Work values are a critical element hiring managers look for in a potential candidate. Here’s a for instance; Felix, your newest hire, has been working with your team for many weeks now, and you’re beginning to wonder if you may have hired the wrong person for the job. His work values are significantly different than those of your team and your firm as a whole and people have begun to notice he’s just not a very good fit for the role he’s in.

Your core team members are devoted to doing good work. They respect collaboration and are always eager to contribute in or stay late if someone is running late for a critical deadline. This has resulted in a team culture of trust, warmth, and mutual respect.

Felix, on the other hand, is motivated by the prospect of climbing the corporate ladder. He is ambitious and ruthless, and he wishes to concentrate his efforts on projects that will either enhance his expert position or result in a public victory. The issue is that his main career values conflict with the team’s core ideals. This schism is resulting in infighting and ill will inside the group.

Each of us has our own set of working ideals. Additionally, while it is impossible to ensure that each individual’s values are exactly aligned, you can attempt to employ individuals who suit. We’ll examine how you may better recognize and comprehend these values — the attitudes that “make them tick”.

What Work Values Are Important?

Your workplace values are the guiding concepts that govern how you work. You use these firmly held values to distinguish between proper and improper ways of working, and they assist you in making critical life and professional decisions.

Several (perhaps contradictory) examples of workplace values include the following:

• Taking responsibility.
• Making a positive difference.
• Concentrating on the details.
• Delivering superiority.
• Being absolutely truthful.
• Keeping commitments.
• Being trustworthy.
• Being optimistic.
• Observe deadlines.
• Assisting others.
• Being an excellent team player.
• Respect for workplace policies and rules, as well as for others.
• Tolerance.

Your organization’s workplace values set the tone for its culture and define what matters most to your organization as a whole. It is critical that your organization’s values correspond with these.

When this occurs, individuals get an understanding of one another, everyone acts appropriately for the appropriate reasons, and this shared purpose and understanding enables people to develop excellent working relationships. Aligning values enables the organization as a whole to accomplish its fundamental objective.

When values are misaligned, individuals labor toward dissimilar goals, with dissimilar intentions, and with dissimilar consequences. This can have a detrimental effect on interpersonal interactions at work, productivity, job happiness, and creative potential.

When interviewing someone, the most critical thing to do is to ascertain his or her workplace values. After all, you may teach individuals to fill skill shortages and assist them in gaining experience. However, changing people’s values is extremely difficult; and they will continue to be “problem workers” until they do.

How Do Your Work Values Stack Up?

Prior to learning how to discern others’ values, ensure that you understand your own. For instance, is completing a project deadline more important than doing great work?

Once you have a firm grasp on the values that are most important to you (for a list, read this page), you can more easily comprehend and identify the values of others. Your objective in identifying these is to increase public awareness and to promote positive behavior and habits.

Begin by inquiring of your most regarded team members about the workplace ideals they hold dear. Invite them to brainstorm the values they believe are most frequent among high achievers, and then list them on a whiteboard or flip chart for everyone to see.

Once they’ve generated their suggestions, collaborate to narrow the list down to the five most critical workplace values.

Following that, consider how people show these principles on a daily basis. How are they able to bring these values to life? And how can you foster greater adoption of these behaviors?

Additionally, you can speak with team members individually to have a deeper understanding of their workplace principles, guide them as they explore their ideas and values, or simply observe their behavior. For example, while team members may claim to value cooperation, it is those who remain late to assist a colleague that truly exemplify this value.

Additionally, consult your personnel handbook or policy manual. These documents frequently include a list of an organization’s ideals. Take a close look at these.

Additionally, you can discover organizational principles by observing how individuals work within the organization and by examining the organization’s actions during the last few years.

Determining The Standard For Work Values In Your Organization

To build a cohesive team, you must first find individuals who fit the organization’s culture and values.

Questions To Ask About Work Values

When interviewing potential team members, make an effort to ascertain their workplace values — this is frequently the most critical point to discuss throughout the interview. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways.

To begin, inquire about your organization’s workplace ideals. Consider the following scenario: you’re looking for a team member who, among other qualities, is extremely accepting of other cultures.

You could pose the following questions:

• Describe a period when you were required to collaborate with a diverse group of people.
• How did you determine and comprehend their points of view?
• How did you modify your own working style in order to collaborate more effectively with these individuals? What was the result?
• Has there ever been a situation when your beliefs conflicted with those of another team member? If so, how did you resolve these conflicts?

These questions bring out candid responses from respondents regarding their approach to these concerns. For additional information, see our article on interview question structuring. In Klein’s work values assessment battery, we gain critical insights as to how a potential candidates work values stack up within your organization and the role for which they are applying.