What beliefs guide your agency’s decisions and shape its culture? Company values set the tone for branding efforts, client relationships, and employee satisfaction.
But crafting impactful values is tricky. How many should there be? Do you plaster inspirational posters on the walls? Without a roadmap, even the best intentions get lost.
In this guide, we’ll make values tangible. We’ll share real-world examples of values done right, steps for developing and integrating them into operations, and advice for keeping them relevant over time.
Let’s dive in!
What Are Company Values?
An agency’s values are the fundamental beliefs that guide organizational behaviors. Core values act as guiding principles for how employees approach their work and interactions.
Some examples of common company values include:
- Integrity – being honest and ethical
- Excellence – going above and beyond
- Respect – valuing all people
- Teamwork – collaborating over competing
- Innovation – embracing creativity and new ideas
Company values provide a framework for fostering a healthy culture focused on shared goals and unified standards. Most importantly, values help agencies stay focused.
Make sense so far? Let’s keep exploring why we need them and how to craft a values statement with real depth and power.
How Do Agency Values Shape Company Culture?
An agency’s culture stems directly from its stated values. For example, creativity is a core value that shapes various policies designed to empower innovative thinking.
Likewise, a value such as teamwork leads to group-focused initiatives that bring employees together regularly.
Clearly defined values allow agencies to nurture cultures that align with the beliefs leadership cares most about. This leads to positive environments where employees feel motivated and encouraged to uphold standards.
How Do Agency Values Shape Decision-making?
When facing major decisions or new ventures, leaders can reference the core principles to ensure choices align with what matters most. Values act as guides through all kinds of organizational weather.
For example, an ad agency may pass on a lucrative project from a client in a controversial industry if it compromises their stated values of community impact and social responsibility. Values give agencies conviction behind choices based on principles versus just profits.
Why Are Company Values Important?
There are many benefits that come with defining agency values, including:
- Strengthen company culture: Shared values allow employees to feel connected by common beliefs and ideas about work.
- Attract talent: Job seekers evaluate an agency’s values before joining. 56% of employees won’t even consider a job if the company has values they disagree with. Clearly defined values signal priorities to prospects.
- Guide leadership: Values create standards for agency leaders to set examples regarding decision-making and modeling desired behaviors.
- Inform business practices: Core values steer policies around communication, flexibility, remote work, meetings, etc.
- Shape brand identity: Values communicated externally convey what an agency believes in and cares about the most regarding professional standards.
Clearly defined values are crucial for agencies looking to build exceptional workplace cultures centered on mutual understanding and working towards a shared vision.
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How Many Core Values Should a Company Have?
Most experts recommend sticking to five to nine core values for agencies. Some even recommend having just 3 values! Psychology research has shown that most adults can store between 5-9 items in their short-term memory.
Also, less than five leaves too little specificity on guidance, while more than nine values can dilute messaging by overloading short-term memory. They won’t easily stick in employees’ minds.
So, to ensure your staff can truly internalize and communicate your values, it’s vital to keep the list short. The key is to distill your values down to the essential guiding beliefs critical for your agency’s business needs and culture goals.
For example, rather than separately listing related values like “creativity,” “innovation,” and “originality,” you may group them under one umbrella value like “Ingenuity.” This keeps the focus tight on key priorities while keeping the list digestible.
How to Create Company Values
When developing agency values, aim to determine the core guiding philosophies your business needs to operate successfully for years to come.
Consider what ideals and beliefs you want to be associated with your agency brand both internally and externally.
Here is a step-by-step process for creating meaningful company values:
- Reflect on existing culture and identity: What beliefs seem most important based on current practices? What does your agency care about regarding standards and vision?
- Gather input from leadership: Schedule a meeting with executives and solicit ideas on potential core values based on goals.
- Conduct employee surveys: Issue a company-wide survey asking staff at all levels for suggestions on values. Review submissions for common themes.
- Identify frontrunner options: Compile a list of potential top values derived from the activities above for further refinement.
- Evaluate selections: Analyze each potential value using criteria such as universality, importance over time, differentiation, and communicability to determine top options.
- Select final values: Choose 3-5 frontrunners that seem highly critical for your agency and culture aspirations both now and in the years ahead.
- Design messaging: Craft descriptions for each value and how it should guide behaviors as you prepare for rollout.
- Leadership alignment: Ensure executives, managers, and team leaders agree with final values and positioning. Adjust if needed based on feedback.
Remember that identifying core values takes time, reflection, and refinement. The goal is to land on the fundamental beliefs central to your agency for years to come. With thoughtful consideration, you can craft an exceptional values foundation.
How to Implement Agency Core Values
With strong values defined, the next step is perhaps an even more critical one: proper implementation throughout the organization.
Without visible adoption by leadership and willingness from employees to uphold values, they risk becoming little more than words on paper.
Here are tips on driving successful values integration:
Communicating to the Team and Stakeholders
- Present final values in an all-hands meeting explaining meanings and importance for culture.
- Create visually engaging overview documents detailing each value sent to remote staff unable to attend meetings.
- Ensure values are communicated externally to clients and partners via the website’s About page and company bios.
- Add values prominently to email signatures and internal messaging boards.
Integration into Daily Operations and Decision-making
- Provide talking points for managers on collaborating values in team meetings and 1-on-1s.
- Build values criteria into project intake forms to reference during selection processes.
- Create quick “values checklists” for major decisions requiring signoff across departments.
- Incorporate values sharing into company gatherings, offsites, and holiday parties, allowing for storytelling.
Training Employees to Align Their Actions With Agency Values
- Add values overview to employee onboarding initiatives and new hire packets.
- Develop lunch-and-learn workshops focused on each value; make attendance optional.
- Create a peer review process for employees to recognize coworkers upholding values.
- Monitor employee engagement levels long-term tied to values sentiment.
Gradual integration combined with visibility from leadership builds an understanding of values’ importance over time. Eventually, they become embedded into everyday operations.
How Should Agencies Communicate Their Values Internally and Externally?
For values to truly take hold, they require consistent internal and external visibility through multiple channels, including:
Internally:
- Office signage and branding
- Digital displays
- Email signatures
- Internal newsletters
- Training programs
- Leadership talking points
- HR documentation
Externally:
- Website pages
- Company bios
- Client proposals
- Printed brochures
- Job listings
- Social media profiles
This omnichannel presence ensures awareness across all stakeholder groups, which is vital for meaningful adoption.
Examples of Company Values
When evaluating potential values for your agency, it can be helpful to review examples from leading companies:
- American Express focuses largely on customer commitment, teamwork, community impact, and ethical decision-making.
- Whole Foods splits between profits, quality, community, and environmental awareness – a nice blend of business and cultural elements.
- Atlassian takes a transparent, no-nonsense approach centered on customer satisfaction and equal employee treatment.
- Slack emphasizes people-first values like empathy, employee fulfillment, and courteousness, as you’d expect.
- Facebook unsurprisingly spotlights big innovation, speed, and social responsibility as core beliefs.
Study these and other companies you admire for inspiration. Look for common themes in their values, positioning, and messaging that could apply to your agency’s culture and brand.
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How to Measure the Impact of Agency Core Values
Assessing a value’s influence involves tracking key performance metrics over annual and multi-year timelines. Progress suggests values and cultural efforts achieve desired impacts.
Client Retention
- Benchmark annual client retention rates before unveiling values.
- For the next 3+ years, compare rates to pre-value baselines.
- Improving retention and closing more deals indicates values strengthen client relationships.
Employee Satisfaction
- Establish an annual employee satisfaction and engagement survey.
- Align questions to agency values and culture perceptions.
- Check out Glassdoor rating metrics.
- Improvements highlight values that foster workforce unity and purpose.
Employees who believe their company lives its values score 27% higher engagement. They also stick around for 23% longer tenures on average (3+ years), according to Qualtricks’ 2023 Employee Experience Trends Report.
That dramatically reduces hiring and training costs down the line.
Overall Agency Performance
- Gather data on annual revenue, profitability, and number of clients.
- Continue benchmarking figures as values roll out.
- Increasing scores show values bolster operational excellence.
Install values tracking early on. Data will reveal where your agency is converting ideals into positive behaviors versus needing more follow-through.
Remember, values only become valuable when put into consistent action. So, let’s get measuring!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Now that we’ve covered the fundamentals of company values, you may still have some questions. Below, we’ve addressed some frequent ones that have come up.
What Are Common Challenges in Upholding Agency Values?
The main challenge is consistency across large teams and multiple locations. With varied backgrounds and communication styles, upholding values day-to-day can prove challenging.
That’s why structured rollout and regular check-ins are key. Agency values can’t just be words in a brochure. Leaders must dedicate time and resources to make those values part of everyday operations.
Values have to show up in policies, conversations, and company activities on an ongoing basis.
How Do Agency Values Influence Brand Perception?
Values shape how clients, employees, investors, and even competitors view your brand. Clearly defined values signal priorities and convey what makes your agency unique regarding shared beliefs and stands.
This allows values-driven branding to attract ideal customers who share convictions around ethical commerce, sustainability, or work cultures. Brand affinity begins with shared values.
How Do Agency Core Values Evolve Over Time?
While agency values shouldn’t flip-flop randomly, occasional evolution is expected. As a company grows and the marketplace changes, the language of values may need tightening or gaps filled in by additional priorities.
Leaders should revisit values every 2-3 years with original authoring teams. Are the values still resonating? Do any demand increased attention or resources? Continuous adaptation keeps values fitting and effective.
Conclusion
Defining agency values establishes standards for positive culture shaping, guides decision-making, and conveys brand identity.
What values resonate most for your agency’s needs and aspirations? Use the recommendations in this guide to craft a custom values foundation poised to steer behaviors for years ahead.
If you need support bringing your agency values to life or want to learn strategies for scaling your agency through values-driven leadership, explore Prospecting On Demand’s coaching programs.
Our team of experts can help you define and implement impactful values while growing your business!