Employer Branding
Core values as the steppingstone towards growth
28 FEBRUARY 2022
“It’s almost like building a house. We need to build the foundation first. Otherwise, we might notice that it will have some cracks and be unstable. We may try to fix it, but eventually, we will realize that we need to start from the beginning.” Anna Fredrixon, Chief Human Resource Officer at Kry
Every couple of years, an innovation or a new way of work comes along and fundamentally disrupts. One could easily argue that Apple disrupted the world with its iPhone, and we should, of course, not forget Amazon that has changed an entire world’s expectations on e-commerce.
But what if we told you – years ago – that you could have a doctor’s appointment in five minutes, no matter where in the world you are? Imagine just logging onto a device and getting help right away. Would you believe it? We didn’t. But Kry, with their international brand name Livi, made that possible. And it did – indeed – change the whole healthcare game.
Culture in the middle of globalization and change
During our third employer branding summit in September 2021, we were honored to have Anna Fredrixon, Chief Human Resource Officer at Kry, with us on the digital stage. With a welcoming smile, which invited all the people behind the screens, to deep-dive into the question of how you translate culture with new strategic goals, destinations, and a new international market. The answer? By building bridges between culture, languages, and nationalities.
Anna Fredrixon, the key person behind the cultural success at Kry, came in as the first person in HR. Nothing was really in place, so Anna’s first key initiative was the core values. Because when you have them in place – you can start building the people and culture processes.
Like all our speakers, Anna got several questions from the event chat and from our moderators. Here are her answers.
What does a process to implement core values look like?
I worked with the whole company – around 30 employees at that time – on establishing the values. I asked everyone what values they associate themselves with at Kry. We started analyzing the material and had a session with the management team to discuss the values. We asked ourselves: “What do they mean? Are these values the ones we aspire to have?”
When we all agreed, we launched them. I remember the first Christmas party at that time, where we had a big workshop where all employees could discuss scenarios on how they would react in different situations – based on the values. It was after that launch we could start building all the people processes.
What role does the culture at Kry play in your growth as a company?
I think the core values are fundamental in a company. It’s almost like building a house. We need to build the foundation first. Otherwise, we might notice that it will have some cracks and be unstable. We may try to fix it, but eventually, we will realize that we need to start from the beginning. The same thing comes with values. I believe that we could not have scaled at the pace we did if we didn’t have the core values in place. Values are the foundation; they should support us and execute the strategy – so that we can reach our goals.
What challenges regarding the values have you faced?
It has been challenging to grow as fast as we do, especially when entering new markets, and in the middle of a pandemic. We realized we didn’t only need a good hiring process – but also onboarding processes. You need people to feel welcomed and that the expectations received in the hiring process, should either be true or exceed the expectations. It shouldn’t feel like a sales pitch. People should feel: “Yes, this is exactly what I signed up for.”
We started making the onboarding process scalable – making sure people could do activities in alignment with their onboarding, digitally. We also constantly review the onboarding process, because at first, we were a Swedish company. But now, when we have expanded to new markets, we need to look at the local touches. That’s why we always look at the onboarding survey – to see what we can do better.
Lastly, what have been your three most impactful actions when developing these living values?
- We hire people who believe in our values – who behave according to them. We have never compromised on that.
- We apply our values in everything we do. We do performance management, promotions, onboarding, offboarding based on them.
- We have made our values sticky. They are simple and everyone can remember them. You can have super sophisticated values, but I think that you don’t need to overcomplicate them. The most important thing is that people understand them.
