Almost every company in America has a set of publicly stated values. Adorning their entryways and websites, these values tell us something surprising — and encouraging — about our country: despite this incredibly divided and tense time, our American values remain amazingly consistent.
We built this word cloud from the published values of the Fortune 50, assigning each set of values to the region where its company is headquartered. Regardless of region, sector, or leadership, companies around the country show remarkably similar values.
Respect and integrity matter everywhere. Three of the four regions prioritize customers. The coasts and the Midwest care equally about passion and trust. Concern for safety runs with the Mississippi River right through the heart of the country. California shares its commitment to teamwork with the deep South.
The overwhelming majority of the Fortune 50’s values are admirable — and universal — goals: safety, inclusion, responsibility. They describe a business community that is ethical, thoughtful, and always striving to be better. Yet typically, the only times we hear about companies acting on their values are when those company values stand in opposition to the law, or when they make huge corporate donations to charity.
It doesn’t have to be this way and we’d like to propose that it actually ought to be the opposite.
Instead of just putting your values on your wall or on your website, make values a part of your infrastructure from the ground up, by using them to guide your hiring practices. Before you write a job description or conduct an interview, use those values to govern your priorities, to inform your questions, and to structure your hiring process. This approach will help ensure that everyone in your organization reflects and builds on your values, aligning teams around commonly held goals and ingraining your principles into every piece of your organization’s operations.
Unlike major corporate giving, values-based hiring costs you nothing, is available to all companies at every stage and size, and can only benefit and strengthen your organization.
So what kind of values do you have? And how can you actually use them to guide your actions? We need more than words: we need actions that show who we as Americans really are.
As our country struggles to unite a divided nation, now is the time for companies to move beyond statements and into action. Instead of speaking publicly about our values, or displaying them harmlessly in our doorways and on our websites, let’s change our hiring practices and transform those values into meaningful, positive, and impactful actions.