Salary and benefits aren’t the only factors that motivate employees to come into work each day. A strong values-driven company mission can be just as important.
In fact, almost 80 percent of millennials seek companies with values that match their own, according to a recent report by American Express.
We spoke with three Colorado tech companies who actively build a values-driven work environment where mission matters.
IntelePeer provides a communications platform for their customers to seamlessly integrate voice, messaging, open APIs and custom workflow automation.
IntelePeer Director of HR Ana Milian told us how they recognize employees who embody the company values in their everyday work.
What are the values that drive your company culture? Why are those values so important to your business?
We strive to “D-E-L-I-G-H-T” every day, whether it’s for customers, partners or each other. Broken down, that stands for: delight our customers, elect to spread positivity, lead with solutions that drive innovation, increase communication with open engagement, go for the extra mile with passion and determination, have fun while learning and growing, and time is of the essence.
It’s vital for us to create and live our core values in a way that truly embodies our company culture — a place where all ideas are welcome, and employees go above and beyond to ensure the success of the business. Our CEO conducts core values training with all new hires. He shares real-life examples of employees living our values and sets the tone of importance and commitment from the top.
What are some steps you take to stay true to those values? Share one specific example of what your values look like in action.
Everyone from senior leadership down to the newest employees takes these core values to heart and demonstrates them through their actions and communication each day. We delight our customers, for example, by delivering nothing but superior customer service.
We also elect to spread positivity with a monthly “Above and Beyond Award” that allows employees to nominate a coworker who demonstrates our core values. We also recently added the “Run Fast Award.” The award recognizes employees who take risks to move fast regardless of the outcome, which supports innovation, time and speed. Award recipients of these recognition programs receive a contribution towards an event or experience, such as a trip, concert, skydiving, etc.
Name.com is a domain registrar dedicated to helping people put their ideas online, from hosting to domain names.
Senior Manager of Software Engineering J. Joseph Benavidez explained how the company promotes employee ownership — their core pillar.
What are the values that drive your company culture? Why are those values so important to your business?
A core pillar of our community is allowing our employees to have a strong sense of ownership over their work, which is beneficial for both our team and customers. The people we hire take pride in the work they do and are unsatisfied with releasing a product, feature or snippet of code that is not up to our own personal standards.
What are some steps you take to stay true to those values? Share one specific example of what your values look like in action.
Most of our day-to-day decisions are direct reflections of that ownership. That value can be seen in a developer working on bug fixes each sprint or reworking old landing pages just because we think they could be better. Giving people the freedom to work on the projects they consider to be the most important is great for all parties involved.
OrthoFi’s software and service solution helps consumers find the right orthodontist based on skill and experience while giving orthodontists a hand in growing and simplifying their business.
Vice President of People Operations Rachel Kopp told us how their mission is shaped by what they strive to achieve as a team.
What are the values that drive your company culture? Why are those values so important to your business?
The core values that drive our company culture include: embracing change, seeking diversity, getting better every day, giving direct and timely feedback, owning it and obsessing over the customers and team first.
Culture is formed on the behaviors that are copied, coached, corrected or rewarded within the community. Our core values serve as guidelines to help us determine which behaviors we reward and which behaviors we coach. While our vision and mission represent what we strive to achieve as an organization, our core values represent how we strive to achieve those goals. Our values were selected based on defining what we want our culture to be and what we want our teammates to strive for each day. We interview for these behaviors and we are constantly recognizing individuals who live them. It’s a big part of our ongoing performance management processes here at OrthoFi.
What are some steps you take to stay true to those values? Share one specific example of what your values look like in action.
We make every effort to keep our core values front and center. We use an employee recognition tool where every member of our team can reward points to a fellow team member and select the core value associated with the reward. In our monthly all-hands meetings, we select and award our “Core Value Conquistador,” someone who exemplified the selected core value in the prior month.
