7 companies with strong core values to learn from

When starting a business, one of the first things you should do is define your core values.

Core values are the main principles and beliefs that guide a company’s actions, decision-making process and overall behaviour. These values shape its organisational culture, influence how it operates, and determine how it interacts with employees, customers and the wider community.

To help you define your own, we’ve highlighted seven leading companies with strong core values and what you can learn from them – inspiring to shape your own business principles.

The importance of core values

Core values serve as a foundation for a company’s identity and organisational culture. They help to ensure that decisions are consistent with its mission and goals, fostering a cohesive work culture where employees are aligned around shared principles. When values and culture work together, they create a strong sense of purpose and direction, guiding employee behaviour and decision-making.

Strong core values also contribute to a company’s brand identity, building trust and loyalty among customers and stakeholders. When adhering to their values, organisations are better equipped to face challenges, maintain integrity and achieve long term success.

Core values can evolve, especially as a company’s strategic direction or culture changes. This can be due to changes in leadership, market dynamics or internal growth. A reassessment and adjustment of values to reflect these new priorities and goals might be needed. Adapting core values thoughtfully ensures they remain relevant and continue to support the organisation’s vision and success.

7 companies with the best core values

Several companies are well-known for their strong core cores, which have helped them build successful cultures and brand identities. Here are 7 prime examples.

1. Starbucks embraces courage and celebrates joy

Whether you love it or hate it, the Starbucks brand is a global phenomenon. But coffee isn’t the only thing it’s known for. The company is also renowned for its strong commitment to inclusivity, exceptional customer service and creating a welcoming environment. Its core values are:

• Craft: Pursuing growth through continuous learning and teaching, embracing the rigour of details across all roles – delivering excellence through passion and creativity.
• Courage: Endorsing difficult conversations to foster improvement with respect, pursuing bold ideas beyond its comfort zone, and always doing the right thing, even when it’s difficult.
• Results: Consistently achieving goals with focus, integrity and drive, constantly innovating to stay ahead while exceeding customer expectations.
• Belonging: Actively listening and connecting with warmth and transparency. Recognising each person for who they are and treating each other with dignity and care.
• Joy: The company takes pride in its work and has fun doing it, celebrating each other and its wins while fostering a positive atmosphere that brings out the best in everyone.
  

2. Ben & Jerry’s craft change through social justice

Ben & Jerry’s delicious ice cream is one thing, but the brand’s dedication to social justice, environmental sustainability and ethical sourcing is equally remarkable. The company actively advocates for progressive causes and integrates its core values into every aspect of its operations. The company sticks with these principles through the following values:

• Human rights & dignity: Committed to honouring the rights of people to live with liberty, security, self-esteem and freedom of expression and protest, as well as the opportunity to provide for their own needs and contribute to society.
• Social & economic justice: Aims to achieve equity, opportunity and justice for communities globally that have been historically marginalised, recognising the correlation to fair livelihoods enabling individuals, families and communities to thrive.
• Environmental projection, restoration & regeneration: Dedicated to making a positive environmental impact by revitalising degraded natural environments, enabling increased diversity and abundance of ecosystems.
  

3. Airbnb embraces hospitality and entrepreneurial spirit

Founded on the principles of community and belonging, Airbnb aims to create a world where anyone can feel at home anywhere. In part, this is achieved through its core values, which are:

• Champion the mission: This means staying true to the company’s mission of creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere and contribute to its global community.
• Be a host: Embrace the spirit of hospitality by building a welcoming and inclusive environment for guests and hosts alike.
• Embrace the adventure: Approach challenges with an open mind and a willingness to innovate, seeing every experience as an opportunity for growth and learning.
• Be a cereal entrepreneur: Employees are encouraged to think like entrepreneurs – adopting a proactive, solution-oriented approach and a willingness to experiment and take risks.
  

4. Netflix drives innovation through smart judgement

Netflix is a global leader in streaming entertainment, with its extensive library of films, TV shows and original content. The company is committed to delivering quality entertainment experiences while building a dynamic workplace culture based on these values:

• Judgement: Netflix values making smart choices and data-driven decisions. It prioritises using data to understand customer preferences and optimise content delivery, ensuring that decisions are informed, effective and aligned with goals.
• Selflessness: Employees are encouraged to focus on the company’s best interest over personal or team gain. Employees should be humble and open-minded about ideas and help others succeed.
• Courage: Encourages employees to take risks and make bold decisions, even if they fail, to drive progress and innovation. This supports a culture where experimentation is embraced and failure is seen as an opportunity for growth.
• Inclusion: Emphasises creating a diverse and equitable workplace with people from different backgrounds, identities, values and cultures. It encourages moving beyond personal biases and respecting everyone, regardless of their background and position.
• Candour: Employees should willingly receive and give feedback and be open about what’s working and what needs to be improved, including admitting to mistakes. This allows employees to feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ensures that challenges are tackled effectively.
• Curiosity: This means fostering a culture of continuous learning and curiosity, encouraging employees to ask questions and seek out new ideas. This also includes being open to other people’s ideas and being humble about what they’re yet to learn.
• Resilience: Emphasises the importance of bouncing back from setbacks and maintaining a positive and adaptive mindset in the face of challenges and changing circumstances. Helps the company to navigate obstacles, sustain innovation and remain agile in a rapidly evolving industry.
• Creativity: The ability to think outside the box and approach problems with innovative solutions. This includes welcoming new ideas, being passionate and persistent and valuing artistic expression.
  

5. Spotify’s creative thinking

Spotify connects millions of users with its vast library of music and podcasts. The company continually evolves to stay at the forefront of the digital music industry. Its core values include:

• Innovative: This includes creative thinking and not being afraid to take risks or fail through the “fail fast” mindset. Each mistake is seen as a valuable lesson, providing insights that drive innovation and future improvement.
• Collaborative: Teamwork is highly valued in its workplace culture. Everyone plays an essential part and has the opportunity to contribute new ideas and practices, regardless of their rank.
• Sincere: Traditional office politics, such as micro-managing, are a no-no. Instead, employees should lead with transparency and engage with open minds, encouraging feelings of mutual trust and respect.
• Playful: This simply means that the company doesn’t take itself too seriously. Whether through celebrating successes or its perks and benefits, Spotify embraces a fun, lighthearted approach to work.
  

6. Kellogg’s fosters integrity and accountability

Having operated for over 100 years, we’re all familiar with the famous name behind our favourite cereals. Over that time, the breakfast food giant has defined its core values that truly represent the kind of employees it wants to attract and nurture. These include:

• Integrity: This means demonstrating a commitment to integrity and ethics and showing respect for individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, styles, approaches and ideas.
• Accountability: Employees should take responsibility for their actions and results. This also includes finding solutions, committing to decisions and involving others in plans that affect them.
• Passion: Promoting a positive, optimistic and fun environment, as well as serving customers through the high quality of Kellogg’s products and services.
• Humility: Values openness and curiosity to learn, seeking and providing honest feedback, learning from mistakes and being open to personal change and continuous improvement.
• Simplicity: Looking to continually simplify and improve processes, procedures and activities, as well as tackling any issues directly and openly.
• Results: Achieving results and celebrating them, working as a team to accomplish results, making people feel valued and appreciated, and adopting a “can do” attitude to get the job done.
  

7. Salesforce builds trust among customers

Saleforce is the leading global provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software – revolutionising the way businesses manage relationships with customers through its innovative cloud-based solutions. Its primary core values are:

• In trust we trust: The number one value of the company, Salesforce builds trust with its stakeholders by leading with ethics and ensuring its technology is reliable and secure while being devoted to transparency, deep listening and delivering on promises.
• When customers succeed, we succeed: Helping customers succeed is a top priority, becoming a reliable partner and guiding them to help their own clients through the effective use of its products and services.
• Sparking change with innovation: Empowering customers to establish and nurture trusted relationships with clients worldwide. By creating connections, it tackles big challenges and helps businesses, people and communities thrive.
• Equality for all: With the belief of working stronger together, Salesforce aims to build a more inclusive and diverse workplace and work towards a fairer world – seeing it as a unique opportunity to ensure everyone benefits from products, experiences and policies that promote equality.
• Net zero, now: Taking bold action to tackle the climate crisis, leveraging the full strength of Salesforce to speed up the global path to net zero – understanding that the health of the planet and being of vulnerable communities depend on a stable climate.
  

Conclusion

Defining and adhering to core values is essential for any business aiming to build a strong, cohesive culture and a trustworthy brand. By examining the core values of the examples above, you can gain valuable insights into creating and sustaining a positive and effective workplace of your own.

These values underscore the importance of integrity, inclusivity, innovation and accountability in shaping organisational behaviour and driving long term success. Living by these principles not only helps businesses align operations with missions but also creates a supportive environment where employees and customers feel valued.

You can take these examples as a guide for crafting your own core values. Drawing inspiration from these leading companies will enable you to tailor principles that resonate with your organisation’s mission and vision.