Core Values
Core values are the set of guiding principles and fundamental beliefs that help a group of people function together as a team and work toward a common business goal. These values are often related to business relationships, customer relationships, and company growth. Further they help guide action and behaviour of a person or even an organisation. Having core set of values makes it easier to be decisive, be better at communicating principles to potential clients and customers in the case of an organisation.
I believe every organisation should have a set of core values, that suits their business and uphold them in every area of the business, whether it be in making decisions, communication, hiring people etc. They should be in such a way that they support the vision of the company in a unique way.
The benefits an organisation can gain from upholding these values especially in difficult times are many. They can bolster the feeling of a community as the shared code or ethos can drive the workforce to think as one and strive towards attaining the goal of the organisation. If these values are nor defined, or even worse, not upheld the community can grow in their own ways, which can potentially hurt the business. Their is also this norm that has been creeping up in different companies recently, where they just put forward these core values and statements on paper but fail to adhere to them. This is a result of the money-making mentality that many multinational companies are currently obsessed with. Furthermore, the values being stated today are rather cumbersome to decode and complex to assimilate. Values need to be simplistic and a person should be easily able to relate to it and use that relation to strive for the goals stipulated by the company.
Although there is an influx of many core values in modern day corporates, I feel Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging are being overlooked.These are in my view one of the much needed core values for an individual as well as an organisation. The need for this value is increasing day by day in this modern age of globalisation. People are blurring the lines of ethnicity and evolving to become a global society. Many countries have been endorsing migration to their country from other countries and their exists a very significant need for inclusiveness in the modern workplaces. Diversity means including different types of people, such as people from different sexual orientation, disabilities, nationalities etc. and building up a special kind of unity among those people i.e., treating as is they are the equal. This act of creating equality and fairness for these diverse people is what is called as Inclusion. This also includes creating fair opportunities, adding culture rather than fitting it, opening up for different perspectives and differences. And when these are properly executed and only then can we create a sense of ‘Belonging’.
In summary, the presence of core values in the company framework can help the company grow while developing a community sentiment in favour of the company. They can make or break a business based on their implementation.