Core values are usually printed somewhere and then ignored. Most companies treat them like wall art. They write them once, post them on a careers page, and forget to bring them up again until the next offsite. On this episode of Reimagining Company Culture, Chris Ciulla and Diana Fernandez of Comrise make the case for treating values as something you cite, out loud, in real situations.
Chris runs US and Cross-Border operations at Comrise, where he coaches client companies on hiring and talent strategy. Diana works on the marketing side and has spent her career inside the values conversation from the brand angle. Together they argue that the difference between a real culture and a marketing one comes down to whether values get used as a working tool, not a poster.
Here is what citing values actually looks like inside a company that takes culture as a discipline.
Why Most Core Values Programs Fail in Practice
Almost every company has values. Almost no company uses them. According to Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report, only 21% of employees strongly agree that their manager explains how culture impacts their role, which means even the basics are missing in most workplaces. Values become language without behavior.
The breakdown usually happens in three places. The values are vague and abstract, which makes them impossible to apply. They are not used in hiring decisions, which means new people are not screened against them. And they are not used in performance reviews, which means there is no consequence for ignoring them. Once any one of those gaps shows up, the values stop mattering.
Chris and Diana describe the discipline of citing values as the antidote. When values get cited in a hiring debrief, in a manager coaching conversation, in a public recognition, they stop being abstract. They start showing up in how decisions actually get made, which is the only place lasting organizational culture ever changes.
What Citing Values Looks Like Day to Day
How do you cite values in a real hiring decision?
You point at the value, you point at the candidate's behavior in the interview, and you tie the two together in writing. The hiring loop now has a structured argument instead of a feeling. If your value is candor, you cite the moment in the interview where the candidate gave honest feedback even when it was awkward. That citation goes into the debrief and the offer rationale.
The discipline forces interviewers to be specific, which makes hiring decisions more defensible and more aligned. values-driven talent acquisition programs that integrate values citation tend to produce better long-run retention because the people you bring in have already been screened on the dimension that matters most.
How do you cite values in a performance conversation?
By making the connection between behavior and value explicit. Instead of saying somebody had a great quarter, you say they exhibited a specific value in a specific moment. That makes the feedback portable and reusable. Over time, those citations build a record of how the person actually shows up against what the company says it cares about. performance management cycle conversations cycles get sharper and more honest because the language is concrete.
What Actually Works When Companies Cite Values
Pick values you can act on
If a value cannot be observed in someone's behavior, it cannot be cited. Drop the abstract ones. Keep the ones that translate into specific decisions, specific moments, and specific calls. Three to five active values usually beats a list of ten.
Build the citation into the cadence
Use values language in standups, in one-on-ones, in board updates. The repetition is what turns the words into shared vocabulary. People stop having to translate, and the values statement framework starts doing real work.
Make consequences visible
If a behavior contradicts a value, name it. If a behavior exemplifies it, recognize it. The asymmetry is what kills most values programs. Companies celebrate the good and avoid naming the bad, which sends the message that the values are optional.
The pattern the guest describes on this episode lines up with broader research. The SHRM research on the future of work reinforces the operating-model lens and gives HR leaders a useful reference for grounding the conversation in numbers their CEOs and CFOs already trust. It also surfaces the same gap between stated culture priorities and how People work actually runs inside most organizations.
Where Employee Relations Fits
Values matter most when something has gone wrong. Investigations, complaints, terminations, and policy disputes are where culture either holds or collapses. The discipline of citing values shows up in those conversations as the documentation of what the company believes is acceptable behavior, separate from whatever the personalities involved want.
company culture solutions for HR is where this lands operationally. The values become inputs to investigation logic, code-of-conduct enforcement, and policy interpretation. HR case management workflow keeps the audit trail intact so the next time a similar situation comes up, the precedent is searchable instead of remembered.
How do values show up in employee relations cases?
ER teams use values as the framework for evaluating conduct in investigations and disputes. The cleanest cases are the ones where the values are unambiguous and the documentation cites them directly. AllVoices captures those citations alongside case notes so the same standards get applied across teams, regions, and managers.
The pattern across AllVoices customers is consistent. ER teams that operate on a single workflow handle more cases at higher quality with the same headcount. The structured intake reduces the time between an employee raising a concern and the case being triaged. The case management layer keeps the documentation tight so investigations hold up to legal and audit review. The reporting layer surfaces the patterns leadership needs to act on structural issues rather than handling each case in isolation. That combination is what lets People teams treat ER as a strategic function rather than a reactive one.
Frequently Asked Questions About Citing Core Values
Why do most company core values fail to land with employees?
Values fail when they are too abstract to act on, when leaders do not model them, and when there are no consequences for ignoring them. Employees notice the gap immediately and stop trusting the language. The fix is to make the values specific and to use them in real decisions out loud.
How often should leaders cite core values?
Constantly and concretely. Every team meeting, every recognition, every hiring debrief, every coaching conversation. The repetition is the point. Values become real when they show up in the calendar of actual work, not in a slide deck once a year.
Can you change a company's core values?
You can refresh them, but only if the existing ones are genuinely broken or out of date. Most cultures suffer from underuse of values, not from the wrong list. Before rewriting, audit how often the current values get cited in hiring, performance, and ER decisions.
How do values affect hiring outcomes?
When values are integrated into structured interviews and debriefs, hiring quality and retention improve because candidates are screened on the dimension culture actually cares about. The companies with the strongest cultures usually have the most disciplined values-based hiring loops.
What is the link between values and accountability?
Citing values out loud is what creates accountability. If the value is named in a feedback conversation, in a performance review, or in an investigation note, behavior gets measured against it. Without that citation, values stay decorative.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Citing values is the simplest and most underused HR practice in modern workplaces. It costs nothing. It changes how decisions get made. And it is the difference between a culture that holds up under stress and one that does not.
The People teams that take this seriously stop talking about values as a brand exercise and start using them as an operating tool. That is the move Chris and Diana describe in the episode, and it is the move every company can start making this quarter.
The conversation in this episode underlines a pattern AllVoices has seen across hundreds of People teams. Programming alone does not move the operating model. The structural work, the manager development, the ER infrastructure, and the listening cycles that close visibly are what produce the outcomes the company can actually measure. That is the work the function will be evaluated on over the next several years, and the People leaders who do it well will keep earning bigger seats at the table. For HR teams looking to start, the move that pays off fastest is usually the operational one. Audit one process this quarter. Pick the structural change with the highest impact. Build the documentation around it. Close the loop with employees so they can see what changed and why. The compound effect of doing that consistently across a year is bigger than any single program initiative. The People teams that take this approach end up running cultures that hold up under stress and operating models that the rest of the C-suite trusts. That is the standard the function is moving toward, and the AllVoices customer base is full of teams already getting there.
If you want to see how AllVoices captures values-based decision-making across hiring, performance, and ER work, you can request a walkthrough of the platform. Book a tour of AllVoices.
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