Organisation Values: Ensuring our Values are Put Into Practice

I am yet to come across an organisation in this industry that doesn’t have a set of organisation values on their website, but I don’t believe that just having a list of values differentiates one organisation from another. The reason for this is that while any organisation can write a values statement, very few can actually deliver their values on the ground.

Organisation Values

Organisation values define the acceptable standards which govern the behaviour of individuals within the organization. Without such values, individuals will pursue behaviours that are in line with their own individual value systems, which may lead to behaviours that the organisation doesn’t wish to encourage. Clearly, the organisation values must be in line with its purpose or mission, and the vision that it is trying to achieve. So to summarize, articulated values of an organization can provide a framework for the collective leadership of an organization to encourage common norms of behaviour which will support the achievement of the organisation’s goals and mission.

It is becoming increasingly important to growing numbers of individuals to experience a sense of purpose at work and to work for an organisation that puts organisation values into practice.

Delivering any type of experience in an organisation requires systems, it requires control, and it requires process.  KinCare has worked very hard at this over the past 20 years. We have made a lot of progress in many areas and still have gaps in others. Really putting our values into practice is a daily proposition that I believe we will always have to focus on and invest in.

As I travel around the country talking to people from a range of backgrounds, I spend a lot of time talking about our values because I believe they are very important. Our organisation values are the foundation for what our clients will experience through their involvement with us each day.

KinCare’s values are:

• Customer Centered Care
• Empathy
• Development
• Enthusiasm
• Partnership

Each of these values is key to our aim of delivering the kind of care we would expect for our own loved ones. For example, the value of Customer Centered Care drives us to develop systems and processes that ensure that our clients are feeling that they are the centre of what we do. The value of Partnership drives us to ensure that our clients and staff feel that we are working with them in partnership to deliver the outcomes that they want.

When our clients tell us that we are not living up to our values we know that we have work to do on our processes and systems, because we see that the commitment to our organisation values is overwhelmingly displayed within our staff members.

Often I hear from staff in organisations going through change that the organisation has lost its sense of values. I usually disagree with this statement. Every organisation value is made up of people, and mostly the people are all still much the same. The problem is usually that the systems and processes of the organisation are failing to deliver services or products that reflect the values.

My personal belief is that the long term sustainability of organisations values in our industry must be driven by the values that drive every aspect of organisational operation. Simply writing them on paper is not enough.  For values to be experienced by our clients, organisations must find a way of controlling and delivering these values as a part of their experience in the client’s home. This is success.

How Are We Doing?
Your feedback is very important to us. Let us know how we are doing. If our staff or services have made a real difference to you please let us know, as our staff always love to hear from you. If we’ve let you down, please also let us know so that we can take corrective action and keep improving. A selection of comments are published on my blog. Any comments of a personal nature I will ensure are responded to offline.