With 60+ staff to lead, David Morel ensures values are baked in to workplace culture and monitored regularly and in every office – including overseas. Here he shares how values become part of the DNA.
“A company’s values will often be the things which are important to the founder, the mainstay of why they started their business. For me, it came from asking myself ‘what do I feel passionate about; what do I want to achieve with the business as the vehicle?
“And if a company’s values aren’t inbuilt within the DNA of an organisation’s leadership, then they could be the equivalent of a set of emperor’s clothes.”
David Morel is chief executive of Tiger Recruitment, with offices in the UK, New York, Dublin, Dubai, and Zurich. He set the business up in 2001.
“I can’t stand the negative impact of ‘glass half empty’ people, and if a company has a set of values it lives by, it is more likely its people will walk into a room and energise it,” he maintains.
“That’s because values are about bringing out the best in people. “Values have to have meaning to define behaviours. They can’t be slogans. So in addition to ‘positivity’ we have ‘excellence’, which is about people wanting to work with those who are not just good at what they do, but are focused on delivering it. ‘Integrity’ - working with people I trust, whether they are internal or external, is one of the biggest things which matter to me. ‘Dedication’ is about demonstrating that we deliver what we say we will, and ‘gravitas’ is having the experience and knowhow to go the extra mile, that we are prepared to have awkward conversations and address issues which might be difficult to talk about
“And we come back to those values at our quarterly meetings for everyone in the business. We don’t go through them point by point, but what we discuss relates to our values. Communication keeps the values alive, and if companies have a failing in this regard it’s that they don’t invite or provide feedback afterwards. “Values give people context and structure to operate to their maximum capability; the values driven company is not an environment for lone wolves. And if values are predominantly aspirational rather than actual, the proof isn’t in the pudding. The values driven company has to be rooted in reality, not intention.
“People have values in their personal lives and increasingly expect to import them into where and how they work.” Values have to be a constant touchstone, Morel suggests. “Targets have to be achieved of course, but the objectives have to be set from the values perspective,” he says.
“Part of our career appraisal process is that we ask everyone to score themselves, one to five, on how they have performed by our values. “My view is that ’integrity’ should get scores in the range of three to four because part of integrity is honesty - and that is always about knowing you can do better, and wanting to, rather than ticking a box.
A values-driven company will provide an environment where people can speak freely without fearing it could have a detrimental effect on their career prospects. Otherwise the whiff of office politics becomes apparent “Usually career progression is associated with status, and one of the struggles in recruitment is that the usual path is into management. “But actually good consultants can make terrible managers, so a values based approach would be to ensure they can continue doing what they are best at as well as having enhanced status, appropriate progression and responsibilities.”
According to Morel, while a company can have a set of values, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is a values driven. “That is determined by whether its values are reflected by its behaviours,” he suggests. “So in essence a company is either values driven or it isn’t.
“What I have found is that for a company with offices in different jurisdictions it is essential that the leaders in each country really understand our values, because they need to replicate them in locations which will have their own cultures.”
Morel interviews every person who comes into the business. “In the first fifteen minutes I can pick up enough to identify whether the person is likely to subscribe to our values,” he says, “and that is because our values are specific, but generalities. “
We have increased our team from 34 to 65 in the last year, and applying our values mean we have been able to scale by bringing in the right people.\
Of course, in life, there is always going to be the proverbial exception which proves the rule, which can come about as a consequence of past behavioural traits re-emerging.
“We appointed a new head of a division after several interviews with them,” recalls Morel. “They were making us a lot of money, but as time went on they didn’t always turn up when they were meant to, and their response to a colleague’s request for help was that they would look into it when they had time.
“This wasn’t what you’d expect from someone following our values, and what message did that send to the team? None of those behaviours were aligned to our values, so we worked with the person to see what could be done. But I realised the reality is that keeping someone on if they are making you money at the expense of flying in the face of your values, that can poison the organisation.
“When he was manager at Manchester United, Sir Alex Ferguson would move people on no matter how good they were if they didn’t fit the team dynamic. “From my perspective, values make a business a more attractive proposition because it means it can demonstrate loyalty, sustainability, and longer term relationships.
“We have been looking at whether we should be going on an acquisition trail, but one of the great challenges is how to find companies with the same values and whether we would retain their top billers if we needed to introduce our set of values - because this is a people business.