Organisational values and the culture change myth

The value of values when building a better culture

I’ve heard many times from senior leaders that culture change is the hardest thing to achieve in an organisation… but I now believe that it’s an excuse for ‘leaders’ who do not want to take responsibility for the fundamentals.

A commitment to safeguarding, woven through your organisation’s identity is a vital component in ensuring everyone understands that in all their work, they should promote the safety and welfare of customers and beneficiaries, staff and volunteers. The visual expression of your organisational identity is a set of values which governs the way people work. Since the explosion of the use of values in organisations around the millennium, they have had a bumpy ride, often because they have been imposed without authenticity, or have been treated as buzzwords which employees have had reason to be sceptical about.

Simon Sinek, in his book Start With Why, tells us that the buzzwords which are often used cannot be organisational values as they have limited impact. Using the example of “integrity” which sounds like a great value for an organisation to have, Sinek reminds us that most people think it is a good thing, but their measure of it will be subjective and difficult to apply objectively to their work. Instead of “integrity” a more effective value will be “Always do the right thing”. The alternative approach, which is also valid, is to have individual words which are each explained in a short supporting statement.

When working with organisations who are committed to improving safeguarding and governance practice in their work, I sometimes get involved in the (re)development of their organisational values. What’s important here is not always that there is a specific value which talks about safeguarding, but that the values align to and reinforce a culture which is focused on safeguarding the people it works with. The values reinforce the message that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility.

When the values support this culture, everyone involved in the work of the organisation can understand why safeguarding is valuable to the organisation. In such cases, good safeguarding practice always aligns with the organisation’s culture, while practice that falls below a high standard can be challenged.

Values that promote safeguarding within your culture might look like:

We are always ambitious, wanting the best for our company, our staff and our customers.
Expect the best, for everyone, all the time
Care genuinely: before, during and after sale

Once this is in place and you start to talk about safeguarding specifically, you train staff, promote reporting processes, or put information around your website, promotional materials and physical spaces, your staff know that it’s not a passing fad or a tick box exercise, but it is the genuine shaping of your organisation’s culture. Staff begin to see authenticity and have a reason to buy-in to the new culture.

It also impacts the way staff and beneficiaries interpret the actions of senior leaders. Culture is changed and established when senior leaders consistently display the organisational values within their work and interactions. And this tells us where cultural change can be hard. If senior leaders don’t demonstrate the culture they are promoting, there will be resistance from everyone in the organisation. But when staff at all levels are treated by their management in line with the organisational values, they begin to adopt the culture, and culture change begins. Yes, it will almost certainly take time, but if leaders are truly committed to implementing a better culture and this impacts their work, change will happen.

And this has benefits beyond safeguarding. By including an organisational value, or values, that promote safeguarding within your culture you can also hang other key priorities from it such as staff mental health and wellbeing, domestic abuse prevention activities, and tackling discrimination within the organisation.

At Keep Safeguarding we love working with organisations focussed on improving their safeguarding frameworks. Visit our Empowering Boards and Board level safeguarding leads page or give as a call if you are interested in finding out how we can help you.

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The value of safeguarding within a mosaic of factors to improve attainment

By Andy Churcher • March 21, 2025

The recently published DfE research report The link between attendance and attainment in an assessment year [1] outlines the significant benefits to schools and their pupils of improving attendance levels. I know that most schools are very proactive when it comes to supporting pupils to increase their attendance, and rightly so. Ofsted are interested in understanding this work during inspections with a recent report stating, “The school has addressed the significant challenges with pupils’ attendance and punctuality through effective actions to support and engage families.” But, of course, attendance isn’t the only factor impacting attainment in assessment. In fact, much research demonstrates that academic success measured by attainment is influenced by the whole life experience of the child. Ofsted’s 2022 paper Securing good attendance and tackling persistent absence [2] identified interdependencies between attendance and safeguarding. Effective and empathetic communication with parents is also an important tool in reducing absence. The same paper noted, “It is clear that leaders who have succeeded in raising attendance levels listen to parents properly and ask the right questions in order to find out why their children are not attending well enough.” There is also extensive research which helps us to understand the link between challenging behaviour and abuse, neglect and exploitation. The Truth Project, part of the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse [3], gathered the insight of more than 6,000 victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. In its report, IICSA noted that victims and survivors knew their behaviour deteriorated as a result of being sexually abused sometimes, but not exclusively, as a deliberate attempt to communicate that they needed help, although sadly these signals were rarely recognised by others. And if behaviour can influence attainment then, of course, so can being the victim of abuse. The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s 2024 National review into child sexual abuse within the family environment [4] stated that “abuse was reported to have impacted children’s education in nearly a third of reviews”. And, if all that’s the case we can begin to see a complex mosaic of interdependencies for children which have the power to influence their risk of being a victim of abuse, their behaviour in school, their attainment throughout their education and their whole life experience. Safeguarding and wellbeing should never be seen as separate to any other part of a child’s experience. I wonder if school leaders take a truly strategic view of this mosaic which results in a co-ordinated approach which is greater than the sum of its parts. Or if work to support pupils is often too fragmented at an organisational level to be sufficiently effective in tackling these interdependencies. Last year the Department of Education published a rapid literature review [5] to shape the work of the longitudinal Education and Outcomes Panel Study (EOPS). It identified this mosaic of issues that impact educational outcomes categorising them into four themes: Theme 1: Children’s cognitive and non-cognitive capabilities and wellbeing Theme 2: Children with SEND and experience of social services Theme 3: Home environment Theme 4: Experiences of school

A photo of Victoria Climbie smiling at the camera which was used by Lord Laming in his inquiry

10,000 children a year! The unique identifier for every child is 25 years overdue

By Andy Churcher • January 16, 2025

The Children's Wellbeing Bill puts right a quarter of a century of delay

We hear the past screaming at us. But do we listen?

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Political ideology should never again be allowed to impact so disastrously on children