Respecting People at Work: Why Values Are Important to Organizations and to People

People want to be respected at work.  They want to know that their organization cares about them as people not just workers.

In my executive coaching work with clients, the word respect comes up a lot. Leaders need to earn the respect of the people they lead by aligning people and business practices with deeply held values.

Are you able to make the importance of values and how they drive business results real to people?

Successful companies that consistently report growth and profits have three best practices in common, according to Charles A. O’Reilly, III, and Jeffrey Pfeffer in their book Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People (HBSP 2000):

1.  They have a clear, well-articulated set of values that are widely shared and act as the foundation for management practices.

2.  They have a remarkable degree of alignment and consistency in the people-centered practices that express their core values.

3.  Their senior managers are leaders whose primary role is to ensure that the values are maintained and constantly made real to all of the people who work in the organization. (p. 232)

For a person to succeed in any organization, he or she has to understand what is really important to the firm—its values. People do this by looking carefully at what’s actually rewarded, observing how people get ahead and who gets promoted, and watching and listening to what senior managers do and where they spend their time. Policies and practices of the company signal clearly what is valued and important. Unfortunately, too often what senior managers say and what they do are ambiguous at best and contradictory at worst.

Why are values so important? Although none of us would work for less money than we feel is fair, money by itself isn’t sufficient for motivating long-term high performance. Most of us would like to believe that what we are doing makes a difference to others and that our work is important. People cannot be motivated when they feel that what they are asked to do is worthless or contrary to their fundamental values. Moreover, most of us also want to feel that we are valued as people, not just as workers. We want to be respected for who we are, not simply for what we do. We also respond positively to being around others who share similar beliefs and with whom we can build relationships.