Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny. – Mahatma Ghandi
In a time of crisis, it’s clear to see which businesses have got their values pinned down, and which ones don’t. These are strange times, and it’s now more crucial than ever for companies to look to their core values and ensure they shine through everything they do – for the benefit of their employees and customers.
How core values can help build and maintain company culture
We nailed down our company’s core values back in 2019 (oh, what simpler times). A team brainstorming session and a seminar from the very clever Steve Price helped us look inwards and determine the values that underpin everything we do as a business. Exercises like this can seem trivial, but since defining these values, it’s been really helpful to refer back to them when making decisions or communicating with clients.
Fast forward to today. We’re now coming up for two months in our new remote office set up, and we can honestly say we’ve never been stronger. Having no previous experience of working remotely as a business did initially raise concerns, but our entire team has pulled together and adapted seamlessly to the transition.
What are DMT’s core values?
It has taken a courageous leap of faith from our directors to help shift our team to remote work. We have had to put full trust into our procedures in order to adapt and cope with this new challenge.
We wouldn’t have been able to shift so naturally to this new way of life without being agile. Keeping our channels of communication open and jumping on morning and evening Hangouts calls has helped ensure that all team members are connected, switched on and united, despite the lack of a physical office space.
Since the lockdown has come into place, we have taken on more clients, surpassed previous expectations and helped clients hit and exceed their targets. We’ve proven to be effective, guiding businesses through these uncertain times and helping them grow and adapt.
We were upfront and honest with our clients as soon as we made the move into remote working. We were realistic – we outlined that it was normal to feel initial concern, but having open channels of communication meant that it made no difference whether meetings were held virtually or face-to-face – what matters is communicating honestly and openly.
We’ve opened up our services, finding different channels for our customers to promote their services. This progressive way of thinking has offered up new opportunities for both existing and new clients.
Most of all, we’ve approached the situation in an entirely human manner. As a lively, close-knit team, there were worries that it would be hard to maintain our infamous culture, but this hasn’t be an issue. Our Messenger chats have been as active as ever, and we’ve been hosting weekly pub quizzes helping us wind down together after each week.
We’ve always been proud of our values, and now so more than ever. Having these five themes at the core of everything we do has helped us to strengthen our position in a time when nothing is certain.
If you haven’t cemented your core values, we definitely urge you to take some time to reflect. Having these in place can help steer your business in the right direction.
All the best and stay safe, DMT x
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[Bonus: Check out this article from Toptal on how to build and sustain a remote culture. It’s a great read with some key insights on the topic of remote working.
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