BUPA, a private international healthcare not-for-profit company, operates in over 190 countries, including Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia, with more than 38 million customers. BUPA employs over 80 000 people and seeks to make its operations places where employees enjoy working within a flexible environment and a diverse and inclusive culture. Following a series of acquisitions that doubled its size and brought with it different cultures, sets of values and visions, BUPA recognised it needed to develop a new set of shared values and embed them throughout the organisation globally. To support its purpose, ‘Helping people live longer, healthier, happier lives’, the BUPA executive team chose seven core values of being passionate, caring, open, authentic, accountable, courageous and extraordinary for implementation across the global organisation.
BUPA considered traditional methods of communicating the values, including a communication cascade rolled out using wall posters, mouse pads, mugs and business cards; and a roadshow approach where members of the executive team could fly into different regions and deliver a series of organisational change addresses to hundreds of employees. Although these approaches had worth, BUPA knew they typically had limited success. BUPA decided that it would communicate the values globally and launch them in Australia and New Zealand at a two-day leadership conference.
Question
BUPA wanted to do something different at the conference and in the concurrent process to communicate its values among its employees. The company asks you for advice about how to effectively establish and communicate its new core values to employees. What action would you recommend?