It is essential for businesses to establish core values and build a positive culture in order to promote their endeavours and define themselves.

Like diversity and inclusion, it is also important to understand the interpersonal relationship and differences between these two aspects in order for a business to achieve its long-term goals efficiently, and generate a good reputation and positive employee experience.

Latitude IT Values

1. Mission First: Help candidates and organizations meet their professional goals
2. Do Rights: Be ethical in every interaction and give back to those who help along the journey
3. Own It: Lead by example. Own the action. Own the outcome. No flinching
4. No Excuses: Keeping to our word. No excuses or no progress
5. Think Big: Believe it can be done and your mind will find ways to make it happen
6. Deliver Quality: Never compromise the quality

More information about this can be found here.

What is Culture?

Well, the culture of a workplace describes the environment and outlines the way that companies support, value and motivate employees in addition to how they promote a sense of community and belonging!

Key influencing factors:

• Leadership: management who is attentive toward their employees promotes a supportive environment and positive workplace culture. This way they can promote confidence, productivity and clearly define expectations and constructively encourage them to meet goals.
• Work-life balance: flexibility in the workplace which accommodates to employee's life. Employees need to feel like they are capable to achieve work goals and meet expectations whilst also balancing family life and responsibilities. Providing this flexibility promotes positive and healthy attitudes to work and can help employees be a productive and positive contributor.
• Appreciation: there needs to be a level of mutual trust, respect and loyalty fostered between team members and team leaders. Providing opportunities for employees to grow their experience and have access to opportunities allows for these employees to advance in their career and offer more skill and expertise, which at the end of the day they bring back to the company.
• Community: cultivating a sense of community can promote productive teamwork and open communication allowing for teams to reach goals and achieve them efficiently. By being intentional and selective in the hiring process, you can gain an employee who fits perfectly into your environment and can grow your team successfully.
• Equality: value all everyone's input equally and create a safe space for each individual to contribute, and feel respected and understood.

What are values

<aside> 📢 Values are an implementation strategy for evolving a culture

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These are guiding principles that guide employees’ actions, decisions and achievements. Establishing core values is essential to building a healthy work environment, and ensuring equal productivity and motivation for employees to achieve. These core values reflect the culture you are trying to create and influence the community into conforming to this.

Culture vs value

It can be hard to distinguish between these two aspects of your company but some of the key distinguishing factors include:

• Impact: values inform culture, and a company’s commitment to upholding values impacts the work environment and reputation. Values are most heavily influenced by leadership, whereas culture is most influenced by the employees as each individual's behaviour contributes to the environment. The culture you desire for your company can be created when everyone behaves according to values.
• Implementation: changes to culture are a long-term effort, and it is determined by the effectiveness of the leadership team and their commitment to the success, support and achievement of their employees.
• Benefits: the values the company promotes directly relate to its credibility. Values which are respected widely such as teamwork, high work ethic and quality delivery clearly communicate what you want to see from your employee and help them align with one another to achieve a shared goal. A healthy corporate environment is essential for successful delivery and employee retention.

Enforcing Cultures and Values

An important thing to remember is that adjustment in company values will show its effect in the short to mid-term, whereas culture adjustments will be observed in the long term.

When enforcing existing or new culture and values there are 3 big points to consider: