Values Alignment and What It Means for Your Organization

Terry Crews, actor, former NFL player, and Wellhub global ambassador, spoke at last month's SHRM annual conference advocating that employee wellbeing should be treated as a foundation rather than a perk.

One of the most impactful topics he discussed was the direct link between his own success and values alignment. Whole-person wellness, he argued, isn't only about fitness or rest, it's about knowing what you stand for and letting that guide your choices.

Crews described turning down millions of dollars rather than promote gambling or alcohol brands that conflicted with who he wanted to be. That clarity, he said, shaped everything that followed: "setting those values paved the way for who I am today."

He framed it as a question worth asking before any decision: "What do you value?" His own answer was rooted in service and wanting to help people become "the best version of themselves."

It's a compelling personal story. But the harder question for any organization is: does your company have as clear an answer?

Why This Matters More Than Another Wellness Perk

The lesson for any workplace is that no perk fixes work that feels empty inside. Employees stay because they see their organization's stated values actually playing out in daily practices: how decisions are made, how people are treated, what gets rewarded. The gap most companies fall into isn't a lack of values, it's a lack of practice.

Where C-Suites Should Look: Values at Every Level

Translating values from statement to practice isn't a single initiative - it has to show up at every layer of the organization. A few places to start:

• Strategic decisions. When your leadership team evaluates a new market, partnership, or vendor relationship, are stated values part of the actual decision criteria, or only referred to after the fact to justify a choice already made? Crews turning down endorsements is memorable because it cost him something. Values that never cost the organization anything aren't really operating as values.

• Manager behavior. Frontline and mid-level managers translate culture more than any policy document does. If managers aren't equipped (or held accountable) to model the organization's values in how they coach, discipline, and recognize people, the values stop at the leadership level and never reach the employees who need to feel them.

• Hiring and promotion. Are candidates and internal candidates ever evaluated against organizational values, or only against technical competencies? Promoting someone whose behavior contradicts stated values sends a louder message than any mission statement.

• Performance management and rewards. What actually gets rewarded? Reward systems reveal an organization's real values faster than any values statement does. Misalignment here quietly undermines everything else.

• Everyday operations. Meeting norms, how mistakes are handled, how customer conflicts are resolved - these small, repeated moments are where employees form their real sense of whether the organization means what it says.

The Takeaway for Leadership

The real difference maker is whether an organization has built its values into the systems that shape daily behavior. Every hire, performance review, and management decision either reflects those values or quietly contradicts them. These moments determine whether employees see an organization's values as genuine or just marketing.

If Terry's story got you thinking about whether your organization's values actually show up in daily decisions, that's exactly the conversation we love having. Unitas Consulting helps leadership teams translate values into practice - reach out to see how.