Making a difference

One Hour, One Value, One Change

This one-hour workshop was initially developed seven years ago by the UK Values Alliance, in collaboration with the Forward Institute, the RSA (the Royal Society for Arts) and PwC, as a simple, effective and practical way for organisations around the world to focus on their organisation’s values for just one hour.

Since then, we have had very positive feedback from many different kinds of organisations ranging from big multinationals to small local businesses and start-ups who told us that the one-hour session had been highly effective for them and they would recommend it for others.

Why are values so important to organisations?

The evidence shows that when organisations have strong values embedded in their culture they perform better and have higher levels of stakeholder engagement and satisfaction.

For instance, research published by PwC highlights that companies with distinctive and aligned cultures are 2 times more successful with execution, and 1.8 times more likely to show higher profitability and growth.

Moreover, consumers are increasingly critical of business practices that do not make a positive contribution to society. It is therefore important for companies to have a clear company story – the why, how and what of their existence. By aligning their own values with those of society, organisations can be powerful forces for positive change.

Please download our Values Guide for Organisations from this page to find out more about what values are, why they are important to organisations, and how to choose your values if you haven’t done so already.

What is the values gap and how to address it?

Most organisations have a clear statement of values. But the reality for many of these is that great sounding values can get trampled on in everyday life. It happens everywhere. There is a gap that grows between how we could live those values and how we actually behave – ‘the values gap’.

Printing out an organisation’s values and hanging them above the reception desk is not enough. The chosen values need to be brought to life and turned into daily habits and behaviours. These habits and behaviours need to extend to all the organisation’s stakeholders, including the communities that it is connected to. This needs consistent effort, constant encouragement, and ownership of the values throughout the whole organisation.

What is the Values Challenge workshop?

The Values Challenge is a one-hour workshop designed to highlight the importance of values to your organisation and to bring those values to life. It won’t close the values gap all by itself, but it can help kick-start the process and help empower ownership of the values throughout the organisation.

This year, reflecting the World Values Day 2024 theme of Bringing Values to Life, it challenges us to ask:

• To what extent are we really living the values of our organisation every day?
• What practical change – small or large – can we make that would help bring just one of those values to life in a more meaningful way?
• How we can do that in a way that will make a difference to us and really bring our values to life every day?

The Values Challenge is designed to be easy to organise, highly motivating and effective. We hope you will find it useful, inspiring and enriching.

If your organisation would like to join the Values Challenge, please sign up by clicking on the Take The Challenge button below and receive a free pack of resources which includes all the material and information you will need to run the workshop.