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Using policies to operationalize your values

Updated: Jun 22, 2023

Company values shouldn’t just be words on paper, they should be baked into every aspect of operations. Your company handbook is a powerful tool to convert ideas into action.

But how do you actually create and implement workplace policies that are consistent with your values and reinforce your team’s commitment to those values every day? The suggestions below will help you connect your company policies to your values in a way that is authentic and resonates with your team.

Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash

🤔 Before writing the policy

Before you begin creating or updating a policy, look for congruencies and conflicts with each of your company values. Congruencies strengthen all stakeholders’ commitment to both the values and the policy by providing a credible raison d’être for any impositions in the policy, and actionable steps to live those values. If the behavior outlined in the policy conflicts with your values, you have an opportunity to rethink your approach and its implications before they harm morale or cause the team to question leadership’s motives. Use the questions below as guidance.


  1. How are your values relevant? Go through each of your company values and consider how each is relevant to the policy you’re creating. In some cases the relevance will be obvious, but take the time to connect the values that also seem irrelevant. It may be helpful to imagine the policy from several different perspectives, including that of a new employee naïve to your culture, someone from an underrepresented group, a parent, someone early or late in their career, someone from a nontraditional background, a disgruntled or struggling team member, etc. For example, a stated value around providing excellent customer service may seem unrelated to a parental leave policy, but how might parental leave affect your team’s ability to deliver the quality service you expect? This exercise might highlight a need to be more explicit about how expecting parents should hand off client accounts before their leave. You may also decide to provide more guidance for managers on how to create flexibility for new parents as they transition back into a full time workload without leaving your customers under-supported.

  2. How does the behavior the policy elicits relate to your values? Sometimes conflicts of interest are more obvious when you flip the question and think about how the contents of your policy might contradict your values. If you over-index on the problem or compliance need that a policy is intended to address, you may overlook how the new approach may cause its own problems. If you codify an approach that is inconsistent with your values, those inconsistencies will quickly come to light, causing your team to question the company’s commitment to its values, and undermining their power as guiding principles. For example, if one of your values is “trust,” then a rigid PTO approval policy might come off as hypocritical if your policy doesn’t frame the rule in the context of your values. Reframing PTO approval as a strategy to ensure adequate coverage builds trust by presenting the policy from the perspective of the colleagues covering for an absent team mate. If you write the policy to show how prior approval protects the whole team’s interests by ensuring that vacation doesn’t come at the expense of extra work for someone else, your team is more likely to support and comply with the policy. When they see that there is an accountability system to ensure adequate coverage, they are less likely to circumvent the system, and take time off secure in the knowledge that they won’t be coming back to a mountain of resentment and unfinished work.

  3. Consider stakeholders’ motivations for (and objections to) following the policy. When writing a new policy, it is easy to optimize for one situation and lose perspective on how the policy might affect others. However, if a policy is too complicated to implement or onerous to enforce, it will be applied inconsistently and become a damaging double standard. If your policy puts an unnecessary burden on the team, consider a different approach. However, if the benefits outweigh the costs, your values can help get stakeholder buy-in, even for a policy that imposes unavoidable inefficiencies on your team. For example, updating your hiring policy to support a DEI initiative may increase your time-to-hire and create extra work for your recruiting team and hiring managers. A well-articulated and authentic company value related to diversity lends significance to their extra effort. For many team members, the sense that they’re working for the “greater good” may motivate them more than KPIs with a more abstract connection to your company mission. Remember that a policy that makes silent stakeholders’ lives more difficult won’t be consistently applied unless your team throughly understands the reason for the tradeoff. Consider how the policy you have in mind might affect:

    1. Team members who aren’t the target of the policy but will need to follow it anyway, such as those whose behavior isn’t a problem or those who live in other states without this compliance requirement. Is this policy fair to them? If not, try a different approach.

    2. Supervisors who must enforce the policy should understand thoroughly how and why to enforce the policy in a way that is consistent with company values. If they don’t understand the connection, they may inadvertently send the kind of contradictory message that the previous section seeks to avoid.

    3. Administrators should be able to maintain the policy-related workflows easily, or the reason for the tradeoffs should be clear so they understand where shortcuts can damage the overall goal.

  4. Look for grey areas. A vague or ambiguous policy can create a lot of anxiety and mistrust among your team when they don’t understand the how their behavior or performance is measured, and what is expected of them. Before writing anything down, think about the circumstances where this policy might come into play, and under what conditions expectations could be unclear. Putting the policy in the context of your company values can help clarify in your team’s minds:

    1. What is prohibited (bright lines), and reasoning consistent with values.

    2. How, and in what circumstances they should request approval.

    3. What decisions are up to their discretion (and values-based guidance for making those decisions).

    4. What (values-based) standards their supervisors use to approve their requests or evaluate their decisions.


 

✍️ When writing a policy

Now that you have gone through the exercises above, you should have an idea of how to frame your expectations, and what edge cases to look out for. As you choose your words, think about the following:

  1. Write with the employee perspective in mind. Values-based policy can come off as preachy if you slip into the manager’s mindset as you write. If you’re writing a compliance-related policy, your first instinct might be to write something like, “If you work more than 5 hours without a break, then we’ll all get in trouble for breaking labor laws. So don’t forget to punch out when you take your break.” Few managers would actually write the policy that way, yet their tone may convey that message nonetheless. Remember that most labor regulations started as a way to protect employees from being exploited (not to make employers’ lives difficult), and that performance issues affect the whole team (not just the company). If you word your policy in a way that is consistent with the original purpose of the regulation and back it up with your company values, your team will buy into whatever behavior you’re trying to create. You could rephrase the overtime example above something like… It’s hard to provide excellent customer service for hours on end without a break, so Acme coordinates our team’s schedule to ensure that no one works for more than 5 hours without a break. Please check with your manager at the beginning of your shift to coordinate your break time so that we’re not short-staffed during peak hours. We use the time clocks to track who is unavailable, and prioritize breaks for those who have been working the longest, so please clock out and back in at the beginning and end of your break to ensure that everyone gets their turn to recharge.

  2. Strike an appropriate tone. Without the support of sincerely-held company values, an overly cheery tone can come off as phony and manipulative. Putting your company’s policies in the context of values gives your policy the appropriate gravity without making it sound inauthentic. On the other hand, if you don’t have a clear rationale for imposing restrictions on your team’s behavior, your policies will seem arbitrary and severe. Neither extreme inspires confidence or compliance.

    1. Negative, not values-based: Beatings will continue until morale improves.

    2. Positive, not values-based: Turn that frown upside-down, and let’s go sell some widgets!

    3. Positive, values-based: We believe that everyone deserves dignity in medicine. When our patients are rude, seek to address the discomfort behind their complaints and address it. If the inappropriate behavior continues, bring it up with your manager before confronting the patient directly.

  3. Check for clarity. Many policies are clear about bright lines, but fail to provide clear guidance in situations where decisions are up to the employee’s discretion. In addition to bright lines, procedures, and consequences, make sure that your policy provides guidance for grey areas. Since you can’t anticipate every situation your team will face, values-based guidance is a great way to empower your team to act independently without being overly prescriptive. Examples of where values-based guidance is particularly helpful include statements around shipping quickly versus reliability, or integrity over profit. On the other hand, a value can also help an employee understand where the bright lines are. For example, the medical profession’s creed to first, do no harm has created a bright line since the 17th century, despite the complexity of the decisions that clinicians face evolving significantly over four centuries.

 

🚥 Implementing your policy


Whether you’re updating an existing policy or creating a new one, you’re not finished when the written policy is proofread and approved. Remember that a policy applied inconsistently is a double standard, so make sure that your team has everything they need to apply and follow the guidelines in the policy. To ensure a policy’s effectiveness, you need to think about how it will be implemented, enforced, and measured. Before rolling out the policy to your team think about the following:

  1. Are supporting tools and documentation consistent with your values? Does your policy include any processes for reporting, tracking, or accountability? For example, if your Expense Policy uses software for expense reports, is the internal documentation on how to use that software also consistent with your values-based messaging? How about any customized workflows, alerts, or categories within the tool itself? If these tools and supporting assets aren’t also “on brand” with your values, it could make the friendly, approachable style in the core policy sound insincere.

  2. How will the new policy be communicated to the team? When you roll out the new policy, don’t present it off-the-cuff to your team (see the dangers from point 2 above). Prepare your talking points ahead of time, and make sure that any live presentations and written memos are all consistent with your values-based messaging so you don’t inadvertently slip into the “mustache-twirling HR villain” tone that prioritizes the company’s interests over the employees’. Be sure that all announcements keep the employee’s perspective and company values at their center, and don’t forget to build in plenty of time for questions. You’ll also want to think about how you’ll communicate the policy to new hires. Keep in mind that any policies they encounter in their first few weeks will influence their first impression and long-term relationship to the company, so make sure that the policy’s connection to your company values is obvious to someone who who is not yet steeped in your culture and vernacular.

  3. Have a plan for accountability and iteration. A policy can backfire if you don’t build in accountability to ensure that it is being consistently followed and enforced. Values can be the north star by which you evaluate the success of the program, and clarify how to evaluate unquantifiable goals. That means including values-based measurements to evaluate how both team members and supervisors are using the policy. Holding stakeholders accountable to values rather than the strict letter of the policy itself will help you avoid falling into the trap of inappropriately applying the policy in an unanticipated situation and accidentally sparking mistrust and resentment. Finally, before you roll out the policy, explicitly include a plan for periodic reviews. Your iteration plan should include objective measurements of success (such as sick and vacation days used), and who will be responsible for evaluating the policy’s effectiveness and implementing future iterations.


When your policies are consistent with your company values, it reduces your management overhead by helping your team make better decisions on their own. Values-based messaging aslo strengthens trust between leadership and the team, and gives your team the intrinsic motivation to act in the company’s interest. Contact me to discuss your situation and challenges. I’d love to help!


 

Want to learn more about how to create policies that people support, not resent? Check out these related articles:

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