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Albert Vilariño Alonso Follow

Consultant in Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability, Reputation and
Corporate Communication,and integration of people with disabilities.
May 13 · 6 min read

Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash

Companies, workers, ​and values.

The lack of agreement between the values required by the companies and
those that the workers offer is a source of inefficiencies and both internal
and external problems for the companies.

Some experts say that our society is immersed in a crisis of values. A crisis
of values that does not necessarily mean that these have disappeared but
have been transformed and mutated in others with the consequent changes
in how we relate to people and therefore society.

It has gone from some rather traditional values to others to which we

have been dragged by today’s society, based above all on individualism,
hedonism, and consumerism.

Unfortunately, at another level, companies are not left out of that crisis
and it seems that their values are not in line with those that their workers
ask for, or with what potential workers who aspire to integrate into their
workforces can offer, neither with what the latter would like to see within
the companies in which they begin to work.

Until not long ago I thought that the above was merely a kind of personal
feeling, the result of thoughts and comments with other people, but reading
a recently published report has served to go from being a sensation to a
reality.

Are the companies from Mars and the

workers from Venus?
In the executive summary of the “1st Report on values in the
company” published by Randstad, it can be seen that there are gaps in
how companies and workers contemplate the values.

According to the report, the company’s vision is based on the company’s

values regarding its role in the world, its distinctive elements and its
company culture.

They serve to shape and are the essence of their identity as a corporation
and influence the decision making within the organization, serving as
guides.

They also determine a special relationship between the company and its
customers and suppliers, and more and more companies express their
values when they understand that they can constitute a competitive
advantage to attract and retain their customers.

For companies, the values most sought after by workers are commitment
(83% of companies include it among the most important for them),
responsibility (68%), initiative (53%) and honesty, ethics, and integrity (
51%).

Meanwhile, according to the opinions of the respondents, the workers

offer responsibility (65%), commitment (63%) improvement (45%) and
honesty (44%).

The report highlights that there is a notable mismatch in three essential

parameters: the values sought by companies in their professionals, those
their current workers consider and those with whom professionals define
themselves.

The main reasons for these large differences are that the value requirements
are changing over time, that companies historically have not taken these
criteria into account when hiring their workers since the values of
professionals are not always discovered neither in a job interview nor in the
current selection processes.

As we see, different variables make this a somewhat complex issue.

There are more reasons for the

differences.
In addition to the reasons mentioned in the report, from my point of view,
there are others that generate the differences mentioned at the
beginning.

On the one hand, we can not escape that the theme of the mission, vision,
values and all “those things” (vitally important from my point of view) is
something that has become rather fashionable of a time to this part, and
the reading of that information in corporate websites of companies often
leads us to not understand very well what they mean or we think is a copy-
paste of some other company with which may or may not have similarities
of some kind.

That is, in the opinion of many, too often that mission, vision and values are
not real or felt by the organization, but are “one more section of those that
we have to have on the website.”

How many companies splashed by scandals of all kinds and their

subsequent reputational crises claim to have values that, if they were real,
would not have gotten them into such trouble? Well many, without any
doubt, and we all come to memory different examples without much
difficulty.

And, if those values are not real, how can there not also be differences
between what the company wants and what the workers offer?

In addition, and related to this, from the point of view of workers (both
current and potential) we can see daily complaints on Linkedin and other
professional and social networks about how they have been treated in their
day-to-day work or in the recruitment processes.

Innumerable comments on companies that are criticized a total lack of

agreement between how they treat people and the principles by which they
should be governed according to their splendid websites.

On the other hand, we must also take into account in all this that, even in
organizations with real values, there is sometimes a tendency to assume
that all its workers know the meaning of a value perfectly.

And that does not always happen, because the general definition of a value
is not enough so that we all respond in the same way to situations with
particular characteristics, or so that we all understand what those concepts
mean.

As a final comment to these differences, I think it is necessary to mention

that it seems that companies are rather static in their demands of values to
their workers and do not consider which are what their current and
potential workers would like a company to have in which to work.

A quick search on the Internet about what values the workers would want in
their company and in their bosses gives us much fewer results and
information than what values companies want from workers.

And that information consists primarily of a string of articles about the

ubiquitous millennials, all of them with more or less the same list of
desired values.

And I ask myself, do the values that the rest of the workforce has outside
that millennial group (which is sometimes like a chewing gum, that can be
lengthened or contracted at will in terms of composition and associated
characteristics) should not be taken into account? Is the entire workforce
millennial? Will their values be left in the lurch when the new generation
leaves for the labor market?

If an organization wants to approach, even minimally, its values with those

that are claimed by the market, will it be based solely on the “generation at
each moment”?

What is the solution to this whole mess

of values?
Well, it does not seem simple, but I think it is necessary to make a
revaluation of what are the values, both personal and business, giving
them the importance they deserve and beyond fashion and the generation at
any time temporary. How to do it is really complex.

To put in tune the values of the companies, those that the workers have and
those that the latter wish to be able to work at ease in the companies, with a
fit that is not perfect but is better than the current one, requires a lot of
work and a long time for the effect to emerge.

Two things seem to primordial for the lace. The first, not only for this issue
but for the proper functioning of society, is to carry out (from an early age)
an education based on values, both in schools and within families.

If you follow the spiral in which it seems that we are involved in the loss of
values, it will no longer be a matter of fitting into companies or not, but we
will be playing with the fit of people within society, something much more
serious.

Secondly, already by the companies, it is essential to leave aside the

cackle of false values, and start building organizations which correspond
with reality, which serve to achieve their business objectives in an ethical
manner, contemplating and assimilating the diversity of society both at the
time of serving it, and nourishing of workers.

Some values that the company must ensure that they are fully understood
by their staff.

Leadership Values Csr Corporate Responsibility Corporate Sustainability

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Albert Vilariño Alonso Follow

Consultant in Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability,
Reputation and Corporate Communication,and integration of people
with disabilities.

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