Posted by By Lindsay Hershberger, Chief People Officer on August 11th, 2020.
In a previous article, Emily Hua described our People First culture and why It’s so important to us. Today, I want to add a little more to the story by telling you about our Values Survey.
Lots of companies out there will talk about their values. However, not many are willing to truly measure whether they’re succeeding when it comes to putting their values into action. We’re proud to be an exception. We want to live our values every day, and that’s why we conduct a quarterly values survey.
Measuring Our Performance, Being Proactive
What’s a values survey, you ask? Each quarter, we send a survey to all of our team members around the globe, asking them to rate the company on how well we’re actually living up to the values we hold dear. All responses are anonymous and candid feedback is encouraged. Team members rate the company’s performance on a range of values using a 1-5 scale (with 5 being the best score). Detailed comments are not required, but they’re highly encouraged.
We then review the results and make changes when the feedback indicates there might be a need. Because we’re doing these surveys quarterly, we’re able to track our progress over time. It helps us ensure that we’re always putting our values into action.
What the Values Survey Measures
A quick look at the questions in the survey makes it pretty clear what our values are. Team members rate our performance in the areas below using a 5-point scale:
- Did we prioritize delivering high-quality work that exceeded our clients’ expectations?
- Did we foster a happy team?
- Did we foster a motivated team?
- Did we foster a highly capable team?
- Did we celebrate when we exceeded our high standards?
- Did we seek, were we open to, and were we passionate about driving new ideas that create better results for Blue Matter and our clients?
- Did we foster a culture that enables us to learn from our setbacks?
- Did we communicate transparently with each other?
- Were our actions always underpinned by mutual trust and respect?
- Did we value diversity of people and experiences and foster a culture of inclusivity?
- Did we empower ourselves to make Blue Matter an amazing place to work?
It’s About More than the Ratings
The ratings are important, but the qualitative feedback is often the most important. All team members are encouraged to offer comments, new ideas, suggestions, and to tell about any challenges they may be facing. That “freeform” input is incredibly helpful.
Check back again soon (or follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter so you don’t miss any new content). Next time, we’ll talk about team happiness!
