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Promises, in this context, are commitments that capture a company’s essential offerings and suggest the impact customers can expect on their practices. Within organizations, promises are seen as elements that unite and coordinate activities.
In the given context, alignment involves ensuring that all aspects within an organization work together to fulfill the promises and value propositions made to customers and other stakeholders. The focus is on creating a mindset among employees that is in line with the organization’s overarching brand or sustainability promise contextualized into actionable value propositions. This is particularly important because aligning promises with actual performance helps avoid the challenges caused by overpromising.
In the Co-worker Alignment with Value Propositions (Co-Val)-Project, Dr. Helena Liewendahl, Professor Kristina Heinonen together with Teresia Stigzelius, developed the co-worker-oriented value proposition alignment (CO-VAL model). They looked at factors that support and hinder employees from aligning with the organization’s brand/sustainability promises across three sectors:
- Care sector
- Investment sector
- Education
The research was conducted as a service design inspired process during which brand and sustainability
promises were contextualized by employees and managers into actionable value propositions. The CO-VAL
model:
a) Sheds light upon factors that impact employee alignment with promises in different sectors
b) shows tools that help workers keep the promised value
c) presents tools to assess an organization’s promise readiness and maturity of its co-worker orientation.
By utilizing the CO-VAL model, one of the participating organizations concluded that:
Read more about the CO-VAL model’s impact and the results from the study in the open-access rapport: