Company Core Values — Purely marketing? Or do they actually mean something?
The ever-popular topic of values has become a pretty flippant term in today’s tech scene…
Words like “innovation” and “continuous learning” come up trumps with companies aiming to disrupt the sector, with employee competencies linked to these overarching “principles” that have become somewhat of a North Star for culture.
But — how far are values truly embodied in a culture, and how much is purely marketing for building an employer brand?
This question has been on my mind a lot lately, especially as we heavily focus on our own employer brand — who are we? How do people see us? How do our employees feel about working here? So I naturally took to slack and asked (as wide an audience as I could!): what do our values mean to you?
I will share my findings here in this article, but also what our values are, in case you weren’t aware :)
Firstly, taking a look at our values , we have 6 that are core to how we operate. These are incorporated into our hiring and evaluated during the process (but also more deeply during a behavioural interview and assessment days) then reflected upon periodically throughout the employee journey (for example, during 1–2–1s and our bi-annual performance cycle)
Here’s a short but sweet summary:
Moving on to our own team and how our values are perceived, here are some of the answers from my survey about how aware our own employees are about our values, and how they are put into practice:
Jordi, Product Manager: “I’m very aware of our values and noticed it’s something people have in mind since joining the company. I also find myself thinking things like “Yeah that’s definitely raising the bar” in work settings — kind of in a jokey way, but I think that’s good!”
When asked which value(s) he connects with most and why? “ Be a team player. Making everyone feel involved in team decisions is something that has always motivated me.”
Marius, another of our Product managers, mentioned when he first joined Vio.com, that the company values document was one of the first things he read: “I remember thinking about how closely the values resonated with my own beliefs and with how they reflected the kind of company that I would want to build and run myself.
The company values are always present in the back of my mind when making decisions, even if I’m not consciously thinking about them. As a product manager, it’s crucial for me to be obsessed over the customer and to try to understand them as much as possible.”
Mili, one of our Analysts, feels our values are great core skills: “team work, raise the bar, take ownership, etc. All these are skills that I choose to work daily for myself as well.
What I like about how we live our values at Vio.com is that they are present in our DNA, we are not expected to do this or that because it is a company value, we work with them because it’s part of who we are.
The value I connect the most is being a team player. I enjoy team work, especially in Vio.com where we have such different cultural backgrounds that enrich our day to day relationships”
Our engineers had some interesting answers, especially from the perspective of how they build our product with values in mind:
Omid said : the most important things I understand about Vio.com is the strong care for people and customers.
Also, as an engineer in a company where we don’t have a dedicated QA engineer role, I take great care in our customers and attain to have more attention to detail in the work we create as a team, in order to have the highest quality, best results.”
Vladimir, who was around at the inception of our values, feels they come naturally to him : “I’m aware of them since their creation as I was participating that time in the creation activity. For me it comes naturally, I don’t often think specifically about them during my daily work routine but they always pave the way in our decision-making processes.”
Frank:
“Finding holiday hotel deals on vio.com and working here, I find myself in both the shoes of the customer and employee at the same time and therefore I always ask questions that I would ask as a customer, then always make sure these questions are best answered by sharing my feelings with the team.
We work together to make sure our customers have the best experience with us and I find my team respecting my views and opinions regardless of their opinions since mostly we reach a common progressive decision.”
Puru, one of our analysts, says:
“At their core, the Vio.com values emphasise the importance of building strong relationships, taking responsibility, and striving for excellence. Through effective collaboration, continuous improvement, iteration, and innovation, we aim to pragmatically solve our customers’ needs, drive success, and unlock our full potential.
I see them as a checklist: If I tick all the values, it gives me confidence that I am heading in the right direction. These values act as a driving force to enable effective decision-making, prioritisation, and measurement of success.”
Nattuvut, or Au as he likes to be called, leads our localisation efforts and specifically feels his role covers half of our values already. Why? “If we are to deliver the best experience possible for our customers in every language we support, then Customer focus, build trust and raise the bar simply have to present.”
I focus on the customer experience in their language and build trust with them, along with raising the bar to improve the quality of the translation and localised experience in every angle that I can.
Which value(s) do you connect with most and why?
For me, I really connect with the “take ownership” because it shows that this company expects people to really know and love what they are doing, giving employees freedom to do the work they’re so passionate about and deliver the best results they can, without getting micromanaged but always there to provide support when needed.
I’m proud about my work and I feel like the work I’m doing has a strong impact on our customers directly while doing the job the way I want and can get the help I need. I mean what more do you want?”
Dorota, Lead Product Analyst, feels values surface as and when needed, however thinks about “focus on the customer” and “build trust” daily when making decisions.
To sum up, our values seem to be ingrained in our culture and our ways of working , and hopefully by continuing with consistent feedback and education around both our values and their application, this will remain reflected in our product and eventually extended to our customers; how they feel and the value the product brings to them.
Do you have company values? Are they truly embodied in your own culture? If you’re reading this post and have any opinion, we would love to know!
