Inspiring Company Culture: 3 Examples of Values That Drive Success

Company values are the shared beliefs about what's most important to a business. They act as guideposts for how the company operates and makes decisions, both big and small. While a mission statement tells employees what the company aims to accomplish, values show them how to get there.

The most effective company values are:

1. Unique to the organization
2. Memorable for employees
3. Actionable in day-to-day work

When values have these qualities, they can powerfully shape a company's culture and drive better business outcomes. Here are three examples of companies that live by inspiring, impactful values:

1. Pinterest Puts Its Customers First

Pinterest's main goal is to "bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love." Their over 300 million monthly users, called Pinners, rely on the visual search engine to collect ideas for their passions - from wedding planning to home decorating to new hobbies.

Pinterest's first value, "Put Pinners First", reminds employees to always consider what's best for their customers. The value description includes key questions to guide work:

• What problem is this solving?
• Is it significant?
• Are we making Pinners' lives better?

By putting a customer-centric value front and center, Pinterest keeps its team focused on serving Pinners. Research has found that an official customer-focused value is one of the top drivers of business success.

2. Snagajob Sees the Power of Simplicity

When Virginia-based tech company Snagajob merged with People Matter, they needed a unified set of values for the combined business, which matches workers with shifts and employers with hourly talent.

Snagajob landed on just four concise, one-word values, each supported by three bullet-point behaviors:

• Solidarity
• Candor
• Unconvention
• Fire

Limiting the number of values and words makes them easy for employees to remember and differentiate. Throughout Snagajob's website and branding, you can see these values reflected, reinforcing their importance.

3. PagerDuty Creates a Culture of Ownership

PagerDuty, a digital operations management platform, helps businesses stay up and running 24/7 with incident alerts. As the company prepared for hypergrowth, they launched new values to shape an enduring culture, including:

• Ack & Own
• Run Together
• Driven by Impact
• Dare to Disrupt
• Bring Yourself

"Ack & Own" uniquely connects to PagerDuty's product, which requires users to acknowledge or "ack" alerts to start resolving issues. By weaving the company's history into a value, PagerDuty inspires employees to take ownership of their work the same way their customers do.

Bringing Values to Life

Defining meaningful values is just the first step - the real impact comes from activating them. To infuse your company's values into the employee experience, try:

• Recognizing value-aligned behaviors: Highlight specific examples of employees living the values to make them concrete. Tools like Bonusly can help.

• Incorporating values into the workplace: Use conference room names, wall art, and swag to keep values top of mind.

• Tying values to business initiatives: Reinforce how major projects or changes connect back to the company's values and culture.

With a strong set of values and commitment to embodying them, you can cultivate the kind of company culture that inspires employees, delights customers, and drives long-term success. For more insights on building a thriving workplace, explore the future of the office.