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People: They’re your biggest asset. They’re also your biggest business expense and often the biggest headache. But let’s be honest. Much of the pain comes from unclear expectations. Do they know and align with your business core values? And are they the right culture fit?
Before you answer that, ask yourself, do you know what makes for a great culture fit? A simple process that identifies your business’ core values can help you quickly determine if someone is right for your organization.
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If you haven’t yet, define your core values, those three to seven guiding principles you use to hire, fire, retain, recognize and reward your people. Your core values state how you and your people show up every day at your company.
If you haven’t previously defined your core business values, it’s easy to do:
Somewhere on that list are your company’s core values.
Next, discuss, debate, filter and challenge your team to whittle your business core values list down to three to seven values. Resist the urge to choose values like “honesty,” “hardworking” and “integrity.” Those are the minimum acceptable standards of performance in business. Also, don’t choose values you wish you had but realistically will never exhibit.
Then, test your core values on your leadership team with a +, - and +/- system. List your leaders and rate each one on how well they exhibit each of your core values so that:
+ means they exhibit a particular value most of the time
– means they rarely exhibit it
+/- means they sometimes do
Your leadership team determines the bar, or the minimum acceptable standard of performance someone who fits the organization should exhibit. For example, if you have five core values, leadership team members should be demonstrating three of those five values consistently (+’s) and the rest at least part of the time (+/-’s).
Continue to test and refine your core values until they accurately and realistically reflect the kinds of people you want working for your company.
After you have completed this exercise, let the core values sit for 30 days; then revisit them with your team. You may find they need to be refined for greater clarity. Once you and your leadership team agree on the core values, you can and should share them with the rest of the company, so employees understand the bar by which their behaviors and performance are being measured.
After the core values have been communicated internally, you can evaluate each employee against those values using the rubric above. Those who fall below the standard may not be a fit for your organization’s culture. For those individuals, Axcet HR Solutions can help you determine whether you can take action to improve these workers’ performance or whether you may need to help them move into another role or encourage them to shift their careers in a different direction.
Note: Thanks to Kyle Danner, EOS Worldwide, who served as a source for this post.
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