Skip to main content

Core Workplace Values

The Coronavirus Pandemic has presented me with some interesting opportunities and additional time to myself. Over the course of the past year, I have had some time to reflect on the values that I hold and ask myself if I have been living in accordance with those values. Some questions that I’ve asked myself in order to determine what my core values include “What was I doing when I felt the most fulfilled?” and “What was I doing when I felt like I was doing something wrong?” Hansen (2020), Career Advice Expert with LiveCareer, provides a values assessment to help individuals determine what their workplace values are and to reflect if your organization’s values are a good fit with your own. In completing this exercise I identified the following as my five core workplace values:
  1. Life-Work Balance
  2. Positive impact on others and society
  3. Professional Development and on-going learning and growth
  4. Strong financial compensation and financial rewards
  5. Respect, recognition, being valued


Of course, the next logical place to take these results is to compare them to my current employer’s stated values. My current employer, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (2021) has the following values statement on their public-facing website: 
Image from: https://erau.edu/leadership/president/values-mission-and-vision
Our Values

Embry-Riddle provides a transformative educational experience through fostering collaboration and teamwork, ethical and responsible behavior, and a culture of research and discovery that mirrors the professions we serve. We focus on the development of the professional skills needed for success in global business. Embry-Riddle is committed to providing a climate that facilitates the highest standards of academic achievement, innovation and entrepreneurship in a culturally diverse community that supports the unique needs of each individual (para. 1).


While I have only been with the organization for about one year, I feel that they have done a good job aligning their actions and policies with their stated values. The university offers substantial professional development activities from Diversity, Equity & Inclusion workshops to a tuition waiver program which allows me to pursue this Master of Science in Leadership degree free of charge. While I would describe the financial compensation of the organization as moderate, I feel that ERAU’s stated workplace values align closely with my own. The organization transmits these values through its policies and procedures and how they enforce them. Values are also transmitted through communication with leadership including Town Hall meetings and email blasts. 

Denning (2011) described four types of values when it comes to organizations. These values are described as “the values of the robber barons... hardball strategists... pragmatists... and genuinely ethical” (p. 127). It seems to me that Embry-Riddle is a pragmatist reaching toward genuinely ethical as their stated and transmitted values directly relate to the work that they do. Policies balance the need for the organization to remain financially solvent and to improve the lives of their employees and the community they serve. 

References

Denning, S. (2011). The leader’s guide to storytelling: Mastering the art and discipline of storytelling (revised and updated). Jossey-Bass.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. (2021). Values, mission and vision. https://erau.edu/leadership/president/values-mission-and-vision. 

Hansen, R. (2020, March 18). Workplace values assessment for job-seekers. https://www.livecareer.com/resources/jobs/search/workplace-values. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Role(s) in a Team

Teamwork is a common thread throughout life. Growing up with parents and a sibling, working at my first job at McDonald's, and my marriage and current household all provide me with an opportunity to practice teamwork. Most, if not all, of the engagements in my life involve interacting and cooperating with others, so this exploration into how teams form and are led is an interesting practice of reviewing literature and reflecting on how I engage in my day-to-date life. As a part of a team, I tend to take leadership roles quite naturally. Whetten & Cameron (2011) describe several roles of embers within a team: task-facilitating, relationship-building, and blocking roles. I believe that I have played each role at some point. I feel most at home when I play a task-facilitation role, but I also make time and space for relationship-building. Teamwork is all about getting individual contributors to work together toward a common goal, so ensuring that the relationships among team membe...
Post a Comment
Read more

How I found the Standards in my Life

I had standards by which I lived my life before I could explicitly identify them. I found that not every choice I made brought me closer to the person I wanted to be. I make decisions every day that bring me joy, sadness, fulfillment, and yearning for more. In an effort to understand how I make these decisions, and to be more intentional, I recently started a journey to reflect on my own core values. I have made many moves in my life and I wanted to better understand how I can make decisions that align with my core values. To facilitate this introspection I asked myself the questions below. In reflecting on these questions I found patterns. Patterns of behaviors and ways of being that helped me understand how I have lived in and out of alignment with my core values. Now that I am aware of them, and have them written out, these are my standards for decision making. These are the ways of being that help ensure I am living the life I want to live. Questions I asked myself What am I doing ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Leaders and Followers and How They Work Together

Obolensky (2016) provides a 16 question assessment to help readers assess the leadership strategy that they mostly gravitate towards. Below I describe four leadership strategies as outlined by Obolensky (2016).  Strategy I - Tell You've probably used this strategy before. Telling someone what to do! This strategy is pretty straight forward, however, it requires the leader to know what to do. This prescriptive approach is a direct strategy that focuses attention on the goal/outcome rather than on the people. The tell strategy I only selected once in this assessment.  Strategy II - Sell Sell strikes a balance between focusing leadership efforts on the goal and on the people executing the goal. Much like a salesperson, the sell strategy requires the leader to fully understand the situation and for them to describe the benefits and risks associated with the actions to be undertaken. A good sales person can make their client (or in this case employee) feel good about their purchase...
Post a Comment
Read more