Strong company values aren't just words on your careers page. They're the decision-making framework that determines how your teams collaborate, how managers lead, and whether employees feel aligned with your mission.

Companies with clearly defined core values see measurable returns: research shows that when employees feel their organization embodies stated values, they're 27% more likely to report higher engagement and 23% more likely to stay beyond three years.

In hybrid and distributed workplaces, values matter even more. When your team is spread across time zones and office locations, shared principles become the connective tissue that holds culture together.

This guide breaks down what core values actually are, why they drive retention and performance, and how to develop values that reflect who you really are as a company.

What are company core values?

Core values are the fundamental beliefs that guide how your company operates. They shape everyday decisions, inform how team members interact with each other and customers, and define what behaviors get rewarded.

Think of them as your company's operating system. When someone asks "How do we handle this situation?" or "What's our approach to this problem?", your core values provide the answer.

Strong values are:

• Specific enough to guide decisions
• Authentic to how your company actually operates
• Consistently applied across all levels
• Used in hiring, performance reviews, and strategic planning

Weak values are generic buzzwords that could apply to any company. If your competitors could copy-paste your values onto their website without anyone noticing, they're not doing their job.

Why core values matter for hybrid teams

The shift to hybrid work has made values more important, not less. When teams aren't physically together, you can't rely on proximity or osmosis to transmit culture. Your values need to be explicit, visible, and actively reinforced.

Here's what happens when you get values right:

Retention improves. Employees want to work for organizations whose principles align with their own. This is especially true for younger workers: studies show that Millennials and Gen Z actively seek employers who share their values on social responsibility, sustainability, and work-life integration. Strong retention strategies start with cultural alignment.

Hiring gets easier. Clear values attract candidates who'll thrive in your environment and filter out those who won't. This saves time and reduces early-stage turnover.

Decision-making speeds up. When values are clear, teams can make judgment calls without escalating everything up the chain. Your values become a shared decision-making framework.

Culture stays consistent across locations. Whether your team is in the office, working remotely, or at a coworking space, values keep everyone aligned on what matters and how work gets done. Learn more about managing distributed workforces effectively.

Engagement increases. People perform better when they feel their daily work connects to something meaningful. Values provide that connection between tasks and purpose. Gallup research shows that only 32% of employees feel strongly connected to their organization's mission, representing a major opportunity for companies that clarify and communicate their values effectively.

50 core value examples to inspire your list

Here are 50 values that companies use to define their culture and guide behavior. Consider this a starting point, not a checklist. The best values are tailored to your specific company, not borrowed wholesale from someone else.

• Accountability
• Adaptability
• Ambition
• Authenticity
• Balance
• Belonging
• Boldness
• Collaboration
• Commitment
• Communication
• Community
• Compassion
• Courage
• Creativity
• Curiosity
• Customer obsession
• Diversity
• Efficiency
• Empathy
• Excellence
• Fairness
• Flexibility
• Growth mindset
• Honesty
• Hospitality
• Humility
• Inclusion
• Innovation
• Integrity
• Joy
• Kaizen (continuous improvement)
• Kindness
• Leadership
• Learning
• Long-term thinking
• Loyalty
• Openness
• Passion
• People-first
• Persistence
• Quality
• Reliability
• Respect
• Responsibility
• Results-driven
• Safety
• Scrappiness
• Service
• Simplicity
• Stewardship
• Sustainability
• Teamwork
• Transparency
• Trust

Remember: it's better to have 4-6 values that actually guide behavior than 15 generic ones that nobody remembers.

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12 companies with strong core values

Let's look at how real companies define and apply their values. These examples show the range of approaches, from concise lists to detailed frameworks.

Google

Google frames their values as "Ten things we know to be true," which includes principles like focusing on the user, doing one thing really well, and moving fast. Their tenth value captures their ambition: "Great just isn't good enough."

Amazon

Amazon's four core values reflect their approach to business:

• Customer obsession over competitor focus
• Passion for invention
• Commitment to operational excellence
• Long-term thinking

These values show up in how Amazon makes product decisions, allocates resources, and measures success.

Netflix

Netflix takes a people-first approach with values that emphasize getting great people together as a "dream team." Their values include judgment, courage, communication, inclusion, integrity, passion, innovation, and curiosity. Each value comes with specific behaviors that demonstrate what it looks like in practice.

Patagonia

Patagonia's values center on sustainability and simplicity. They're committed to using sustainable materials, reducing waste, conserving resources, and limiting environmental impact. Their values aren't just internal guidelines; they drive product decisions and supply chain choices.

Airbnb

Airbnb's core value is "Belong Anywhere," reflecting their belief that everyone should have opportunities to experience different places and cultures safely. This value shapes everything from product features to community guidelines.

Zappos

Zappos built their entire brand around "Deliver Wow Through Service." This single principle drives their customer service approach, hiring decisions, and daily operations. When a value is this clear, everyone knows what success looks like.

IKEA

The Swedish furniture company's values include togetherness, caring for people and planet, cost-consciousness, simplicity, and constant renewal. These values explain both their product design philosophy and their operational approach.

Ben & Jerry's

Ben & Jerry's operates with three interconnected missions: a product mission to make fantastic ice cream, an economic mission to manage for sustainable growth, and a social mission to use their company to make the world better. This three-part framework keeps purpose integrated with business operations.

Salesforce

Salesforce's emphasis on trust and transparency permeates their company culture. They strive for openness in internal and external communications, building trust throughout the organization and with customers.

Trader Joe's

This grocery chain lists seven straightforward values including integrity, being product-driven, delivering wow customer service, avoiding bureaucracy, and "Kaizen" (continuous improvement). The clarity makes them easy to remember and apply.

Marriott International

Marriott's values focus on action: putting people first, pursuing excellence, embracing change, acting with integrity, and serving the world. The emphasis on "doing" rather than just "believing" keeps the values grounded in behavior.

Etsy

Etsy's values as a marketplace for unique goods include committing to their craft, minimizing waste, embracing differences, digging deeper, and leading with optimism. These values reflect both their environmental commitments and their approach to building community.

How to develop your company's core values

Defining values isn't a top-down exercise where leadership writes five words and calls it done. The best values emerge from honest reflection about who you are and what behaviors already drive success in your organization.

Start with your current culture

Look at what's actually happening in your company today. What behaviors get rewarded? What traits do your best employees share? When you hire someone who doesn't work out, what's usually the mismatch?

Talk to employees, managers, customers, and partners. Ask what they think your company stands for and how it's different from other places they've worked. Pay attention to the patterns in their responses.

Identify what matters for your future

Your values should support where you're going, not just reflect where you've been. If you're scaling rapidly, maybe "scrappiness" or "adaptability" needs to be explicit. If you're shifting to a hybrid model, "flexibility" or "autonomy" might be essential.

Think about your business strategy and ask: what cultural attributes do we need to execute this successfully? Your values should enable your strategy, not work against it.

Make each value specific and actionable

Generic values don't guide behavior. "Innovation" could mean anything. "Scrappy innovation that ships fast" tells people how to act.

For each value, define what it looks like in practice:

• What behaviors demonstrate this value?
• How would someone violate this value?
• What decisions would this value influence?

If you can't answer these questions, your value is too vague.

Choose values you can actually uphold

Don't list "work-life balance" as a value if your culture expects people to be online 24/7. Don't claim "transparency" if leadership makes decisions behind closed doors.

Values you don't live up to do more harm than no values at all. They create cynicism and distrust. Pick principles you're genuinely committed to reinforcing, even when it's difficult or expensive.

Test them against real situations

Take recent decisions or challenges your company faced and ask: would our proposed values have helped us navigate these situations? If the values don't provide clarity on actual dilemmas, refine them.

Good values should help you make hard choices, not just easy ones.

Involve your team in the process

Values that employees help shape feel more authentic and get adopted faster. Run workshops, send surveys, or form a cross-functional working group to gather input and iterate on language.

This doesn't mean designing by committee. Leadership still needs to make final decisions, but incorporating diverse perspectives creates values that resonate across your organization.

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How to communicate and reinforce your values

Defining values is step one. Making them real is the harder work.

Build them into hiring and onboarding

Screen candidates for value alignment, not just skills. Ask behavioral questions that reveal how they've made decisions in past roles. During onboarding, explain each value, share stories that bring them to life, and clarify how they'll be evaluated against these principles.

Use values in performance reviews

If you claim "collaboration" is a core value but only assess individual contributions, people will ignore it. Build your values into how you evaluate, promote, and compensate employees.

Ask managers to reference specific values when giving feedback. When someone gets promoted, explain which values they exemplified.

Recognize people who live the values

Celebrate examples of employees demonstrating your values. This can be as simple as shout-outs in team meetings or as formal as awards tied to specific principles. Research from Achievers shows that when employees feel aligned with their organization's values, they're 9x more committed to their roles.

Public recognition shows that values aren't just aspirational; they're the behaviors that actually get rewarded in your organization.

Let leaders model them consistently

Values are only credible if leadership demonstrates them, especially during difficult situations. When executives make values-based decisions that cost something—turning down a profitable opportunity that conflicts with your principles, for example—it sends a powerful signal. Building trust in the workplace starts with leadership consistency.

If leadership doesn't live the values, no amount of posters or presentations will make them stick.

Make them visible and accessible

Don't hide your values in an employee handbook nobody reads. Put them where people see them: on your website, in Slack channels, on office walls, in email signatures.

The more present they are, the more likely people are to reference them when making decisions.

Review and evolve them

As your company grows and changes, your values might need refinement. Set a regular cadence—maybe annually—to assess whether your current values still serve you.

Ask: are these the principles guiding our best decisions? Do new employees understand and embrace them? Are there gaps between our stated values and actual behavior?

If you find misalignment, it's okay to adjust. Just be transparent about why the change is happening.

Supporting hybrid teams with workplace tools

Clear values create cultural alignment. But hybrid teams also need practical infrastructure to stay connected and productive. That's where workplace management software comes in. Implementing hybrid work best practices requires both strong values and the right tools.

Gable helps companies coordinate hybrid teams, manage office space, and create purposeful in-person experiences that reinforce your culture. From desk booking to visitor management to space analytics, Gable gives you the tools to make flexibility work without losing cohesion.

Values in action: living your principles daily

Defining values is just the beginning. The real work is embedding them into how your company operates, making them the default framework for decisions at every level.

When someone faces an ethical gray area, do they know which value to apply? When a manager has to choose between hitting a deadline and maintaining quality, is there a clear principle guiding that decision? That's the test of whether your values are working.

Companies that successfully operationalize their values create cultures where people feel confident making judgment calls aligned with organizational priorities. This speeds up decision-making, increases autonomy, and builds trust across teams.

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