Company Values: How to Make Them a Working Tool, Not a Poster

"Openness, care, initiative" are posters in the meeting room. If your values never come up at retros, in 1:1s, or in hiring, you don't have them. Not "we haven't grown into them yet," not "we're just getting started." You don't have them — you have decor.

At every other company I worked with as a product person, there was a values offsite. The HR team went out of town for a day, drew on flip charts with markers, picked five words, printed posters, ordered mugs with the slogans. A year later those mugs sat on a shelf, the posters hung on the walls, and absolutely no one remembered what they said — except the HR director, who occasionally mentioned the values in onboarding presentations.

It's a textbook story. And the problem isn't that the workshop was bad — it's that values aren't an exercise in self-definition. They're a decision-making tool. If the tool isn't used in decisions, it's dead, no matter how nice the words written on it.

Let's unpack what makes values alive, and how to fix them in 90 days without any new offsites.

What Doesn't Work

First, the antipatterns — because most companies do exactly these and then wonder why "the culture is stuck."

A session as a one-off event. The team gathers, picks 7 words, leaves. Two weeks later it's all forgotten. Values aren't a one-off event, they're a system of habits. One day doesn't create a habit.

Posters, mugs, and stickers. They don't hurt on their own, but they don't work either. Visibility ≠ activation. You can hang 50 posters with the same word on the wall and employees will walk past them like wallpaper. Visibility only works when reinforced by behavior; otherwise it quickly becomes background.

Values only in the onboarding presentation. The new hire hears about them on day three, in a "here are our values" format, ticks the box, and forgets. Because all their real learning — what they observe in the team in the first two weeks — contains not a single mention of these words.

Too many values. Ten isn't a set of values, it's a glossary. Nobody remembers ten. Psychologically, 3–5 works, ideally 4. If you have seven or more, you don't have priorities — you have good intentions.

Template values. "Teamwork, honesty, excellence, customer-centricity" is a mix straight from Wikipedia. They're identical for you, your competitors, and a fertilizer company. They distinguish nothing and direct nothing. Good values should be specific to your company, and ideally contain a deliberate trade-off you're willing to make.

Values as marketing. When the HR team invents values for "how they should sound on the website" rather than "how we actually live," the result is pretty but dead. Employees read the gap instantly.

Three Places Where Values Must Live

A simple test: take your values and check whether they come up in three places. If yes in all three, you have living values. If no in even one, you have decor.

Recognition. When a colleague or manager publicly thanks an employee, that thank-you mentions a specific value. Not "thanks for the work," but "thanks for owning the failed release — that's our 'initiative in action.'" Every peer-to-peer thank-you in the portal should have a "which value this relates to" field — not mandatory, but always visible. Within a month you get a living map: which values are actively expressed, which are never mentioned (meaning they're either dead or poorly worded).

1:1s and performance reviews. At least once a quarter in a developmental 1:1, the manager asks: "Where this week did you especially express our values — and where, perhaps, did you fall short?" In the performance review, one section is "how the employee lives the company's values." Not as a formal score, but as a discussion.

Hiring. The interview has questions that explicitly test your values. Not "are you a team player?", but "tell me about a time you had to make an unpopular decision in exchange for a long-term result" (if "long-term thinking" is one of your values). And — most importantly — a candidate is rejected if they don't fit the values, even if they're strong professionally. If you haven't rejected a single candidate on values in the past year, you don't have them in hiring.

If values are absent from even one of the three places, you have posters, not values. Period.

How to Activate Your Values in 90 Days

The good news: reviving your values requires neither a new workshop nor a new platform. It takes 6 short steps of two weeks each.

Weeks 1–2. Reread the list of values. If there are more than five, cut. If they're template ("teamwork, openness, honesty"), reword them for yourself. A good value contains an internal trade-off that reveals what you choose at the moment priorities conflict.

Weeks 3–4. For each value, two concrete examples: "this is yes, this is no." Without behavioral examples a value stays a word. If your value is "ownership" (full responsibility for the result), then "yes" is "the person drove the project to a result even when the adjacent teams went on vacation." "No" is "the person sent 17 emails and considers their part done."

Weeks 5–6. In recognition. Every thank-you now ties to a value (a portal field). For the first two weeks, managers post their thank-yous in this format — they set the tone. By the end of week 6 you already have data: which values are mentioned often, which barely appear.

Weeks 7–8. In 1:1s and performance. The developmental 1:1 now includes one question about values — for example, "where last week did you see value X expressed on the team?" The performance review template has a dedicated values section. Not evaluative — observational.

Weeks 9–10. In hiring. The HR team and managers revise the interview rubric. For each value, 2–3 behavioral questions. They agree: if a candidate fails even one of the value tests, it's a rejection, even with strong professional skills.

Weeks 11–12. Measure. Look in the portal: which values are mentioned in thank-yous more, which less, which never. This is the health map of your values. The ones never mentioned are candidates for removal (or rewording). The ones mentioned disproportionately often are the real engines of your culture.

After 90 days, don't return to static. This cycle isn't a one-off activation but a rhythm. Every quarter — review the map of mentions; every six months — discuss whether there's a value due for an update.

How to Tell Your Values Actually Work

A few simple tests I offer my clients.

The feed test. Open the recognition feed for the last month. Can you tell from the value tags which value is currently "peaking" and which is "forgotten"? If the map is empty or uniform, your values aren't being used.

The 5-random-people test. Ask five random employees (not managers) to name three company values. If at least three of five can, the values are alive. If fewer than two, you have posters.

The trade-off test. On your last hard decision — was there a moment when someone said "but that contradicts our value X"? If yes, your values work as a filter. If no, they're not used in decisions.

The hiring-manager test. Ask a team lead: "Which of the last 5 candidates did you reject on values, not skills?" If the answer is "none," hiring isn't reinforced by values.

These four tests take 15 minutes and give an honest picture. Far more honest than a sweeping engagement survey.

The Bottom Line

Company values aren't a marketing artifact or the product of an annual offsite. They're criteria for decisions — whom we praise, what we discuss at 1:1s, whom we hire, whom we reject. If they aren't used as criteria, you have decor on the wall, not a culture.

The good news: you can revive your values in 90 days without buying a single new tool. Six two-week steps, and within a quarter a map starts appearing in your feed — showing what actually drives your company. That's the moment values stop being a poster.

Next, on gamification without burnout. Self-Determination Theory, three big-company failures with leaderboards, and why "let's gamify everything" is the most destructive mindset in HR tech in 2025.

If you want the "Activate your values in 90 days" checklist, it's linked in the card. One page, no signup.