Values

The Power of Three

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Vision. Mission. Values. These three elements form the fundamental pillars for an organization’s strategic plan. When we look at each of these as separate elements, they have inherent power. Vision is the big idea that drives and pulls the organization into its future self. Mission articulates the purpose or the reason for being in the organizational marketplace. Values are the beliefs upon which the organization exists in order to represent itself with its moral, ethical, and social character.

When these three separate elements are joined together, their power becomes solidified. Like a three-legged stool, their strength is reinforced through their reliance on each other. One leg does not function without the other two, and all three provide the basis of support for the organization’s success. Should one of the legs be weakened or break, the entire entity will topple over.

An example of how the strength of these elements work together—to support organizational and human resources success—can be found in a short interview with the CEO and President of Schneider Electric, Annette Clayton.

Click here to read the interview with CEO Clayton.

Click here to find out more about Schneider Electric.

As noted in the CEO’s responses, Schneider Electric has not only built its award-winning success on the “highest levels of business integrity,” it is deeply committed to its “people strategy,” so it can remain competitive within the industry, and future-focused to achieve its vision. As the organizational leader, the CEO can clearly articulate how organizational values shape her decision-making processes. It is also interesting to note how critical the role of Human Resources is, not only as a partner to the CEO, but also as a leadership champion for successful changes in implementing its strategic commitments to its people.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How can Human Resources use organizational values in the development of a “people strategy”?
  2. Think about your own work experiences. How did an organization’s vision, mission, and values impact you as an employee? Were these elements evident in the workplace? What advice would you give to your employer to change or improve the visibility and impact of the organization’s vision, mission, and values?

Mission, Vision, and Values

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The mantra of mission, vision, and values has been at the core of most modern-day organizations for many decades. Even though many organization’s mission, vision and values statements are sometimes lost from creation to implementation, they are still very important to their success and defined culture.

Many are saying that in the upcoming digital transformation of the workplace, culture will be even more important to organizational success than it is today. According to Edgar Schein, Professor Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management:

“The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you.”

Many organizations have great products, but if they don’t proactively manage their culture, bad things happen. Remember the Volkswagen emissions scandal?  Here is an excerpt from VW’s mission statement:

“We assume responsibility regarding the environment, safety, and social issues. We act with integrity.”

I think most would agree that knowingly falsifying diesel emissions is not in alignment with the mission statement.  How does an organization’s culture get so off track? If you believe Schein, VW failed to manage their culture and they paid dearly for the misalignment, some say up to $33 billion for the scandal.

Cecile Alper-Leroux, Vice President of Human Capital Management (HCM) Innovation at Ultimate Software, believes we need to reorder how we manage our organizations. Vision still comes first, and she also believes in putting culture before strategy. She believes culture is the true driver of any organizational strategy.  (Click here to read her article)

Discussion Questions

Research a company from a traditional industry and compare it to a new hi-tech company. Compare their mission, vision, and values.  How do they define each of the workplace cultures?

As a new HR professional, do you think workplace culture will be more or less important in organizations that are undergoing a digital transformation?  Support and defend your position.

SodaStream Helps Candidates Fit In

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The basics for most recruitment campaigns begin with the premise that an organization is looking for the right person to fit the right job.

To achieve the right result, the Human Resources practitioner must design and implement a series of recruitment tools that value and measure the “fit” relationship between what a job-seeking candidate offers and what the job itself provides. There is a heavy emphasis on how these types of tools are developed so that, when implemented, they can validate the closeness of that fit to produce a reliable result. The bigger the gap between what is measured as required for the candidate and the job, the less likely it is that the outcome is a reliable, or good, fit for the organization.

This candidate-to-job fit approach seems to work best within a traditional recruitment planning process. There is an increasing trend, however, to move away from this narrow approach and use a broader strategy that seeks to recruit candidates based on the fit between potential candidate and company ethics and/or social values.

This approach is identified in a recent online recruitment campaign implemented by SodaStream International Ltd., an innovator in home-based water carbonation.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZoPBThVwk8[/embedyt]

The messages that are provided through this online recruitment campaign are clearly linked to SodaStream’s corporate and ethical values. It is an innovative and broad-reaching approach given the international growth for this particular company.

How do these values translate into tools that can be used to assess the necessary fit relationship between people and jobs? At the end of any recruitment process, no matter how creative it may be, a hiring decision needs to be made that serves the best interests of the organization. This decision may not necessarily be the one that serves the best interests of the candidate. In this case, traditional tools that measure and provide reliable results may still need to be in place in order to support the organizational decision that is made when the recruitment outcome does not support a good fit between the two.

Discussion Questions:

  1. As the Human Resources advisor for SodaStream’s recruitment campaign, design a recruitment measurement tool that is valid and reliable, based on the values identified by the CEO.
  2. What are potential challenges that SodaStream might face when deciding to exclude candidates from moving forward in the recruitment process?
  3. What types of branding/corporate messages does the SodaStream recruitment video promote?
  4. In your opinion, who is the target audience for the SodaStream recruitment campaign and is it effective? Explain your rationale.

Going for the Gold

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In the spirit of the Olympic games, the media is full of inspiring stories featuring passionate and committed Canadian athletes focused on the achievement of excellence. That achievement comes with multiple rewards, including the high honour of Olympic gold, given for outstanding athletic performance.

Gold-winning strategies are not the domain of Canadian athletes alone, however. Every year, the online publication Canadian Business highlights and gives awards to the Best Managed Companies in Canada. For the fifth year in a row Napoleon Grills, a used-to-be-small manufacturing company located in Barrie, Ontario, has hit the list as a gold winner for outstanding business performance.

Click here to read about gold-winning Napoleon Grills.

The article shows that this is no typical Canadian business success story. When reading this piece in view of our studies, it becomes apparent that Napoleon Grills has implemented numerous elements that could have been pulled directly from our textbook on strategic human resources planning.

This particular company been able to put its ‘big picture’ corporate strategy into daily practice. While the end goal is the production of a high quality Canadian product, that goal is achieved with the combination of:

  • effective leadership;
  • sound corporate culture;
  • high levels of employee engagement;
  • future-focused succession planning;
  • a commitment to excellence.

Most importantly, the article highlights the need for a clear and consistent strategic vision that drives every decision, every contact, and every product that Napoleon Grills makes.

A gold winning performance indeed!

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. From your reading of the article, identify and explain the link between the organization’s vision and its success to date.
  2. If you were the Human Resources director for the Napoleon Group of Companies, how could you ensure that the company continues to be successful through the succession management process?
  3. Identify and apply the seven steps of “Strategic Planning Process” from your text book readings to this article.

 

What Is Going Wrong in Canadian Workplaces?

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The numbers are in and they do not look good.

In a recent HRNOW posting, it was reported that a 40% leadership failure-rate exists in the workplace.

This week’s upbeat HR research is even more alarming. Hays Canada has been conducting workplace satisfaction surveys since 2013 and the changes they have found this year are alarming:

  • Work satisfaction is down 19%.
  • 8% of Canadian employees would consider leaving their job for another position, an increase of 12.2% from 2013.

Here is how I interpret the above numbers on what Canadian employees are really trying to say to their leaders. The message is loud and clear: We are not happy with our work and we are ready to leave you.

When almost 90% of the respondents want to leave their organization it is time for Canadian employers to step up, look in the mirror, and ask why is this happening?

Many leaders will default to claiming that people want to leave their company to get more pay elsewhere. That’s not it; research is also illustrating that 75% would accept less pay for their ideal job, and that 41% are ready to leave for better company culture.

Could this sad state of employee relations possibly be linked to our management and leadership practices? Of course, the answer is yes.

Click here to read 2017 What People Want Survey: Fact Sheet from Hays.

Canadian employers must start to take these concerns seriously and become proactive in evaluating and improving company culture, and in focusing on employee satisfaction. Consider the above research alongside the fact that Canada is seeing its lowest unemployment rate in 9 years. Employee retention and recruitment may soon be a significant problem and HR departments have to start developing solutions. Solving this problem in your own context may begin with improving your company’s perceived organizational culture.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Identify two companies you would like to work for, research their company culture and explain why you would like to work for them.
  2. What would you recommend if your VP of HR asked you to conduct a corporate-culture survey? Where would you start? Develop an action plan to present to an HR department.