Values are a real differentiator. Unless they’re not real.

Every brand deck has a values slide. Usually five words. Usually bold. Usually floating over a photo of diverse people laughing at laptops.

Integrity. Innovation. Excellence. Collaboration. Customer first.

Lovely words. Entirely useless.

When values are picked for optics, not truth

Too often, values are chosen based on how a business wants to be seen, not how it actually behaves. They become a wish list. A bit of corporate cosplay.

The problem is simple. If your values are aspirational rather than real, they stop being a differentiator and start being wallpaper. Nobody notices wallpaper.

Real values are not flattering. They are specific. Sometimes uncomfortable. They describe what it genuinely feels like to work in your business on a random Tuesday afternoon. Although that can be your best Tuesday afternoon, not the worst.

If your culture is fast, demanding and commercially sharp, say that. If you are obsessive about detail and slow to change, own that too. Truth is magnetic. Fiction is exhausting.

When values become marketing slogans

When values drift into pure marketing, the damage runs deeper than a cringe-worthy careers page.

Employees see straight through it

People are not naïve. If the website says “we put people first” but the internal culture rewards burnout and silence, engagement falls off a cliff.

You cannot gaslight your workforce into belief. They live the brand every day. If the story does not match the experience, trust erodes. Once trust goes, retention usually follows.

Candidates are doing their homework

Sites like Glassdoor, Fishbowl and Blind have changed the balance of power. Candidates compare your polished employer brand with unfiltered reviews in seconds.

If your values are fiction, recruitment becomes an uphill battle. The best people are not looking for perfection. They are looking for honesty.

Public backlash moves fast

Social media has no patience for virtue signalling without substance. When businesses talk loudly about being progressive, inclusive or ethical but act differently behind closed doors, they get called out.

Google learned that the hard way when employee walkouts challenged the gap between public positioning and internal reality.

Hypocrisy spreads faster than any campaign you will ever run.

The cost of bullshitting your workforce

Lying about values is not just a bad look. It is expensive.

You pay in disengagement.
You pay in churn.
You pay in weaker recruitment.
You pay in brand erosion.

And you pay again when you have to run culture programmes to fix a problem that started with five dishonest words on a slide.

The solution: real values or none at all

Here is a slightly uncomfortable take.

If your primary driver is maximising shareholder return, say so. Not every employee is searching for spiritual fulfilment at work. Many are commercially minded. They respect clarity.

What people struggle with is spin.

That said, most strong businesses do have real values. They just have not done the work to articulate them properly.

Finding them is hard. It means listening. It means surfacing tensions. It means describing who you are at your best and at your worst. But when you get it right, the payoff is significant.

Real values do three powerful things:

1. They align your people around how you actually operate.

2. They help new hires understand quickly what good looks like.

3. They shape decisions, from how you answer the phone to how you price your work.

And when your people live those values consistently, clients notice. Prospects feel it. The experience becomes coherent.

That is when values stop being decoration and start becoming design.

When your culture, your brand and your behaviour line up, trust builds. And trust, in business terms, is gold dust.