Ethical practice and the role of people professionals
You can usually tell whether company values are real when a difficult decision lands. Someone is producing brilliant work but treating colleagues badly. A client wants something your team is uncomfortable with. Two candidates are equally capable, but one behaves in a way that feels far closer to the business you are trying to build. A manager needs to decide whether to challenge a decision made by somebody more senior.
CIPD guidance and factsheets are updated regularly. The references in this article reflect the position as at 10 September 2026.
That is when values either become useful or disappear.
If they disappear, people make their own judgement about what the business really rewards. Managers become inconsistent, difficult decisions take longer, and employees learn fairly quickly that the wording on the website matters less than what leaders tolerate in practice.
So, how do you create company values employees actually use? In our experience, you need a small number of values that genuinely reflect the business, translate each one into observable behaviours, use them in real people decisions, and make sure leaders behave consistently with them. Values become useful when they help somebody decide what to do, particularly when the decision is uncomfortable.
That is also where ethical practice comes into it.
What does ethical practice have to do with company values?
Ethical practice is bigger than having good intentions or staying within the law. The CIPD's 2025 factsheet Ethical practice and the role of people professionals describes ethical practice as applying ethical values to organisational behaviour, including the discretionary decisions people make when there is not necessarily one obvious answer. It also describes organisational values as a framework for culture and decision-making.
We think that distinction matters.
Most businesses can write down values that nobody would disagree with. Integrity. Respect. Excellence. Collaboration. The difficult part is deciding what those words require when two priorities compete.
Suppose one of your values is respect. Does respect mean avoiding a difficult conversation because you do not want to upset somebody, or having the conversation properly because leaving them without honest feedback would be less fair?
If one of your values is customer focus, does that mean saying yes whenever an important client asks for something, or are there circumstances where treating your employees fairly requires you to say no?
Those are ethical decisions because there is a trade-off.
The CIPD also warns about the 'say/do gap', where leaders state one set of values but behave differently. That gap damages credibility and can leave employees cynical about the organisation's stated principles.
Values therefore need to do more than describe the business at its best. They need to help people make decisions when things are less straightforward.
How many company values should a business have?
There is no perfect number of company values. Since founding JourneyHR in 2010, we have worked with growing organisations to define values that are credible, distinctive and practical, rather than simply choosing a set of attractive words. The right number depends on what the business can genuinely stand behind.
In our values work, three to five is often a useful starting point. We begin with leadership alignment, listen to employees and explore what makes the organisation itself. Only then do we decide which principles deserve to be called core values.
The test is not how many values can fit on a slide. It is whether people can remember them, recognise them in behaviour and use them to make a decision.
When the list becomes too long, values get mixed up with goals, expected behaviours and general good practice. Our approach is to keep the principles focused, then give each one enough behavioural detail to make it meaningful across teams and roles.
We also connect the emerging values to the organisation’s strategy, vision and direction. A value should reflect who the business is and what it is prepared to protect as it grows, not just what sounds appealing today.
We would start with a harder question than 'Which words do we like?'
Ask: What would we still care about if living this value occasionally made a decision harder, slower, or more expensive?
That tends to remove quite a few words from the list.
A value becomes much more credible when the leadership team is prepared to accept the consequences of it.
How do you turn company values into behaviours?
This is usually the point where values work either becomes useful or turns into a branding exercise.
If you want to know how to turn company values into behaviours, take each value and ask what somebody would actually see a person doing differently because of it.
'Respect' is difficult to observe.
'Give somebody difficult feedback directly rather than discussing the problem with everybody else first' is observable.
'Ownership' can mean almost anything.
'Raise a problem early, take responsibility for your part in it, and come with a proposed next step' gives a manager something they can recognise and discuss.
A simple framework translates organizational values into clear and recognizable behaviours rather than relying on abstract statements. Respect goes beyond treating people well and involves listening attentively, challenging ideas rather than individuals, and explaining decisions that affect others. Ownership means taking responsibility by raising problems early, following through on commitments, and acknowledging mistakes.
Collaboration involves working together by sharing relevant information, involving colleagues before decisions are finalized, and seeking help when needed. Courage means demonstrating bravery by raising concerns, providing honest feedback, and respectfully challenging decisions when something does not seem right. It is not necessary to establish twenty behaviours for every value.
Instead, the focus should be on defining sufficiently specific and observable behaviours so that two managers can broadly agree on whether a particular value has been demonstrated.
Case study: Here developed values and role-model behaviours with JourneyHR
A recent example comes from our work with Here, a creative studio. Following its 2022 staff survey, Here worked with JourneyHR to develop a framework setting out its core values and the role-model behaviours that would bring them to life.Valuing your talent
We ran focus groups to capture employees’ own descriptions of effective behaviour and held a discovery session with the Governance team to connect expectations to the studio’s vision. This meant the framework drew on what people across the organisation recognised and needed, rather than being written only by senior leaders.
The next step was to make those expectations usable.
In July 2023, the draft framework was shared with Governance and line managers for feedback. Here then finalised a concise, level-by-level framework explaining the behaviours expected in someone’s current role and at the next level.
The team received training on using it in self-appraisals and performance discussions. Here also identified opportunities to apply the framework to job descriptions, interview questions, promotion decisions and development planning.
In its 2023–24 B Corp impact report, Here described clearer expectations and more meaningful feedback and appraisal conversations as benefits of the work. The report also makes clear that further embedding, including in onboarding, remained a next step.
That is the practical difference between publishing values and building a framework people can use.
How should leaders embed organisational values?
When we are asked how leaders should embed organisational values, our answer starts with behaviour before communication.
Employees notice what leaders do with far greater accuracy than they remember what was said at a company meeting.
If collaboration is a value but important decisions are routinely made by two people behind closed doors, employees have their answer.
If respect is a value but a senior high performer can behave badly because their numbers are good, employees have their answer.
If openness is a value but leaders disappear when there is difficult news, employees have their answer.
The CIPD's 2025 ethical-practice factsheet makes the same connection. It says leaders shape ethical norms through the behaviour they model and the way they talk about ethical practice. It also recommends embedding expectations across recruitment, induction, learning and development, performance management, and reward.
That last part matters because leaders cannot embed values through role modelling alone.
The systems have to agree with them.
Case study: JourneyHR helped the7stars connect personal values with team goals
Our work with the7stars offers a more recent example of what embedding looks like as an organisation grows. The independent media agency had expanded beyond 300 people, making it increasingly important to keep individual development, team priorities and the wider business direction connected.Lane Crawford
In 2024, JourneyHR facilitated Team Vision Setting Sessions across all 16 departments. The conversations explored personal values, communication preferences and team ambitions, then linked those discussions to the agency’s objectives.
The sessions also helped teams develop objectives connecting individual growth with wider organisational priorities. Rather than relying on a values announcement, the work created space for employees and managers to discuss what mattered and how that should shape their day-to-day contribution.
This is a useful reminder that values need ongoing conversations, especially when teams become larger and more dispersed. Our published account of the work explains the approach, without claiming that a workshop by itself proves a lasting culture change.
The leadership lesson is to support the conversations with consistent management practices. If you say values matter but still recruit purely for skills, promote purely for results or review performance without discussing behaviour, the system teaches employees something different.
People generally believe the system.
What is the role of people professionals in ethical practice?
People professionals have an unusual position in a business because they can see many of the places where stated values meet actual decisions.
Recruitment. Pay. Promotion. Performance. Redundancy. Employee relations. Reward. Leadership development. Complaints. Organisational change.
That makes the role of people professionals in ethical practice far more important than administering a code of conduct.
The CIPD Profession Map describes ethical practice as building trust by modelling ethical behaviour and applying principles and values consistently when making decisions. It also expects people professionals to challenge decisions, explain reasoning transparently, and consider different ethical perspectives rather than treating every question as simply right or wrong.
We think people professionals have three particularly important jobs here.
First, they help translate aspiration into practice. If a leadership team says fairness matters, People + Culture should be asking what fairness means in recruitment, salary decisions, promotion, and performance conversations.
Second, they can see contradictions across the organisation. One department may be rewarding collaboration while another promotes individual performance regardless of behaviour. Those inconsistencies are difficult for employees to miss.
And third, people professionals sometimes need to challenge.
The CIPD's 2025 factsheet refers to its 2022 People Profession survey, which found that most people professionals said they would not compromise their professional principles, although business needs and pressure from senior stakeholders were areas where compromise was more likely.
That feels important because ethical practice becomes most valuable precisely when saying something is harder than agreeing.
People professionals should not become the moral police of the organisation. That rarely works.
But they should be able to say: 'We said this matters. The decision we are considering points in the opposite direction. Are we comfortable with that?'
Sometimes the answer will still be yes.
At least the trade-off is being made consciously.
How do you review company values after growth?
A founder can hold a surprising amount of culture personally when there are 10 or 15 people in a business.
People hear how they speak to clients. They see how decisions are made. They know what gets praised and what is challenged.
As the company grows, that proximity disappears.
Managers interpret things differently. New teams form. People join who were not there when the unwritten rules developed. Acquisitions, international growth, new leadership, or a change in strategy can create another layer of distance.
That is when it is worth asking how you review company values after growth.
The answer is not necessarily to throw the values away.
Start by finding out whether the words still describe the organisation, whether employees interpret them consistently, and whether the behaviours beneath them still make sense for the company you are now.
Case study: Netflix reviewed its culture as the business changed
Netflix offers a useful example because it has repeatedly revisited one of the best-known culture documents in business.
In June 2024, Netflix published a new version of its Culture Memo. According to Netflix Chief Talent Officer Sergio Ezama in Netflix: Sharing Our Latest Culture Memo (24 June 2024), the company had revised the document four times since the original 2009 version. The 2024 review took 12 months and every employee was given the opportunity to contribute. The same Netflix announcement reports that the company received more than 1,500 comments during the process.
The result was not simply a longer document.
Netflix shortened it and reorganised it around four principles that it felt better represented the organisation it had become. The company also says its culture will continue to change as the organisation grows, while retaining its focus on excellence.
We like that distinction.
Reviewing values after growth does not mean changing them because they feel old. It means checking whether the organisation's language, behaviours, and systems still express what it genuinely believes.
Growth is one trigger. A merger, leadership transition, strategy change, or recurring gap in employee feedback can be another.
The question is whether your values are still helping people make decisions now, rather than describing a version of the company that existed five years ago.
How JourneyHR can help
Values work is rarely difficult because somebody cannot think of enough words.
The difficult part is understanding what already exists in the business, where leaders agree and disagree, what employees experience, which principles are genuinely important, and how those principles should affect everyday behaviour.
Our organisational-values work starts with leadership alignment and employee insight, then connects the values to the business strategy and turns them into clear language and behaviours. From there, we work with businesses to build those expectations into the employee lifecycle, including recruitment, onboarding, performance, and leadership development.
JourneyHR service: Organisational Values
We can also help when a company already has values but suspects they have stopped doing much. Sometimes the words are still right and the behaviours need rebuilding. Sometimes growth has created a gap between teams. Sometimes the leadership team itself has a different interpretation of what one of the values means.
That is useful work to uncover before writing anything new.
Get in touch: Explore JourneyHR's Organisational Values work or contact our team.
Final thought
The real test of a company value is not whether an employee can remember it.
It is whether the value helps when somebody has to make a judgement.
If your values affect who you hire, how managers behave, what gets rewarded, which behaviour gets challenged, and how difficult decisions are explained, people will learn them without needing to recite them.
If they do not, employees will still work out what the organisation values.
They will simply learn it from what happens instead.
FAQs
How do you create company values employees actually use?
Create a small number of values that reflect how the organisation genuinely wants to operate, then describe the behaviours connected to each one. Employees are more likely to use values when those values affect real decisions, including recruitment, feedback, performance, promotion, reward, and leadership behaviour. The words matter, but what the organisation repeatedly rewards and challenges matters more.
How many company values should a business have?
For most growing businesses, three to five company values is usually enough. There is no fixed rule, but a long list often makes it difficult to distinguish genuinely fundamental principles from desirable behaviours or business priorities. Choose the values you are prepared to use when making difficult decisions, then put the more detailed expectations underneath them as behaviours.
How do you turn company values into behaviours?
Take each value and describe what somebody would actually see an employee or manager doing if they were demonstrating it. Avoid broad descriptions such as "show respect". Define specific actions such as listening before responding, explaining decisions, giving direct feedback, or raising concerns early. Observable behaviours can then be used consistently in recruitment, development, recognition, and performance conversations.
How should leaders embed organisational values?
Leaders embed organisational values by behaving consistently with them and making sure company systems reinforce the same expectations. Recruitment, onboarding, performance management, promotion, reward, and leadership development should all reflect the values. The CIPD's 2025 ethical-practice guidance also stresses the importance of leaders modelling ethical behaviour and creating clear expectations around acceptable conduct.
How do you review company values after growth?
Start by asking employees and leaders whether the current values still describe the organisation and whether people interpret them in the same way. Then examine whether hiring, management, promotion, and reward practices support those values. Growth does not automatically mean the values need replacing. Sometimes the underlying principles remain sound while the behaviours and language need updating for a larger, more complex business.
