Most organisations describe their culture through a set of values. But how many of these are designed to be truly distinctive, to attract and retain the best people, and to supercharge an organisation’s performance? Whilst culture is made up of much more than values, when they’re authentically lived, owned by employees and directly linked to purpose and strategy, they’re a powerful way of creating leadership alignment, team engagement and thriving organisational performance.
Why Does It Matter?
Inauthentic culture: The majority of FTSE 350s list their values, but almost half of employees feel disconnected from them.
Worldwide disengagement: a large proportion of employees globally feel disengaged at work, contributing to a whopping $8.9tn cost to the global economy each year.
Say/Do gap: Research shows that 85% of CEOs believe that the actions of their people are aligned to their organisational values, whilst only 61% of employees share this view.
The Business Challenges Values & Behaviours Can Solve
When values are well-integrated, they serve as a foundation for a strong culture, aiding organisations in reaching the next level. They clarify difficult decisions, provide stability during change, attract and retain talent, build accountability, and foster pride and advocacy.
Organisations that use values as a strategic lever are more likely to attract top talent, have lower attrition rates, higher customer satisfaction scores, increased innovation, and quicker decision-making.
What We Offer
Transform your values from words into action with Kin&Co. We’ll help you embed your values into the fabric of your organisation, driving measurable business impact. Our approach combines impactful initiatives with targeted, everyday actions, empowering your employees to co-create your culture and take ownership of your values.
We’ll guide you through experimental approaches, avoiding costly delays and building trust by demonstrating tangible change from day one. While empowering teams to interpret values in their own way, we provide central support and direction to ensure strategic alignment. We also address common challenges like leadership buy-in and resource limitations, ensuring your values become a genuine strategic enabler.
There are typically three main phases in our values definition programmes:
Listen to colleagues & Set Direction
1 – Genuinely listen to your people.
2 – Reset attitudes, gather insights and benchmark behaviours.
3 – Set the strategic direction and “red lines” for change with leaders.
Co-create A New Culture
1 – Design high-tempo, creative engagements with colleagues to co-create new values and behaviours.
2 – Upskill ‘culture champions’ to lead engagement to better influence and sustain the change.
3 – Establish ‘quick wins’ to build belief and drive business impact.
Launch & Embed Values
1 – Develop and deliver a long-term activation plan to turn your desired culture from words into action.
The Science Of What We Do
Modelling Theory and Social Norming: If you role-model the values you want to see throughout the process, people change their behaviour based upon observing others and wanting to be part of the majority.
The IKEA Effect: If you’ve had a hand in creating something, you’re more likely to take ownership of it. Co-creating your values with your people means they’ll be your biggest champions and role models.
Gamification: The “act of changing human behaviour by making activities more enjoyable” – simple, but hugely effective in values definition programmes and woefully underused in change management.
The Impact
increase in employee engagement (Open Reach)
of the disparate 11k+ community felt excited about the culture, leading to a 12% increase in company pride (PMI)
of leaders had changed their behaviour after just 10 weeks (Allstream)
Client Success Stories
Our methodology has been tried and tested with 100+ organisations, defining cultures that have created measurable results like the ones below:
Values & Behaviours FAQs
Other questions you may have
Many organisations find it difficult to translate espoused values into actions. This struggle often stems from a lack of senior leadership buy-in and prioritisation, where leaders view focusing on values as a trade-off with performance or merely an internal branding exercise.
Another reason is the indirect return on investment, as the returns on culture investment are traditionally hard to measure, leading to reluctance in signing off activation work. Limited budget and resources, where small, under-resourced teams lead the work, also contribute to this challenge.
Leaders can take several key actions to navigate the common pitfalls in moving from words to action. These include starting with behaviours by grounding values in specific, observable actions. It also includes sparking a movement by involving people in bringing values to life, which can lead to faster change and deeper commitment.
Taking an experimental approach, selecting teams to explore organisational behaviours and designing measurable experiments, is also helpful. It is also important to not delay in acting on values. Finally, leaders should let values live by empowering people to make the culture their own within set strategic parameters.
Kin&Co have defined the cultures of 100+ organisations across almost every sector. Our unique methodology, grounded in behavioural science, allows us to help organisations spark a change in behaviour and engagement from day one of the process – meaning you see better business outcomes faster and have an expert partner to help you keep momentum. Our clients love the playful, inclusive and experiential spirit we bring to our partnerships and our absolute focus on measurement and organisational impact. Contact us to find out more!