Posted:
OUR VALUES IN ACTION
At RCL FOODS, We Grow What Matters together, through our people and our unique culture, which we call Our Way. Our Way is shaped by our values, but even more so by our people actively living our values. Those values describe how we act and behave every day – with our customers, clients, co-workers and anybody else we work with.
“We’ve purposefully expressed our values as being values in action,” says David Scott, RCL FOODS’ Chief Human Resources Officer. “We’ve also tried to make them as simple as possible to understand and implement. That’s intentional. Ours is a hands-on business that requires a blend of human intelligence, creativity, judgement, emotion, drive and good old-fashioned hard work.”
“I think we’ve made a good start at crafting a culture that’s unique to RCL FOODS,” says David. “But our culture is still evolving. We can all contribute to Our Way by living our values every single day. If we don’t, they end up being meaningless words on a poster or a page.”
Ultimately, RCL FOODS is about people. “We wouldn’t exist without them,” he says. “As someone who’s worked in HR for most of my career, I don’t see people as assets. Assets are something you sweat. I see people as investments, which need to be nurtured and inspired. When you do that, they invest back into the business through their skills, creativity and passion. And when those two work in harmony, you have a great chance of enduring into the future.”
It can be difficult, but we need to listen to people whose background or personality is different to ours. And it comes down to respect. Without respect, and without seeing every single one of your colleagues as a human being whom you respect, you’ll never be open to hearing their views.
Of all our values, this is the most maverick. Being curious calls for rolling up your sleeves, playing, exploring, trying out ideas and seeing if they work. If they do, that’s great! If they don’t, you need to fail fast, learn and change direction.
Agility is not just about working quickly. Speed for the sake of speed isn’t always a good thing. Agility is knowing when to go faster and when it’s better to go slowly. There are some decisions that you can’t undo – and in those cases you have to
move carefully.
For many people, sustainability means the same thing as being ‘green’ or caring for the environment. But that’s just a part of it. Being sustainable means lasting long into the future. To do that, we need to deliver excellent business results, underpinned and supported by the behaviours that ensure we can keep on delivering those results for many, many years to come.
Sometimes it may feel easier to do things on your own, but working together always produces better results. Collaborating means getting more brains in the room to get a better outcome. When we collaborate, we share our ideas, our effort and our knowledge.
Accountability is like a yardstick that we measure ourselves by. It’s not a stick to beat one another with! Being more accountable means encouraging our people to embrace feedback and fix mistakes. We know that mistakes happen, but it’s how we react to them that really matters.
