Disclaimer: These communications are intended for the employees of HB Global. We recognize that the general public will have access. The views expressed in these communications represent Bob Whalen in the context of HB Global and may not apply to broader audiences.
At HB Global, we are doers. We handle whatever task is in front of us, we step up to help our teammates, and we put the work in each day for our own personal and professional growth. This “doer” mentality is directly connected with how we approach our mission and values.
We don’t just talk about our mission and values to check a box. We are fully committed to these core tenets and believe it’s crucial to have this engagement from every single person within the organization.
So you may be asking, “Why are we talking about this? We know our mission and values.”
Just five short years ago, HB Global had only five divisions. Today, we house 10 divisions and continue to evaluate growth prospects. That’s a lot of growth in a short amount of time, which also creates a lot of opportunity for the message behind our mission and values to get muffled or lost with all the new faces.
It’s important that we can do more than just memorize our mission and values. We need to have a full understanding of what these mean, how we can act on them to benefit HB Global, and also how HB Global acts on these to benefit each team member.
So let’s break it down further to take a closer look at the intentions behind what our mission is and WHY it’s important as well as how our most foundational core value of TRUST comes into play. As we explore these intentions throughout the year, we hope that this creates clarity, provokes deeper thought in our day-to-day work, and promotes a great team mentality.
What is our mission?
At HB Global, our mission is to empower employee owners to make this a great place to work and create value. Our core values of Trust, Team, Grit, and Growth support this mission. The mission, paired with these values positions each employee owner, HB Global as a whole, and our clients for growth and success.
Executing this mission is no small task. Achieving this mission means that almost 2,000 individual employee owners have come together for this common goal. It means that everyone has the same understanding of WHY we’re here each day. There are many facets of making this mission a reality that we will be delving into in more detail over the next several months. But at a high level, what does our mission mean?
We share what we create
When we say that part of our mission is to create value, we mean that we want to create value for HB Global but also share that value back with every employee owner. Our goal is for you to be able to have the same level of income in retirement that you have had in your working years. To do that, we have to share what is created in a transparent and tangible way.
By being an ESOP, HB Global is set up to share value with you in a very unique way that sets us apart from non-ESOP peers. While we are able to share this value in traditional ways, such as bonuses, we also have additional methods by which to distribute this value, such as our share contributions.
In next month’s blog, we’ll focus more in-depth on the ways in which this value is shared with every employee owner.
Making this a great place to work
It may seem obvious that we want HB Global to be a great place to work. Of course, you want your work and workplace to be fulfilling and enjoyable. But why we want HB Global to be a great place to work goes much deeper than the surface.
Being a great place to work:
- makes the overall work experience more enjoyable which leads to more productivity and higher quality of work.
- creates growth by attracting new hires to serve more clients as well as attracting acquisition opportunities.
- generates more value through the growth that is created, which is then shared back to our employees.
- creates an environment where you are motivated and empowered to grow personally and professionally.
We also know the more we collectively embrace helping our teammates reach their goals, the more rewarding our work becomes.
We’ll continue to cover this topic more prominently later in the year as we continue to further break down our mission and values.
It’s all about Trust
The foundation of our mission is our first core value: Trust. Trust needs to work both ways for our mission to be successful. We know that you need to trust that the value being created is shared back to you, and HB Global needs to trust that you, as an individual, are exemplifying our values by being an awesome teammate and providing quality work each day.
Without trust, the whole system breaks down. Lines of communication become closed off, opportunities for everyone to grow and learn become more scarce, and the environment in which we work becomes more tense and less collaborative. A lack of trust would make the completion of our mission nearly impossible.
Why is this communication initiative important for all of us?
As you can see, there is more to our succinct mission statement and four core values than meets the eye. As we implement this new communication strategy throughout the year to level-set our mission, values, and culture for all employees – no matter the tenure at HB Global – our goal is to ensure that everyone is fully engaged with the parts that make up the whole of these core tenets. We want to cover WHY each of these benefits us as employee owners as well as the clients we serve in order to make sure we are all engaged in our mission and to make work more rewarding for all.
We know that engaged employees create raging fans, which leads to superior financial results that are invested back into our engaged employees.
Stay in the loop!
Be sure to check out the following resources to gain more insight and varying perspectives on our mission and values here at HB Global:
- Monthly Email Message from Bob Whalen
- Monthly Blog
- Monthly Podcast adaptation of the blog
- Monthly Conversational Podcast with Bob Whalen on the theme