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BRAND BUILDING 12 Summer 2018 FEATURE Discover the Power of a


Core Values Statement


By Holly Lebowitz Rossi e


very employee has a sense of professional identity, starting with what they create or build or with how


they help or serve someone in their job. But what inspires people as they arrive at work each day often has little to do with what they produce. It’s the core values of a company that can drive performance, commitment, and happiness among employees. When those values are clear, consistent, and integrated throughout the organization, both employee experiences and business outcomes thrive. Marketers hold a key responsibility with this culture-sustaining practice—core values should be at the very “core” of your internal marketing strategy. Establishing a core values statement is “the number one thing all companies need to do,” says Marissa Levin, Founder and CEO of Successful Culture, a Washington, DC-based company that has helped more than 100 businesses craft and implement their statements. The stakes are high in being intentional and clear in core values. According to a Society for Human Resource Management case study, 30 percent of mergers and acquisitions fail because of basic cultural incompatibility. Effective core values statements can prevent cultural missteps and save businesses.


But core values statements offer more than insulation against cultural implosion. po


n.


Effective core values statements are powerful tools that can unify employees, clarify shared mance. Here


arify shar


purpose, and inspire peak performanc are four examples of companies that havehave identified and implemented their core values in ways that have supported and sustained their business goals and employee satisfaction alike.


alues in heir


BRIGHT HORIZONS FAMILY SOLUTIONS (Watertown, MA) Core Values Statement: The HEART Principles • Honesty • Excellence • Accountability • Respect • Teamwork


Bright Horizons, a leading provider of c care, early education, and other services, distinguishes bet


business mission and the “ho


ons, a leading pr vider of child y education, and other services, guishes between the “what” of their


siness mission and the “how” of their daily


Marketers hold a key responsibility with this culture-sustaining practice— core values should be at the very “core” of your internal marketing strategy.


work. It’s the latter that informs the HEART Principles, says Ilene Serpa, Vice President of Communications for the company. “We always lived those principles, but naming them and describing them in words also held us—and those who would come after—accountable to them and accountable to our organizational culture,” she says. The HEART Principles infuse daily life for the company’s more than 30,000 employees in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, India, and Canada. According to Serpa, “It’s not an overstatement to say that the HEART Principles are a


touchpoint in every process, project, program, and


She adds that the company is very deliberate re


esonate eq welcome welco tha


and basic human interaction we have within the Bright


Bright Horizons family and outside our family.” She adds


about referencing these values when welcoming ees


new employees to the fold. “We stop and ask es—in th


ourselves—in this moment—Do these principles resonate equally for those who are being welcomed and for those who are doing the welcoming? And if the answer is anything other than yes, we stop and reset.”


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