Company values are one of the most important assets that an organisation must stay true to!

To share a personal story of mine; I graduated university and quickly  landed my first office job.

I was so excited to  have a salary and take my first steps into what society considers proper adulthood.

Everything looked so promising. The interview showed me that their brand purpose and values aligned to my own!

But when I started working, I saw that this wasn’t the case…

As it turns out, these values were not represented at all in the company. Projects existed to make quick profit and many customers were unhappy and unsatisfied.

But nothing was done to make things better and by the second month, I was so upset.  I felt as if I wasn’t doing anything meaningful and that was one of my biggest goals; to help people and do good in the world.

Why should companies stay true to their values?

Back to the topic of my old company. Because there were no true values represented in their work, a lot of setbacks happened.

This caused it to have many severe repercussions, the main ones were:

Low Retention Rate:

In a short span of two weeks we had about 10 employees resign. This hurt productivity in the workplace because we were now short of so many employees.

This then  placed more strain on the remaining team members.

Additionally, HR  had to spend more resources replacing team members and training them. Finally, seeing so many people leave in such a short amount of time struck a huge blow to morale.

In the weeks after, many employees were looking on Linked In for better potential jobs.

Bad Company Image:

The company didn’t stay true to their values and  just wanted to do business wherever there was money. As a result their company image declined.

Reviews online claimed the company didn’t care and wanted to churn out products for quick profit.

Even worse, people commented on these reviews, sharing similar feelings and the company’s rating plummeted.

And today, a simple google search easily brings up these negative opinions at the top of the results.

This is why it’s important!

Make sure your values are not only clear, but that your company sticks to them.

When a company doesn’t stay true to their values (or have any values) it can seriously harm company image.

And when represented well, company values can have so many benefits!

They can help to ensure a standard in the products that a company produces. This helps to keep the same level of awesome quality throughout the production cycle.

They can also increase your company’s retention rate by allowing your employees to be proud of what they do.

And educate not only your current clients but potential new clients about the company. This helps to attract those with similar values, making your company one big happy family.

In the end, I left and moved onto another company whose values were in line with my moral compass.

I’m proud to say that this company is The Sponge and I’m so excited to work with them!

Keen to be party of their big happy family (which is one of their values)!!