we do, the values are reduced to a set of behavioral rules that only apply in specific situations. They must be a fundamental way of acting and making decisions. Period.
Our experience is that elaborating on the value statements has made it easier for teams to have more concrete and meaningful conversations about the values, as the elaborations provide a shared point of reference from the outset.
Bringing Our Values to Life
After presenting the new values to the organization, each leader facilitated workshops within their teams. The goal was to make the values tangible and relevant: What do these values mean to us? How do we interpret them in our context? What are good examples of living these values in our team, and where do we see room for improvement?
The real work begins after the values are defined. It’s about making them part of our everyday conversations and decisions, so they become something we live, not just something we say.
The Ongoing Journey
Defining our core values was not a one-off exercise. It is an ongoing journey that requires continuous dialogue, reflection, and leadership commitment. We know that values only make a difference when they are lived, not just stated. That is why we will keep revisiting and reinforcing them, ensuring they remain a guiding force in everything we do.
We need to talk about our values and use them as active tools when we hold 1:1s, development conversations, and Business & Breakfast meetings. To acknowledge when something is perfectly in line with the values, but also when it may not be. It is through this dialogue that the values become strong and gradually increasingly guide behavior.
But just as importantly when we start a new project or task. What do the values mean in this specific project? How are we accountable? How do we make the collaboration work here, and how does passion come to life in this context?
Values are only meaningful if we use them to guide our actions and decisions. Our commitment as leaders is to keep them alive - every day, in every conversation