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Core Workplace Values Assessment

I unconsciously think about my values every day. Whether it be when I’m challenged by my job, my family or school, I know that I fall back on who I am and what I’m made of. This includes my integrity, faith, compassion and motivation to do what is right, meaningful and fair. A personal value system ‘is an enduring organization of beliefs concerning preferable modes of conduct, or end states of existence along a continuum of relative importance’ (Rokeach, 1973, et al Fearon, Nachmias, McLaughlin, & Jackson, 2018, p. 270). Those values influence my decision-making by making me pause and connect with reality before I make a choice. I can generally know in that instant if I’m about to make a decision that goes against my values and I must make the choice to break my vow, my promise or my word.
I recently completed a core workplace values assessment exercise and found the results to be extremely close to what I thought they would be going into it. I found from this exercise that my top five values in no particular order were:
1. — opportunity for balance between work life and family life
2. — having self-respect and pride in work
3. — variety and a changing work pace
4. — making decisions having power to decide courses of action
5. — having a positive impact on others and society
If anything, this exercise has reaffirmed my commitment to my values. For me, it isn’t about praise, making money or having a title, it is more about my contributions to those around me. It is something that I will continue to keep in the forefront of my mind.
Denning (2011) lists four values that organizations could exhibit. The one that closely matches my organization is Values of the Pragmatists. These organizations practice their values year in and year out (Denning, 2011, p. 129). The culture I see at work is one of caring and forward progress. For the longest time, we lacked the organizational capital to motivate people with the right values. Instead, it was more about who can do what for you. With our new leadership, we’re finding ourselves in position to put our values into everyday life. We have reminders from our leadership team about our values and discuss them frequently. We’ve seen our organization transmit these values through our teams as they grow in strength, even now during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our meetings, our department webpages and our bonuses are all tied into our values. This is the Value of the Pragmatists and we practice it each day.
Another workplace value that Denning (2011) talks about is the Genuinely Ethical Values. Although our CEO is a servant leader and is a very ethical person, it would take years to get our organization to a place where we had a business strategy centered around being 100% ethical. I’m very happy to say we’re not on the other end of the spectrum and act more like organizations with the Values of the Robber Barons (Denning, 2011, p. 127). Out of fairness or consistency or inertia, they ignore the unique capabilities and contributions that individuals bring and, in so doing, waste all that unique talent they recruited in the first place (Coyle, 2018, p. 221). We have come a long way in the almost 20 years I’ve worked at my organization, but we can still do better. That is what separates us from the outliers.
References
Coyle, J. K. (2018). Design For Strengths. United States of America. Author: John K. Coyle and The Art of Really Living LLC.
Denning, S. (2011). The leader's guide to storytelling: Mastering the art and discipline of business narrative (2nd ed.). San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass.
Fearon, C., Nachmias, S., McLaughlin, H., & Jackson, S. (2018). Personal values, social capital, and higher education student career decidedness: A new 'protean'-informed model. Studies in Higher Education, 43(2), 269-291. doi:10.1080/03075079.2016.1162781

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