Core values are important, both to individuals and to businesses. They are the fundamental beliefs of a person or organization, the guiding principles that dictate behavior and action. Many companies focus on technical competencies but often fail to identify the underlying competencies that make their companies run smoothly — their core values. Strong core values provide both internal and external advantages to the company:
- Core values help guide decision-making processes.
- Core values clarify the identity of the company for clients and potential customers.
- Core values are becoming primary recruiting and retention tools.
At Talencio, you can read our core values on the “Our Team” page of our website. They are: Integrity, Dependability, Practicality, Collaboration, Tenacity, Trustworthiness, and Experience. These values are the practices we use every day in everything we do; they are the basic elements of how we go about our work. In this blog, we’ll discuss two of Talencio’s core values: Integrity and Trustworthiness.
The best way to identify a company’s values is to examine its employees’ behavior. You should be able to intuit a company’s core values by the way you are treated by the company’s employees, because a core value is only a true core value if it has an active influence on company and employee behavior.
Case study: Let’s look at how the core values of integrity and trustworthiness were expressed at the consulting firm of Arthur Andersen, founded in 1913. Andersen, who headed the firm until his death in 1947, was known for an unwavering faith in education as the basis upon which the new profession of accounting should be developed. He was a generous man of high integrity: he once refused to sign off on flawed accounts of a local rail utility even “…for all the money in America.” Andersen’s motto was “Think straight, talk straight” and everyone knew his trustworthy reputation.
Based on that impeccable reputation for integrity and trustworthiness, Anderson Consulting became the largest consultancy in the world. But something happened. Leadership was no longer guided by those core values. The firm’s reputation was severely damaged due to their conviction for obstruction of justice in the shredding of documents relating to the Enron scandal. Though the conviction was overturned on technical grounds, this once mighty firm with 85,000 employees worldwide was quickly whittled down to some 200 employees based primarily in Chicago.*
At Talencio, our core values of Integrity and Trustworthiness mean that:
- we have the skills, tools, and technical talent available to us to help you solve your staffing needs
- we approach our work with professionalism
- we say what we mean and we mean what we say
- you can count on us to follow through to help you achieve a positive outcome
It is truly our privilege to partner with you and with other companies in the Life Sciences community. Just as we hold ourselves accountable to expressing our core values through our behavior, we invite you to measure us by the yardsticks of Integrity and Trustworthiness. What are your company’s core values? We welcome your critique and collaboration.
Resources:
* Michael Q. Pink, “A Good Name Destroyed.” A WorkLife Coaching Session written by Michael Q. Pink for WorkLife.org.
Company Culture: An Inside Look at 100 Core Values from 15 Winning Companies, YFS Magazine.
Company Core Values: Why to Have Them and How to Define Them.
Core Values Examples from Your Dictionary.