How we Live our Company Values

Lithon was founded with a mission to make a significant and positive impact on people’s lives. To live out this purpose, we developed a core set of values that help us to turn our words into actions. While our mission is the centre of our business wheel, our values are the spokes. They work together to keep us moving towards our goals. 

 

Our company values sit at the heart of all we do, serving as a guiding light for our actions and decisions.

 

Lithon’s Company Values

 

• People Focus: Emphasising genuine care and prioritising relationships.
• Excellence: Maintaining pride in our everyday work, with a relentless drive to inspire, initiate, and improve.
• Generosity: Demonstrating focused investment in our people and our projects.
• Integrity: Upholding honesty and accountability, ensuring we are a trustworthy partner.
• Loyalty: Committing unwaveringly to the company’s purpose and values, as well as those who share our vision.
• Respect: Honouring all people and processes, advocating for dignity and equality.
• Serving: Showcasing a consistent willingness to help, and maintaining reliability in our service.

 

Choosing our Values

In the corporate world, values are often thrown around as marketing jargon, with little real impact on the day-to-day operations of a business. But when thoughtfully chosen and genuinely integrated into a company’s culture, values can transform the way people interact with each other and clients. We’ve seen this in action at Lithon!

 

We chose to officially define a set of values around 2018. It was a process that involved defining the company’s mission, engaging employees on their thoughts, and delving into how we wanted the world around us, and our clients to perceive us. When a company grows in size, everyone must get the same definition of what a particular value means. When people are protected within a defined set of values, they feel empowered and also secure in what is expected of them. By aligning personal and corporate values, we’ve created a harmonious work environment, where our team feels valued and motivated to contribute their best. 

 

Living our Values

Integrating our values into our culture has not just been a one-time event, but an ongoing deliberate process. This includes individually highlighting and celebrating each of our values for short periods throughout the year. We use these moments as opportunities to learn what it means to live out the specific value we are focusing on at the time, and we do activities (both big and small) as a team to put these values into action. Some activities we’ve done include serving others outside our company to live out our value of ‘Serving’. We did this by picking up trash in the street – a task viewed by many as something beneath them, but through that, we not only demonstrate serving but also humbleness to serve. Another value we put into action was ‘Respect’. We had our people prepare traditional dishes and we shared them. Although we had a great laugh with people eating mopane worms, sosaties, mahangu pap and potjie kos, we aligned our thoughts on respecting each other’s cultures.

 

Celebrations aside, living in line with our values has also meant making some tough decisions. Recently we had to turn down what looked like a great business opportunity because we had concerns about its ethical nature. We believe this has enhanced our reputation for integrity among clients, and also shown employees that we are serious about allowing our values to define our decisions no matter how big or small they are. 

 

At Lithon, our leaders set the standard for the rest of the company – it’s a top-down approach. We’ve worked hard to create an open environment, where discussion around our values is encouraged. When we deviate from our values, we use these instances as opportunities for learning and growth, reinforcing the idea that our values are guiding principles rather than rigid rules. It’s like being in a big family, where everyone is encouraged to be themselves but also forgiven if they make mistakes.

 

Join the Mission

 

If you share our values and would love to contribute to our mission, we’d love to work with you and help make your next big project a reality. Get in touch with us at info@lithon.com