How to Define Core Workplace Values That Everyone Can Support

Your core workplace values shape your employees’ experience of work. They can make or break your company.

With strong shared values, you’ll have a positive workplace culture, with engaged, loyal employees who feel connected with one another and who get great results together. Don’t underestimate the importance of this: a Deloitte survey found that 94% of executives (and 88% of employees) “believe that a distinct workplace culture is important to business success.”

Your values help you attract and bring on board the right people, so that you can build a world-class team.

Here’s how Gary Hemming, Owner & Finance Director, ABC Finance, puts it: “Shared values build trust. They’re what hold teams together, giving everyone a solid base to work well, avoiding misunderstandings. When people trust each other, they feel confident and motivated to give their best.”

What Exactly Are Workplace Core Values?

To establish strong workplace core values, you need a clear definition. Your values aren’t the same thing as your company’s mission. Instead, they’re guiding principles for everyone’s behavior and decision-making.

For instance, if your business has a core value of “honesty”, that might mean quickly admitting to mistakes. A core value of “kindness” might mean going the extra mile for a customer.

You don’t need a lot of core values. Having just 3–5 will make it easier for people to remember and live by them. Microsoft lists their core values as respect, integrity, and accountability.

The Benefits of Having Clear Workplace Values

Roman Zrazhevskiy, Founder & CEO, MIRA Safety says, “Core values aren’t just words on a poster or website—they’re the way work gets done every single day. They guide decisions and keep teams moving in the right direction.”

Having clear values can:

Ensure Employees Act in the Ways You Want When Not Supervised

You can’t be watching your employees’ every action: it would be exhausting for you and annoying for them. And if you have frontline workers (or remote workers) on your team, they’ll often be making independent decisions without you. Having clarity about your values empowers them to make good choices.

Build Stronger Employee Engagement and Loyalty

If your employees value the same things as the company, they’re more likely to stick around. In fact, LinkedIn found that 71% of employees (over two-thirds) would take a pay cut to work for a company that shares their values and has a mission they believe in.

Maryanne Fiedler, Director of Marketing at Psychic Source explains, “People want to live lives of integrity, where their personal values can be upheld in the workplace too.”

Foster a Positive Work Environment, Improving Collaboration

Without clear shared values, employees may feel that others are working to a different set of priorities. For instance, if one employee highlights a team’s mistake (prizing transparency), another employee may be offended (prizing discreteness). But with clearly articulated shared values, it’s easier for employees to know and agree what decisions to take in difficult situations.

Attract Talent Whose Own Values Are a Good Fit For Your Company

You want to bring on board employees who’ll quickly fit into your company, acting in alignment with others. With 91% of managers saying that a candidate’s fit with company culture is as important (or more important) than skills and experience, knowing your core values is vital to making the right hiring decisions.

This matters because you want employees to show the same values in their professional lives as a whole that they bring to their day to day work. For instance, if they’re networking on social media, you want the way they behave there to be a good fit with your company’s core values.

Popular Workplace Core Values

You may already have a sense of the core values that you’d like to see emerging even more strongly in your workplace. But if you’re not sure where to begin, here are 10 popular ones:

1. Accountability – Taking ownership of actions and outcomes.
2. Courage – Making bold decisions and taking risks when necessary.
3. Empathy – Understanding and caring about others’ perspectives.
4. Excellence – Striving to deliver the best in all tasks.
5. Integrity – Always acting with honesty and strong moral principles.
6. Innovation – Encouraging creative ideas and embracing change.
7. Openness – Freely sharing ideas and opinions without being judged.
8. Respect – Treating everyone with dignity and recognizing their innate value.
9. Sustainability – Committing to environmental and social responsibility.
10. Transparency – Being open and honest in all communications.

John Grant, Founder & CEO at Premier Bidets says, “My wife and I founded our company after a bucket list trip to Asia, which changed our perspective on personal hygiene. Passion and expertise are such important values for our company and inform everything we do.”

Five Steps to Identify the Right Core Values for Your Workplace

So how do you go about identifying the best core values for your company? 

As Tom Golubovich, Head of Marketing & Media Relations, Ninja Transfers points out, you need to "pick values that naturally fit your mission and goals, but also ones everyone in the company can get behind … the last thing you want is values that most employees disagree with." 

Here’s a process you can follow to identify your company’s core values.

Step 1: Get Input from Your Existing Employees

What matters to your employees? Run a survey or a workshop (in person or virtual) to get feedback about what matters to them. You could ask questions like:

• What makes you feel proud to work here?
• If someone asked about our company vibe, how would you describe it?
• What values do you think we need to focus on to hit our goals?

If you think employees may not be forthcoming, you could give them the list of values above and ask them to pick their top three.

Step 2: Reflect on Organizational Goals and Mission

It’s important for your company’s values to fit with your goals and mission. Otherwise, it’s like going on a journey with the wrong map: you won’t get to where you want to go!

If you’re not already clear about your company’s mission or purpose, then it may be time to take a step back and reflect on this. 

Here are a few examples of company mission statements to inspire you:

Microsoft: “Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

Google: “Google’s mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Whole Foods: “Our purpose is to nourish people and the planet.”

UnitedHealth Group: “Helping people live healthier lives and helping make the health system work better for everyone.”

Your company’s mission goes beyond your specific products and services. What is it you truly want to achieve in the world? 

The way you achieve this is by living your values each day. As Dr. Mo Ziaei, Cornea & Vision Correction Specialist, Re:Vision says, “Core values act as the bridge between what we believe and what we aim to achieve. They turn the mission into actions and guide the way our team works every day, whether that’s with patients or in the back office.”

Step 3: Create a Draft List of Values

At this point, you can hopefully pinpoint values that link into your mission and how you want to achieve it.

Draft a list of around 5–7 core values that resonate with your mission. You’ll want to bring in others, perhaps a small group or all senior executives, at this stage to confer. 

Murtaza Oklu, Owner of OMO Transfer suggests, “This is your chance to explore what your company stands for and how you want it to be known. Get a core team involved to brainstorm and challenge ideas. The most meaningful values often come from a mix of perspectives and honest discussion.”

At this stage, your list doesn’t need to be perfect. You’re going to refine it over the next couple of steps.

Step 4: For Each Value, Identify Specific Behaviors

Now that you have your draft list of values, list specific example behaviors (habits, actions, or responses to situations) that link with that value.

For instance, if one of your values is “integrity”, you might list behaviors like:

• Quickly admits to mistakes (even small ones) and doesn’t seek to hide them.
• Works required hours even when working remotely
• Chooses to do what’s right, not what’s easy (or what’s necessarily best for them)
• Follows company rules and policies
• Speaks out against unethical behavior

Step 5: Assess Your List and Narrow it Down

Once you’ve reflected on the values and seen how each can link to observable behaviors, it’s time to narrow down to the 3–5 values that are the most important to you.

A few things to consider at this stage are:

• Do some of the values cover very similar ground? Perhaps you’ve listed both “integrity” and “honesty”, for instance. Honesty is part of integrity.
• Are there any values that conflict with others? It might be difficult to have values of both “innovation” and “caution”, for instance!
• Which values are most crucial? If you’re struggling to cut down your list, consider which values are most essential. 

Using Your List of Values

Now that you have your list of values, it’s important to clearly communicate those to your employees, and to make sure the values are being upheld at every level of your company. 

That doesn’t just mean putting up a big poster in the lobby, displaying your values on the front page of your website, or blasting them to everyone on Slack … though those might be a good start.

You want to train employees on the values, with clear examples of “dos” and “don’ts”. Incorporate your values and these examples into your onboarding process, too.

It’s also really important to lead by example, living by those values. That might include using your value of “flexibility” to offer flexible scheduling, using your value of “openness” in your communication with employees, and using your value of “respect” during activities like team building days.

As Chris Aubeeluck, Head of Sales and Marketing at Osbornes Law says, “Core values shouldn’t just be something people read—they should be something people do. When you back them up with training and real-world examples, they become part of how your team makes decisions and works together every day.”

Your list of values doesn’t need to be set in stone. Chances are, you’ll adjust and update it over time. But by starting now, you can begin to shape a powerful workplace culture around what matters most to you as a company.