The importance of an organisations mission and values in helping to create an inclusive workplace
An organisations mission and values are an extremely important part of their business. They define the organisation; without them they would quickly lose direction. They provide competitive advantage, values help educate clients and customers on an organisation’s unique selling point. In the modern-day marketplace, they can also speak to an organisations audience: making them stand out as the supplier of choice. Some of the other key reasons for their importance are:
- They assist in the decision making process
- They communicate what is important
A recent study found that 59% of employees ranked culture, corporate identity and benefits such as work-life balance over and above salary or location. Values act as an integral part of helping organisations create inclusive workplaces. By recruiting against specific values, organisations attract individuals who align with who they are and what they do. Employers set a standard that has a clear level of respect for how to treat others.
Although it is evident that an organisation’s mission and values are extremely important for a business and its employees to flourish, there are still issues with their implementation. A study conducted by Reward Gateway, which surveyed 1500 workers and 750 senior decision makers across the UK, US and Australia, revealed that only 25% of employees feel completely informed about their employer’s corporate mission and only 32% feel completely informed about the values of their organisation. These stats are problematic when you consider that 89% of employers say it is critical to the success of their business that employees understand their mission and values.
In order for everyone in an organisation to understand the mission and values, organisation’s need to ensure that they do not over complicate the messaging. By keeping the message simple, it helps reduce the chance of their employees misinterpreting them. Another key solution for making sure an organisations employees are completely informed on the mission and values is building them into the existing structure. Values need to be carried out by line managers and constantly referred to. They should not be on a piece of paper sitting in a drawer, they should be all around the organisation. To address this, organisations could include discussing them when having one to one performance review meetings, or taking 5 minutes at the start of a meeting for colleagues to discuss what the values mean to them. They could also be on posters around the office.
At enei, we offer training on inclusive leadership and unconscious bias to help address these issues. We also offer resources such as, Employee Resource Groups, which can be an extremely useful tool for companies to help broadcast their values throughout the organisation. To find out more about our training please contact info@enei.org.uk or visit www.enei.org.uk/training-consultancy/.
