Historically, values have been seen as ephemeral, hard to grasp, not quantifiable and in this mistaken belief provides one of the greatest challenges to values being taken seriously.
Organisations take income and profit or surplus seriously because it is measurable. It is the same with staff turnover and attendance, customer retention, complaints. More recently gender and race diversity and equality, staff satisfaction have all become the subject of surveys and measurement and most importantly actions to improve.
There are now examples of organisations that not only measure the impact of their values on the business, staff, customers, stakeholder and community but also give significant space in their annual reports to informing it readers of their progress.
Key Performance Indicators are not only in place but are being developed by many values-based organisation to enhance their USP’s and to refine how their values are implemented to the benefit of all stakeholder groups. Values are now becoming a key component of governance in many organisations.
The key is to review your existing KPI first. You will be surprised how many of them may already be measuring your implementation of your values. The do a simple gap analysis and work out what you are not measuring. Chose simple, non-complex measures that will engage all of your workforce. If you can add any of these measures to your monthly management reporting processes then do so and keep everyone inside the organisation up to date.
For examples of values reporting these excellent examples :
The Midcounties Co-operative – www.midcounties.coop/who-are-we/values-in.action
G4S – www.g4s.com/who-are-we/our-values/values-champions
The Big Issue – www.bigissue.com/about-the-big-issue-group
BCRS – https://bcrs.org.uk/committed-to-our-values