In December 2021, Peopleconnexion invited all three offices from Brisbane, Gold Coast and Port Moresby, PNG, to come together as a company to reflect on and refresh our core values, in other words ‘activate’ the values which are core to the business.
This process was part of the Pilot launch of Peopleconnexion’s Values Activation program which launched earlier this year to clients with the objective to better integrate and embed organisational values to produce a strong, cohesive and connected culture within the entirety of organisations.
Led by Kristine Berry, company founder, CEO and Managing Director, and supported by Wendy Hall from Pentagram Potential, Organisational Development Consultants, we pinned up our values, our mission and our purpose on the drawing board with the intention to strip them back and pull them apart to assess their effectiveness of not only portraying who Peopleconnexion are and what we represent, but to leading our staff into 2022 to achieve our goals and ambitions.
Being recruiters, HR & learning and development consultants, we not only understand, but teach about the volatile and fluid nature of work and the road block organisations face when having a fixed mindset. With this in mind, Kristine and Wendy opened up the session vulnerable and ready to accept real, transparent and honest feedback about the existing values, trusting and honouring the feedback of their people whom underpin the success of the business.
The Values Activation session kicked off with Kristine presenting her back-story from being born and raised in South Africa, with an introduction into her family and how her passion, inspiration and drive always has, and always will, lead back to her roots. From that point, there was a noticeable shift in the room. From hearing of the path and journey Kristine has walked, and how Peopleconnexion came to be, we got it. We could see the raw drive, passion, strength and vulnerability which our leader has carried with her and ultimately led to why we were all sitting there on that day, feeling a sense of pride to now be apart of the journey.
This was a crucial part of the Values Activation program. The program is not about a leader dictating the values to which their people should follow. The core of the program is enabling staff to understand where the business has come from, what it and its leaders stand for and why people would want to be a part of the organisation. Where organisational values, mission and purpose are the ingredients of an organisation, Values Activation stands as the method for mixing them together for a recipe of organisational and individual success.
The floor then opened up to the people of Peopleconnexion, to share how they felt about the values, mission and purpose which had led them to this point thus far in the business. This wasn’t just an effort to agree or disagree. Each staff member was given the opportunity to share how they connected with the values, or didn’t; and how they saw the values being lived out by themselves and/or their colleagues and teams, or not. Being a small-to-medium business, we were lucky to have the opportunity to facilitate this opportunity to every staff member, which made for an incredibly deep, connected experience with our close-knit team.
Following this event, the company’s leaders went away with butchers’ paper and coloured pens to dissect what each of the values looked like for each person and how they were intentionally living them in their daily interactions. The importance of this was to determine if Peopleconnexion’s values were still relevant, understood and embraced by all.
While the leaders went in with an open-mind and ready to accept, adapt or change, this process proved that Peopleconnexion’s values were seen as very real by each person and only solidified them to move into the new year with. However, naturally, there is always areas for improvement with anything we do in life. While the values were strong, the Values Activation program identified that Peopleconnexion’s values could be condensed and written in a more creative way to really resonate both internally with staff and externally to our candidates, clients, contractors and connections.
The result was our five Fundamental values of Integrity, One Team, Excellence, Growth and Passion, being embed into three core values of being Happy, Humble and Hungry.
These are the values which speak to our people, which epitomise our people and what type of people we welcome and embrace in our business. They encompass the 5 fundamental values which have shaped how we do business, and will continue to do business. What was most evident that the three core values each speak to growth, care and integrity, and speak clearly to our mission of inspiring greatness. From there, a new sense of motivation and drive was felt by all.
Reaching the end of the first quarter, we will soon invite our staff to reflect on our core values and share how they have lived the values within their business, interactions and relationships this past quarter.
We are also very excited to have launched the Values Activation program with Paradise Foods, whose Executive Leadership Team are currently embarking on the first phase of the program:
“It’s all about building a great culture for the business and we are just excited about what our new values will look like but more importantly how we communicate this to the rest of the business to embed and ensure these come to life every day at Paradise”, said Jane Wickham, General Manager of People and Performance, Paradise Company Limited.
We are humbled to have both been on this journey as a company and to now be sharing the experience as an official program with our clients, and sharing the insights, feelings, attitudes and culture change which comes with the journey!