How Flobotics Built Their Company Values? [Company Culture Case Study]

In the fast-paced world of tech, it’s easy to become consumed by KPIs and quarterly reports. However, at Flobotics, we took A LOT OF TIME to discuss something that powers our rocketship from within – our core values. Similar to updating software, we believe in refining the principles that drive our collective engine.

For us, values are not just dry sentences or empty slogans. They are tangible instructions, alive in our emails, coffee chats, company trips, and projects. In their description, we aim to capture and preserve this authenticity as faithfully as possible.

Our values shape how we collaborate and deliver outstanding outcomes to our Clients and Partners. They are not imposed by the leadership but created organically by our entire team. They serve as a compass for right actions and informed decision-making. 

Here is the story of how we created them and what we achieved as a result.

Creating our Fresh FloboValues was an extensive, collaborative project with multiple steps, and the whole company engaged.

The process began with heartfelt one-on-one conversations with each employee to gather diverse perspectives on our company’s values and culture.

The People & Culture team conducted these interviews to gather diverse perspectives on what attracts people to Flobotics, what makes them want to work here, what’s essential to the culture, what’s unique, and what they love about Flobotics. The team also asked about areas that could be improved and what is unacceptable in the company.

Here are some questions we asked:

• What in Flobotics has helped me improve myself?
• What rules, attitudes, etc., should exist and do not exist?
• What positive aspects of Flobotics do I consider when talking about work? 
• What attracts people to Flobotics?
• What keeps you here?
• If you could change one thing about Flobotics, what would it be?

The insights gathered during these conversations were compiled into a collection of quotes. We transcribed them, selected all the meaningful quotes, printed them, and cut them down into little pieces of paper. We ended up with hundreds of quotes!

The next step was inviting all the employees to a four-day company retreat fully dedicated to one goal – creating values together. The retreat occurred in the picturesque Polish Lake District, where we engaged in a highly creative values workshop. 

The fuel of the workshop was the very cards with quotes!

We divided the quotes into categories to identify the most important values and then split them into categories to discuss them. At first glance, it was already quite clear what values were the most important for the team—these categories had the most quotes.

Our discussions led to a deeper understanding of how we perceive specific values and how they resonate in our day-to-day culture. We worked together to determine what we want to embody as a team, what drives our growth, and why we value the Flobotics work environment. 

To make our activities more engaging, we organized brainstorming sessions in smaller groups, created visual posters, and presented our ideas to the whole group through humorous skits. We also openly shared our feelings and had lively discussions filled with laughter and emotion.

The workshop lasted eight hours, and we ended up with a draft list of nine values with additional information on how Floboticans understand them.

After identifying the most important values and their relevant elements to our culture, the next objective was to synthesize them, unify, and refine the language used to describe them so they were understandable and contained all the aspects important to the Floboticans. 

This happened back in the office and was taken care of by the CEO, Communication Team, and People & Change team.

During two three-hour workshops, we carefully reviewed each value and created the first version of the values.

After the first version of values was ready, we actively solicited feedback from all the team members.

We presented the values during a series of small-team workshops. We discussed each value, asking Floboticans what they thought about how they were phrased and how they understood them.

Then, we worked on the collected feedback and looked at what was recurring in people’s opinions. Checking how people understood what we had created was key for us. We wanted to ensure the entire team was on board with what we were creating. This was a challenging task, as we had to navigate an enormous amount of information and collective input to arrive at a shared vision.

This process had few iterations. At every step, the feedback from the team was crucial!

Finally, we ended up with eight Core Values, reflecting our team’s beliefs and aspirations that were ready to present to the team.