12 Company Core Values Examples to Shape Your Organizational Identity

In today's fast-paced business world, where market shifts are rapid and unpredictable, companies must navigate these changes to stay competitive and successful. To do so, they need an anchor to help them solidify their stand as a strong business —a set of guiding principles that will steer them through uncertainty. This is where company core values become essential.

But have you ever thought about these core values? How do they shape the future of the company? If not, then it is high time you think about it.

As you delve into this blog, you'll discover company core values examples and learn their crucial role in building a thriving and resilient organization.

What are Company Core Values?

Company core values are the fundamental beliefs that serve as an organization's cultural cornerstones. They guide a company’s actions and decision-making processes. These values are the roots of a company’s culture and identity, impacting everything from strategic decisions to day-to-day employee behavior.

Holding a sacred position, these core values must not be compromised at any cost. They provide a framework for the behaviors and mindsets the company seeks to instill within its workforce.

Many renowned companies have established their core values as a direct reflection of their founders' vision and mission. As such, these values propel the company and its employees toward a unified mission.

It's important to ensure that the company's core values are not just empty buzzwords displayed on its website. Simply writing them down is not enough.
Instead, taking ownership and implementing these principles will yield long-term benefits for the employees and the company.

According to a study, 63 percent of consumers said they want to purchase products and services from companies that have a purpose that resonates with their values and belief systems.

Why do Core Values Matter?

Strong core values are far from being termed as a corporate formality; they are the pulse that drives the organization’s success. Let us understand why core values are indispensable to a company:

Cultural Cohesion: Core values unify teams by offering the organization a shared mission and vision. They build a cohesive culture where everyone understands and aligns with the company’s purpose, leading to synchronized efforts and enhanced teamwork.

Guiding Decision-Making:

It’s not hard to make decisions, once you know what your values are.
– Roy E. Disney

They provide a clear framework that eases the process of decision-making and resolving conflicts. When core values are prioritized, every decision is based on clear principles, boosting the organization’s integrity and trust.

Attracting and Retaining Talent: Talented professionals seek workplaces that align with their personal values, for they wish to work in organizations that resonate with their beliefs and principles.

When a company’s core values reflect those personal values, it naturally attracts like-minded individuals. This alignment between personal and company values fosters a sense of belonging and purpose.

According to research, more than two-thirds (68%) of professionals in Europe, and an even higher percentage in the U.S. (87%), prefer to work for companies that align with their personal values.

Employee engagement: When employees resonate with the core values of their organization, they are more likely to be engaged, motivated, and committed to their work. This engagement does not limit itself to job satisfaction; it goes beyond creating an environment where employees feel their contribution carries meaning and is aligned with a greater purpose.

Building Trust and Credibility: Upholding core values consistently builds trust with employees, customers, and stakeholders. It reinforces the company’s reputation as a reliable and principled organization.

Navigating Challenges: In times of uncertainty or crisis, core values act as a compass, navigating the organization through difficult decisions and maintaining stability.

12 Examples of Company Core Values

1. Integrity

Integrity is the foundation of trust within an organization. It ensures that interactions with employees, customers, or stakeholders are conducted honestly and transparently. Doing the right and ethical thing is always prioritized over personal gain.

2. Customer Focus

Customer focus is centred around understanding and prioritizing customers' needs in every business decision.

Positioning the customer at the center, companies can enhance customer satisfaction and foster customer loyalty which are the key drivers to attaining growth and competitive advantage.

3. Innovation

Innovation is the need of the hour for staying relevant in today’s fast-paced market. Fostering innovation encourages employees to experiment with their creative mindset and deliver groundbreaking solutions for solving problems. This gives companies a competitive edge over their competitors.

4. Collaboration

Collaboration cultivates a sense of teamwork and unity within the organization. By encouraging employees to collaborate, companies can leverage diverse perspectives, enhance problem-solving, and achieve common goals more effectively. This collective effort builds a more cohesive work environment.

5. Accountability

Accountability ensures that everyone in the organization takes ownership of their actions and outcomes.

This value instills a sense of responsibility among employees, who will be driven to perform better and take ownership of their contribution to the company’s success. It drives continuous improvement and helps in achieving business objectives.

6. Respect

Respect is fundamental in fostering positive relationships and an inclusive work culture. By treating everyone with respect and dignity, irrespective of their background or position, companies can shape a culture where employees feel valued and motivated.

7. Sustainability

Sustainability reflects a company’s commitment to environmental care and social responsibilities.

Integrating sustainable practices into their operations can help companies reduce their environmental footprint, contribute to societal well-being, and appeal to conscious consumers, all while maintaining long-term business success.

8. Agility

Agility is crucial for navigating the uncertainties of business outcomes. Agility as a value makes employees swiftly respond to market changes, customer needs, and emerging challenges.

This helps companies to seize new opportunities and maintain resilience in the face of adversity.

9. Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion are essential values for creating a workplace that welcomes and values different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences.

Fostering an inclusive culture can allow companies to tap into a wide spectrum of ideas and solutions, enhance creativity, and build a more equal and innovative organization.

10. Passion

Passion drives and motivates employees to put their best effort into work and derive purpose from them.

A passionate workforce is committed and aligned with the company’s goals in a way that helps them face the challenges in the workplace.

11. Leadership

Leadership upholds multifaceted responsibilities that lead the team or employees toward a common mission and goal. From guiding teams, setting exemplary standards, and inspiring others to achieve their best, leadership is the beacon of inspiration and motivation.

By valuing leadership, a company cultivates a culture where everyone feels empowered to contribute, innovate, and drive the organization forward.

12. Trust

The success of businesses significantly rests on the foundation of trust they have established among their employees and customers. Earning trust is a way to nurture long-lasting relationships and is the key to standing out from competitors.

How to Choose Your Company’s Core Values?

Choosing the right core values for your company is a crucial process that gives you an upper hand in shaping your organizational identity. The process must be carried out thoughtfully and strategically, given its profound impact on the organizations. Below is a list of factors that can help you choose core values that resonate with your business goals.

1. Reflect on the Founders' Beliefs

Your company’s core values should reflect the deeply rooted beliefs and principles of its founders. These values should demonstrate the original vision and mission that inspired the company's creation in the first place.
Anchoring your core values to the founders' beliefs ensures they are authentic and aligned with the company's origin. This sets a solid bedrock for organizational culture while maintaining the company's overall identity.

2. Engage Employees

Leaders should not decide core values alone; it is important to involve employees in the process for it needs to resonate across the entire organization.

Therefore, engage your employees in the process by seeking their input and understanding what values are essential according to them. This helps select values that genuinely reflect the company culture and fosters a sense of ownership and alignment among the workforce.

When employees witness their beliefs reflected in the company’s core values, they are more inclined to embrace and live by them. This leads to higher engagement and strengthens organizational culture.

3. Analyze the Market

Understanding the competitive market landscape and trends is another essential way to help you identify core values and set your company apart.

Look at what your competitors are engaging in and identify gaps or opportunities where you can differentiate your company. For instance, if sustainability is becoming a key concern in your industry, adopting it as a core value can position your company as an emerging leader in environmental stewardship.

Analyzing the market ensures that your core values resonate internally and simultaneously enhance your brand’s external identity and appeal to customers.

4. Align with Mission and Vision

Your core values should be aligned with your company’s mission and vision. They should bridge the gap between where your company stands today and where it aspires to be in the future.

Aligning core values with your mission and vision justifies the decision and action taken by the company to support its long-term goals. This alignment serves as a cohesive strategy to drive the company forward by keeping everyone—from leadership to frontline employees—focused on the same objectives.

5. Keep it Simple and Memorable

Make sure to choose core values that are easy to recall and understand. While it can be tempting to select complex values, simplicity is critical to ensuring everyone in the organization embraces them.

A few well-chosen, clear, and concise values are more effective than a long list of vague or redundant values. Simple and memorable values will likely be integrated into daily operations, company culture, and decision-making processes, making them a powerful tool for guiding the organization.

How to Live by Your Company’s Core Values?

Living by your company’s core values is essential to maintaining a strong organizational identity and fostering a positive workplace culture. It is not enough for management and leaders to define these core values; they should be consistently embodied and reinforced through organizational practices.

Below is a list of things that you and the employees can stick with to live by the core values:

Consistency

Consistency is vital to immersing core values into an organization’s fabric. This implies that core values should be reflected in every action, decision, and communication, from top leadership to every employee.

Leaders must model these values consistently, as their behavior sets the tone for the rest of the organization to follow. It emphasizes the importance of these values and ensures that they become ingrained in the daily behavior of everyone in the company.

To achieve consistency, consider integrating core values into all aspects of the business— from hiring processes and performance reviews to daily operations.

This approach helps maintain a cohesive culture and ensures that every team member understands and upholds the company’s values in their work.

Recognition

Recognition is a powerful tool that plays a crucial role in embedding and sustaining the company’s core values. Regularly acknowledging and rewarding behaviors that align with your company’s values sends a clear message about what the company prioritizes and expects.

This reinforces the importance of these values and motivates other employees to emulate those behaviors with the hope of receiving similar recognition. With time, this creates a ripple effect where the desired behaviors become rooted in the company culture.

Source: Vantage Rewards

Moreover, when recognition is tied to specific core values, employees understand how they can be practically applied in their daily work. This clarity enables them to see how their actions contribute to the larger goals of the organization, fostering a more profound commitment to living by these values. As a result, it strengthens the organizational values.

Recommended Resource: Types of employee recognition

Authenticity

Authenticity is the crux when it comes to living by your core values. Employees can quickly detect when values are mere words rather than genuine cherished principles. Values become meaningful when they are authentically embraced by leadership and nurtured in daily operations.

Authentic core values should reflect the true ethos of the company and resonate with employees at all levels. They should move beyond being aspirational and must be demonstrated through tangible actions and decisions. For instance, if “innovation” is a core value, the company should take tangible steps to promote and practice innovative methods to approach any problem or solution.

To ensure authenticity, regularly communicate the importance of core values and provide examples of how they are being lived within the organization. This could be through newsletters, town hall meetings, or internal communications highlighting real-life examples of values in action.

10 Examples of Companies with Strong Core Values

After garnering a solid understanding of core values and exploring their examples, let us glance into the companies that uphold strong core values.

1. Netflix

The global content streaming Giant considers every member a part of its “Dream Team”. It emphasizes how irrespective of varied skills, they connect through common strengths that make them better together. The core values they value are as follows:

• Selflessness
• Judgment
• Candor
• Creativity
• Courage
• Inclusion
• Curiosity
• Resilience

2. Google

Google terms its values as “Ten Things We Know to be True,” which they abide by religiously. Google states that it wrote ten things when it was just a few years old.

• Focus on the user and all else will follow
• It’s best to do one thing really, really well
• Fast is better than slow
• Democracy on the web works
• You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer
• You can make money without doing evil
• There’s always more information out there
• The need for information crosses all borders
• You can be serious without a suit
• Great just isn’t good enough

3. Apple

The tech giant has taken innovation to heights. Apple abides by values demonstrating how the company and its employees interact and operate in the workplace.

• Accessibility
• Support education
• A planet-sized plan
• We’re all in
• Privacy is a human right
• Racial equity and justice
• Supplier responsibility

4. Ikea

The Swedish furniture company, which has spread its wings globally, lives by the following fundamental values:

• Togetherness
• Caring for people and the planet
• Cost-consciousness
• Simplicity
• Renew and improve
• Different with a meaning
• Give and take responsibility
• Lead by example

5. Slack

As a platform to assist business communication and collaboration, Slack emphasizes building products they believe in. It perceives that they gain real value by helping people simplify whatever they do and bring more of themselves to their work, wherever they are.

❤ Empathy
💁 Courtesy
🌻 Thriving
🔨 Craftsmanship
🙆 Playfulness
🙌 Solidarity

6. Amazon

The following core values drive the e-Commerce Giant:

• Customer obsession rather than competitor focus
• Passion for invention
• Commitment to operational excellence
• Long-term thinking

7. Airbnb

The leading name in the lodging business, which caters to travelers across the globe, Airbnb believes that the “best work happens when it champions the full spectrum of our lived experiences”. It lives by the following core values:

• Champion the Mission
• Be a Host
• Embrace the adventure
• Be a Cereal Entrepreneur

8. Patagonia

Patagonia, the outdoor recreation clothing brand, has etched its name and is a perfect example of how a business can be purpose-driven and altruistic without hampering financial performance. It incorporates “protecting the planet” as the core element of its business strategy. Its core values are:

• Quality
• Integrity
• Environmentalism
• Justice
• Not bound by convention

9. Adidas

“Through sport, we have the power to change lives”. This phrase very much sums up what Adidas, the sports brand, believes in and engages with consumers worldwide. Its core values are as follows:

• Courage
• Ownership
• Innovation
• Teamplay
• Integrity
• Respect

10. Zappos

Zappos, the authorized retailer, is known for its unique approach to company culture. It is led by a vision of delivering happiness through the 4C’s, namely, commerce, customer service, company culture, and community. Its core values are as follows:

• Deliver WOW Through Service
• Embrace and Drive Change
• Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
• Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
• Pursue Growth and Learning
• Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication
• Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
• Do More with Less
• Be Passionate and Determined
• Be Humble

Conclusion

The discussion above has undoubtedly deepened your understanding of the company core values. As the building blocks of an organization, these values reveal their true power when both the company and its employees fully embrace and live by them. They are not merely a reflection of what a company represents but a guiding framework for how it operates and achieves success.

The examples provided demonstrate the transformative potential of core values and how they can steer companies toward sustained success.

Now, it’s your turn to craft company core values that align perfectly with your goals and guide you toward achieving them.

This article is written by Riha Jaishi, a Content Writer at Vantage Circle. Apart from being an active and keen writer, she is generally found reading books and articles, feasting her eyes on food videos, and binging on her favorite shows and discussing them. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com