Companies everywhere struggle to define their ‘values’ and get their employees to live them. Why do they care? The top performing companies throughout the world all have one single thing in common for which they credit their success: a common purpose powered by their organizational core values.
Successful enterprises know that bringing your values to life in the workplace can result in a 3x return to your profit line.
So why don’t more Indigenous economic development corporations bring these cultural values more formally into their organizations?
The keyword here is ‘formally.’ You need to take your cultural values and work with your team to explicitly define and agree on how everyone in the office will live them in the projects you choose, the businesses that your start, the partnerships that you strike, and the behaviours that everyone should bring to work every day.
It takes careful weaving but it’s worth it, which is why PBDC’s Director of Operations Lee Sinclair was quick to embrace the idea and apply it to OCN’s owned businesses.
“Our Seven Sacred Teachings have been a cornerstone of our people’s success for thousands of years. It made sense for PBDC to weave these teachings into our performance management frameworks so that leaders and front-line employees alike have a clearer understanding of the outcomes and attitudes that will bring us success.,” said Lee Sinclair.
Sinclair added that by aligning their community values with corporate values, PBDC team leaders have noticed some early but important signs that staff are more proud to work at their jobs and are more loyal to the organization.
“The best part isn’t just higher employee productivity, but also the growing feeling of excitement that employees have for their individual contributions to the workplace.”