Why I always choose an employee’s core values over productivity
In my industry - holiday home rental management - there is a clear dividing line between success and failure. My company needs a certain occupancy rate in order to remain profitable. It’s a results-driven business and my staff need to be tuned into that reality.
And yet when I hire employees, and assess the performance of my current staff, there is one non-negotiable of what they must bring to the table… and it’s not their productivity.
For me, someone’s core values are a more effective way of measuring their worth to a company.
In recent years, there has been a narrative around the “cult of productivity”: the expectation of constant effort and constant returns. But I feel any leader - or indeed employee - who buys into this is missing the point.
Of course dedication and high performance is important, but it is also nothing without the right core values. I’m a lifelong Manchester United fan and under Sir Alex Ferguson’s leadership, the team had core values. No player was bigger than the collective and on a number of occasions, Sir Alex chose to get rid of his best-performing players - David Beckham in 2003 being the most high-profile example - when he judged they no longer demonstrated those values.
After he retired in 2013, there was less focus on players’ values. It’s no coincidence that despite spending more than £1bn on supposedly world-class players in the subsequent decade, United has not won the Premier League since Sir Alex left. It’s only under the latest manager, Eric ten Hag, that the team is on the right track again and it’s all down to recovering those values. The way he recently disposed of Cristiano Ronaldo - arguably the greatest player of all time - after constantly causing dressing room ruptures is evidence of this.
I have taken the same principles into business, especially since joining the UAE chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, which is where I first started to truly understand the importance of core values: that they are the fabric that builds a company.
When launching my own business from scratch, it forced me to ask myself: “What kind of personality am I? Who do I get along with? What do I believe in?” This in turn reveals the type of people you need to join you and I choose who I employ purely on the basis of whether or not their values align with the company's. Are they loyal? Do they show passion in everything they do? Do they have an "all-in" attitude? Do they want to improve themselves every day?
I once let someone go who, skillset wise, was A+. They did everything right and you couldn’t ask for a better employee in terms of job delivery. But their values were completely unaligned with our company culture and we let them go. They weren’t loyal, didn’t have the passion for work and did not have a “make it happen” attitude. In short, their high productivity was no use to us.
On the flipside, even if someone’s performance is not quite up to scratch, if they have the right core values I believe in training them because it’ll be worth it in the long run.
Another person we had was six out of 10, skillset wise, when he started in a junior role. His reporting wasn’t precise, for example, and he wasn’t very organised. But his core values were 100% aligned with the company. He stayed with us because we wanted to make him better, and in terms of performance he came a long way, ending up in a management position.
That long-term outlook is why I think companies should always look to compromise on performance delivery, and make the time to help people improve this, providing their attitude and values are there. When someone’s productivity is great but their values aren’t aligned, they will 100% hold back the business because they detach teams from what they’re trying to achieve. You have to get rid of them.
After all, you can’t train a values system - that only comes naturally.
