We spoke with two business leaders who have successfully engaged staff with their company’s vision and values – and have reaped the benefits.

To ensure staff are engaged with your company’s vision and values, it’s important to include them in every process.

Whether it’s hiring, training, team meetings, management updates, day-to-day tasks, team away days or anything else, values should be at the heart.

Snaffling Pig has three unambiguous values – do great things, have some fun, don't be a dick – and the pork snack business lives and breathes them every single day.

Udhi Silva, co-founder, said the business talks about its values in staff updates, performance manages people against them and recruits for them.

“Our three simple values run right across the business. Even though some teams are separate, it's important to bring every employee back to those values. Once the team buys into the vision and understands our core beliefs, they are free to create their own style of management,” he said.

Getting staff engaged with the company’s vision and values has had an overwhelmingly positive effect on performance.

“Retention levels are higher, we’re relying less on agency staff and the team wants to take on more work. Once you get the team is engaged with the company vision, they are buzzing to hit the next milestone,” he said.

Sellick Partnership has made its company values a focal point to ensure they are embedded in what the team does.

The national recruitment business is guided by its values statements – “Passionate”, “Respected” and “Engaging” – on a daily basis and strives to make them as visible as possible.

The company's three key words have become woven into everything it does. The words are printed onto boards around the offices, used as screensavers, can be found in company literature and are discussed during the interview process.

“You don’t want to brainwash people. But when you live and breathe it and hire on those values it becomes embedded. It doesn’t happen overnight, of course, you’ve really got to work at it. But successful companies take time to do that,” said Jo Sellick, Sellick Partnership’s managing director and founder.

A key part of engaging employees with your company’s vision is hiring people who embrace your values, Jo said.

“It can be really challenging for businesses to maintain their momentum and to keep people living and breathing what the core values are. But I think if you recruit around those values, it makes it much easier to continue with the drive you created at the beginning,” he said.

Udhi agrees. Snaffling Pig puts its values right at the heart of the recruitment process, stating them on job adverts and discussing them at interview stage. Once people are in the business, they’re trained within the context of the company’s values and then employees are trusted to carry out the role in their own way.

“I’ve always learnt that if you set yourself up with people who are really enthusiastic, it helps drive your business along. Trust your employees. Let them own something, whether it’s responsibility or looking after a customer or supplier. It encourages people to step up and ask for more responsibility,” Udhi added.

What to do next?

We have a wide range of content dedicated to helping you solve crucial business challenges, but here are some suggestions:

• A story – Chance & Counters: Building a team that complements your business vision
• A guide – An introduction to getting staff interested in your vision and values
• A template – Running a values workshop