Refreshing Company Values
Swift
The Goal
Relaunch the company’s values
Storytelling was used to
Realign the company’s culture with its core values
Support community well-being
Revalue employee wellness
What They Said
“The On Your Feet sessions were incredibly helpful for our employees. They took [our values] from being theoretical sayings and words and showed us what they looked like in action.”
Maren Elliott, Chief Talent Officer, Swift Agency What Was Asked
Swift is a digital agency that started in Portland, Oregon, and works with clients such as Google, Starbucks, and Twitter. From humble beginnings, it rapidly grew into a world-renowned boutique powerhouse in the digital realm. It’s no surprise there were growing pains.
The company leadership realized they needed to relaunch Swift’s values. On Your Feet was brought in to help refresh these values through story, since the values were foundational to Swift’s culture and needed to be top-of-mind again.
What We Did
We used storytelling because stories have the power to communicate the subtle, complex, and emotional information that is embedded in a company’s core values.
On Your Feet helped Swift reintroduce their values by finding, sharing, and generating stories with employees through a company-wide initiative that involved a series of interactive workshops and all-hands meetings. We also helped create visual artifacts and a Swift Values Ninjas team that kept the values/story work alive after the training was complete.
What Happened
On Your Feet helped Swift recognize gaps between how the company’s culture was supposed to manifest and how it actually manifested.
Hundreds of ideas were generated, helping leadership realign the company with its core values. Here’s one example: Leadership learned employees believed taking time off would be frowned upon, although Swift’s culture was all about supporting community well-being.
Through On Your Feet’s work with Swift, leadership decided to rename “sick days” as “wellness days” to encourage employees to use the time to recharge, run errands, or just spend time with family. Swift quickly saw increased employee satisfaction and people taking more “wellness days.”
