Values - a guide for everyday working life

Guiding principles and signposts – this is often how the ”point” of a company’s values is described. Achieving them entails involving all employees – and being able to constantly demonstrate how the values are a part of everyday life.

Guiding principles refers to the fact that CMP’s values can show how employees should treat each other, customers, suppliers and other business partners.

“The values should furthermore provide guidelines in trying situations, facilitate decision-making and contribute to increased effectiveness – in short, that we treat each other correctly and act in the right way to achieve our objectives”, emphasises Pia From Jeppesen, CHRO within CMP.

Involve everybody

CMP’s values process started a few years ago and was a part of the work that was carried out surrounding the company’s vision and mission. It resulted in the formulation of nine values.

“Vision and mission show where we are going, while the values specify how this is to be done”, Pia From Jeppesen reiterates. In order to simplify and elucidate our guiding principles, the nine values have subsequently become three – which was done via a project involving everybody in order to ensure broad ownership right from the outset”.

The three values that resulted are Respect, Ambition and Community. The words emerged in a process, which primarily entailed highlighting what was already in place in CMP.

“You could say that the basis was our existing DNA. In other words, we identified a fundamental approach and set of attitudes in the company which everybody can feel they are a part of, but simultaneously looked to the future in order to remain competitive.

“For example, we noted how strong the sense of community is among the employees, which made it natural to also have it characterise the values. Many CMP employees have their family members as colleagues”, she continues. “It makes community especially important. We show respect for each other, for each other’s jobs, for our customers, for the environment etc. We are ambitious, we are ready for changes and have the courage to select new routes in order to be number one in the industry”.

The practical work was performed in a number of workshops in connection with CMP’s Dialogue Meetings. These meetings are held twice a year, always with different themes on the agenda.

“Besides producing and formulating the value words, we also put a lot of energy into bringing them to life. Ways in which this was done included ”cases” where the participants had to put the values into everyday situations, interpret how they should be used, but also discuss which dilemmas or deliberations needed to be addressed”.

One unusual method was that everybody had to visualise the fundamental purpose of the business through building it in Lego – a process where ideas and imagination flowed freely and where Respect, Ambition and Community were transformed into creative figures and sculptures.

Sense of community

Even though the values are in place, work on them is not over. Quite the reverse. Constantly bringing the words to life is key to them becoming a clear and natural part of our everyday work.

“This is being done in 2019 through having the topic on the agenda among our operations managers and via continued discussions in CMP’s senior management. As in previous years we will also be addressing the values at the forthcoming Dialogue Meetings”, Pia From Jeppesen says.