We say we have "core values," but now what?

Dear HR Friend,

My company just went through the process of defining our “core values.” I didn’t love the process and a lot of people have complained about how it seems like the CEO and his friends just came up with a list of words that sound good. What’s funny is that the words DO sound good and I think they are great values for us to aspire to. So, they announced the values and posted them on our Careers page, but that was over a month ago and no one has heard anything about this since. Nothing has changed about the way we do business and work together. I can’t help but feel like this whole thing was a waste of time (and kind of got my hopes up about our culture getting better) and that we’re not actually going to do anything with the values. I’m a project manager and work with a lot of different people at the company, but I don’t manage people. I do feel like I have a good relationship with our head of HR, so I could talk to her, but I need some advice on what to even say. Help?

- Values Fan Boy

Hey, VFB! I want to start by making you feel better—this is sooooo common! Company leaders love to create splashy statements that sound good, and then leave them gathering dust while changing nothing.

When I first read that “when properly practiced, values inflict pain” it struck me like lightning—this is exactly it! It’s a hard truth, but any organization that I’ve worked with to make choices that uphold their core values has experienced some degree of pain. It’s legitimately hard to make the right choice sometimes!

An example: An organization I worked with found out that a customer had been mistreating employees, including intentionally misgendering them and making racist comments. This customer was a long-time fan of the organization and had spent a lot of money over the years, and now leadership was presented with deciding whether to fire him as a customer. I helped to spur conversations among leadership and between leadership and staff, wherein staff watched leadership struggle with upholding the org’s professed equity values when loss of revenue was on the line. This was a clear case of the core values tool causing real pain in the process (both for leaders faced with a tough choice and staff who had to witness the struggle). I’m happy to say that leadership ultimately decided to fire the customer—they chose to use their values as a tool to make the right decision. While the process was painful, the result ultimately built trust among employees that leadership would have their backs.

So, what’s the lesson here? It’s that core values can’t just be a plaque on the wall or a page in the handbook—use them as a decision-making tool to build trust, offer reliability and consistency for employees, and create a place where people know leadership is guided by a shared understanding of what is important.

Here’s the fun thing: I challenge you to find a single business decision or organizational choice that can’t be made clearer and better by applying a core values lens to it. Performance reviews, compensation, new market expansion, hiring, product development, customer service—all of your decisions and outcomes improve when we know what drives us.

VFB, I can’t know whether your company’s leadership, or even the HR leader you mention, will be receptive to digging into this work, which requires deep conversation, training, constant reminders, and tangible follow-through. What I do know is that you can share this advice with your pal in HR and ask her if you can help her move this forward. They are lucky to have you!

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