Company work culture is more than just flexible hours, free snacks, and company retreats. At its core, company work culture consists of a shared mission or purpose, driven by a set of values that create a positive and enjoyable work environment.
A successful business that works to establish strong values is a business headed toward excellence. If you’re wondering what today’s most successful tech giants care about the most, look no further. When the bottom line isn’t in the spotlight, these are the core values that guide today’s top tech companies—and the people who work for them.
You can find Google’s core values on a page of its website, titled “Ten things we know to be true.” Google founders first wrote these “10 Things” when Google was just a few years old, but the list is still revisited even today. Within the list you will find values pertaining to keeping focus on the user, championing democracy online, making money without doing evil, always seeking out more information, and more.
Microsoft
One of the most prolific tech veterans, Microsoft keeps it simple with just three core values: respect, integrity, and accountability. However, Microsoft widens the reach of these values considerably by showing examples on its website of how they are put into action, including innovation, diversity and inclusion, corporate social responsibility, and more.
Oracle
Founded in 1977, Oracle is known best for its branded database management systems. Much like Microsoft, Oracle values integrity and respect, but includes eight other core values such as customer satisfaction, communication, fairness, and ethics.
IBM
A technological mainstay, IBM boasts more than a century of dedication to excellence and innovation. And, like Microsoft, the company keeps its people focused on just three core values: dedication to every client’s success, innovation that matters—for our company and for the world, and trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.
Amazon
One of the world’s most successful companies, Amazon has enshrined its core values in the form of 14 Leadership Principles that guide the actions of its 800,000 employees every day of the week. These principles include such things as: customer obsession, invent and simplify, learn and be curious, think big, bias for action, and more.
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By Peter Economy, author, Wait, I’m the Boss?!? (Career Press, March 1, 2020)
Peter Economy is a best-selling business author, ghostwriter, developmental editor, and publishing consultant with more than 100 books to his credit (and more than 3 million copies sold). Peter’s book Managing For Dummies sold more than 600,000 copies, and his latest book Wait, I’m the Boss?!? was published in March 2020 by Career Press. He is The Leadership Guy on Inc.com and for more than a decade served as Associate Editor for Leader to Leader magazine—published by the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Forum in New York City.
