Empathy, passion, respect, drive, innovation.
They’re values we all hope to approach our work with, and they’re also common examples of the core values companies set to motivate their teams and create a workplace where people want to be.
But core values mean nothing if they aren’t lived. If they aren’t actively incorporated into a company’s culture they become meaningless words posted on a wall or spoken at the onset of town halls. According to recent analyses by Gallup, only 23 percent of U.S. employees agree they can apply their company’s core values to their work, and only 27 percent strongly believe in their employer’s core values.
Values play a major role in shaping company culture, which is a key factor for 46 percent of job seekers exploring new roles, according to a compilation of statistics by project management company TeamStage.
To turn these stats around, companies should look toward their culture keepers.
Leaders set an example, and they act as role models for living their company’s culture and values. Leaders are responsible for shining a light on core values, connecting them to their company’s mission and proving how values help their company achieve its goals.
To empower more employees to believe in and incorporate core values into their work, leaders should recognize team members when they do embody empathy, passion, respect, drive and innovation. Emmanuel Straschnov, co-founder and co-CEO of Bubble, does just that. He and Josh Haas, co-CEO and co-founder, established a monthly values award, which recognizes employees who live their core values.
“Team members nominate a peer for representing a specific cultural value, and we pick a winner,” Straschnov said. “We see more than 10 nominations a month for a team of 100 people.”
Built In NYC sat down with Straschnov and FireHydrant VP Mignon Monroe to discuss their companies’ core values and how they stay true to them in everything they do.
FireHydrant’s platform allows developers to resolve, learn and mitigate incidents with speed and consistency, helping their organization operate smoothly and achieve reliability at scale.
What are the values that drive FireHydrant’s culture? Why are those values important to your business?
FireHydrant's core values are building trust, continuously improving and acting with integrity. We believe this is made possible by building a diverse company that we all want to work for. Each of our values is based on a core belief that creating that type of company culture is always a work in progress, and it requires all of us to operate in good faith and with empathy for each other.
What are some steps you take to stay true to those values?
We don't believe in anything performative at FireHydrant. We’re focused on the true outcomes of anything we set out to do. When those outcomes aren’t what we want to see, we own our mistakes as a company and lean into difficult, yet constructive, conversations to right our wrongs. We're focused on doing what it takes to truly create the workplace we want — one full of passionate, empathetic teammates committed to creating something powerful for ourselves, our customers and our industry.
We’re focused on doing what it takes to truly create the workplace we want.”
What are some traits you look for in employees that indicate their values are aligned with yours?
As a remote-first startup, we find that considerate, curious and resourceful self-starters with a collaborative mindset are set up for success at FireHydrant. Firefighters, what we call employees, often describe their peers as thoughtful, caring and always willing to support each other in any way that they can.
With teams dispersed across the U.S., the personal connections that teammates develop are critical to effectively navigate the constant ambiguity and change present in a startup environment.
Bubble’s visual programming platform lets users build and host a web app without needing to code. With one million users, Bubble hopes to be the go-to platform for startups and entrepreneurs to build web applications.
What are the values that drive Bubble’s culture? Why are those values important to your business?
Bubble’s culture is driven by five fundamental values: empowerment, kindness, genuineness, user-centricity and fire. These are our guiding principles when we work and build our team. We use these values — empowerment and user-centricity, in particular — to define our priorities. To do this, we ask ourselves whether a new project puts the user at the center and whether a feature will empower users more or less. Very often, our users don’t have alternatives to Bubble and therefore depend on our platform. This is an important responsibility that requires us to put users at the center of everything. We also apply our values to our recruiting and performance evaluation processes.
What are some steps you take to stay true to those values?
We keep values in the conversation with the team and bring them up as often as possible. Repeating the messaging is key. We also have monthly values discussions to reflect on how we’re living up to our values, and Josh and I usually attend and moderate these conversations. Finally, we revisit our values on a regular basis to make sure they remain accurate. That’s how “fire” was added to our first four values. We felt it would be beneficial to remind ourselves that how fast we ship things and bring value to our users is absolutely essential.
People who are committed to the vision and who put the user in all their decisions will do their best.”
What are some traits you look for in employees that indicate their values are aligned with yours?
First and foremost, we’re looking for people who believe in our mission and why it’s important for Bubble to exist. It’s absolutely critical that everyone at Bubble believes that it is not okay to live in a world where people can’t create products online without technical training or significant financial resources and that we need to fix this problem. Our values make sure they’ll be a good fit. In particular, kindness ensures that the team will work well together. We don’t believe in a competitive, aggressive culture as a way to move fast. We think that people who are committed to the vision and who put the user in all their decisions will do their best. That way, we’ll collectively do incredible things.
.jpeg)
