Today’s best employees work for companies that exhibit strong work values, but companies that truly lead with principles are hard to find. In a 2023 Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning survey, 77% of senior leaders viewed empathy as important, but the majority of respondents said their leaders didn’t consistently exhibit empathy. Similarly, more than 80% of respondents ranked integrity as highly important, but less than two-thirds reported seeing it in their leaders.
We at AnswerNet believe in the transformative power of human interaction and dedicate ourselves to helping businesses like yours lead with crucial work values. Today, we’re going to examine the extraordinary work values that boost businesses beyond their limits and discuss some simple steps you can take to build your best team.
The Benefits of Employee Satisfaction
A paper published in 2023 in the International Research Journal of Management Sociology & Humanity compiled research from multiple organizations and found a clear positive correlation between work environment and employee job performance. They present a model similar to the one below as a visual representation of the way work environment, employee productivity and job satisfaction intertwine.
Intuitively, we understand that the work culture begins with upper management and surveys back us up. According to Gartner, 2025 is the third year in a row where leader and manager development is the number one priority for surveyed HR leaders. The question is, how do we develop our managers to lead with strong work values?
Build Strong Work Values With Support
The process of building your best team begins with support. Leaders have the unique role of supporting both themselves and their people, so let’s examine both ways to build.
How Leaders Support Themselves
Professor Adam Galinsky of Columbia Business School notes three roles a manager can play to instill strong values in themselves: visionary, exemplar and mentor. To become a visionary, leaders prioritize optimism, vitality and simplicity; to become an exemplar, leaders behave with integrity, courage and passion; and to become a mentor, leaders treat their people as people, not objects.
How Leaders Support Their People
Harvard Professional and Executive Development notes three ways a manager can use their work values to support their people: mastery, autonomy and purpose. To promote mastery, a manager can provide feedback, advice and professional development opportunities; to promote autonomy, managers can encourage employees to work through solutions on their own, without micromanagement; and to promote purpose, managers can tell employees why they’re being assigned to their tasks and show them how they relate to the bigger workplace picture.
Build Your Best Team with AnswerNet
A reliable contact center partner can revitalize your values, elicit emotional responses from employees and present data-driven research with a human touch. If you’re looking for a reliable contact center partner, you’re in the right place.
AnswerNet works with 10,000+ clients and 1,200+ live agents because our contact center services are employee-approved. To learn how to lead with heart, reach out here or click the button below to get in contact.
