It’s often said that you shouldn’t mix business with your personal life. When it comes to values, however, you most definitely should.
Every business has a set of ingrained principles that guide its actions aka its core values. These sit at the heart of a company and determine everything you do, from your launches to your product development.
This includes how you deliver service, create successful teams, and manage your pipeline inventory. With these values, a company builds its brand and creates a strong reputation in the market.
Large and small decisions are taken every day. If a business is looking to upgrade its communication channels, for example, it might consider the advantages of VoIP. This decision would have to be assessed according to its core business values.
It’s important to mix your business ethos with your personal values. This is because these values will inform an employee or entrepreneur when taking action and decisions at work.
Read this article to see the three primary reasons why you should mix business with your personal beliefs.
1. It Fosters a Happy Workplace
Every employee or entrepreneur has experienced this situation at some point in their career. We take on suitable roles and yet it seems something is missing. By aligning core business and personal values, you can find talents that better fit your business.
You can always find a person capable of managing a particular role. It’s more challenging to find people that “fit” into your company culture and share your values. The values people hold define who they are. They help us grow and act as signposts, guiding the decisions we take.
By incorporating key personal values into the core identity of a business, you establish its identity. You define how it conducts itself. Companies incorporate values like integrity, respect, and accountability to shape their business conduct.
This has a positive impact on the workplace and the workforce. When employee and company values are aligned, employees are happier in their roles. Shared business and personal values can thus boost worker satisfaction.
This is important in the workplace because happy employees will represent the business in the most positive light at all times.
As a result, employees can become company evangelists. They will share marketing content like that article on “faxing without a fax machine” and will be more engaged in the business.
Businesses with highly engaged employees show 21% greater profitability. A business should look to align its core values with its staff. Doing this will improve its image and lead to a better workplace environment. It also leads to higher profits.
2. You Increase Productivity
Aligning business and personal values can lead to an increase in productivity. When individual and corporate values are aligned, employees can feel as though they’re a part of the bigger picture. They’re able to see how their efforts positively impact the success of a business. However, 72% of employees do not understand their company’s strategy.
There are many ways to improve employee engagement. Sharing business and personal values can be an effective method. By putting the business and its staff on the same page, it’s easier to produce a motivated workforce.
Accountability and employee recognition can also lead to higher engagement. This leads to increased levels of productivity and teams that want to be at work.
The positive effects of having a happy, motivated workforce are highly valuable. Employees that are motivated and engaged will produce quality work. They will avoid being absent and feel less stress at the office. Every year, 550 million workdays are lost to work stress.
So, align your core business values with your personal values and bring together teams that share your vision and will happily work toward it.
3. Improves Business Relationships
A business that maintains its core values exudes a positive and professional external image. When an entrepreneur or employee shares the values of their business, it reflects in the work they do.
Take a marketing agency, for example. When they emphasize customer satisfaction and product quality, other businesses are attracted to their services. When the agency produces SEO reports for its clients, it looks to create reports the client wishes to read. These might focus on areas like content engagement metrics, organic traffic, trends, and other data.
For example, a client could have a post on “how to fax online”. By producing quality reports, the agency would boost its standing and reputation with its clients.
Some businesses with similar core values can collaborate on projects. By sharing business and personal values, it’s possible to build a network of businesses with mutual beliefs.
This allows a business to comfortably outsource aspects of its operations. Customer service is often outsourced to other companies. They may share customer-focused values and can manage angry customer calls as you would.
Mixing Business and Personal Values
Every business can benefit from intersecting personal and business values. You can learn from successful businesses to improve your own. Entrepreneurs can have a number of key qualities and skills that may lead to a successful business. It’s crucial for them to remain motivated and strive for success.
By sharing business and individual values, you can discover the drive to take your business to the top.
Author bio
Victorio Duran III – RingCentral US. Victorio is the Associate SEO Director at RingCentral, a global leader in cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions. He has over 13 years of extensive involvement in web and digital operations with diverse experience as a web engineer, product manager, and digital marketing strategist.