First and foremost, I should appreciate your management or HR team for taking the trouble to ensure that your employees understand the meaning of mission, vision, and values. In many companies, these fancy statements find their importance only on the decorated plaques on the wall. You can make sure that your employees understand all this through the following ways:
- Conduct a 1-2 hour session where employees understand the meaning of vision, mission, values, etc., and how it should translate into their day-to-day work.
- The most important place to make everyone understand these aspects is during the orientation training itself. Create case studies of your employees and show newcomers how in the past your employees lived by the company's values. There were many temptations around, but living with values is no easy task by any means.
- Highlight the efforts the company has made to live by the mission.
- I had the chance to conduct a training program for the staff of Big Bazaar. At that time, the Pantaloon Training Head (now Future Group, but at that time the company's name was Pantaloon Retail India Limited (PRIL)) provided us with a CD. It contained an interview with their MD, Mr. Kishore Biyani, who personally explained the business objectives of PRIL.
Importance of What You Are Going to Do: What you are going to do is quite important. In one company, the management once decided to conduct an Employee Satisfaction Survey. When the survey questionnaire was circulated, one employee bluntly wrote: "You have created this vision, mission, values, and all that. Do you live by it? Ask this question to yourselves. You don't have to ask anything of us!" I hope you don't face a situation like this.
Thanks,
Dinesh V Divekar