Values employees can own

The Brief

To develop their values, Ravensdown took a ground-up approach to engagement. Through a series of workshops, they engaged broadly with employees across multiple regions, roles, and levels of seniority to fully understand what staff truly value. The end result was three values that captured the voice and sentiment of the audience the values ultimately needed to engage – their people.

After helping them refine the wording and definitions to achieve greater memorability and distinction, the Ravensdown team asked us to develop a high-impact visual treatment for the values – both as a collective and for each one individually.

The Solution

We initially developed five distinct visual directions for the values and used these to workshop the client’s preferences, narrowing the options down to two. These two were then used to re-engage with staff who had participated in the initial values workshops. A clear direction emerged: WE are Ravensdown. The client embraced this cohesive design and messaging platform for three key reasons:

1. It engaged hearts and minds, creating a collective sense of belonging. It genuinely captured Ravensdown’s down-to-earth persona and inclusive culture, reflecting Ravensdown back at themselves.

2. Ravensdown is on a journey to embrace te ao Māori world-thinking. The concept supported this journey through the creation of three strong, interconnected graphics that speak to the whakataukī associated with each value.

3. WE represented a bold messaging approach that felt fresh, new and aligned with their broader transformation programme. While the look and feel of the values needed to be on brand, this platform allowed us to elevate secondary elements of their visual identity and introduce a small number of new components.

The WE symbol represents Ravensdown standing tall together and moving forward as one. As a collective noun, WE is inclusive – encouraging everyone to be part of the team and to support each other in living the values every day. Adding WE to each of the values – WE Connect, WE Respect, and WE Deliver – activates them, reinforcing that this is how WE do things around here.

Following the completion of the design, we worked closely with the Ravensdown team to develop collateral to support their values launch plan. This included a presentation deck and templates, postcards, stickers, e-cards, and screen display animations. We finished the project by designing a wide range of values-branded items that can be rolled out in the year ahead to bring the values to life. 

The Results

Employees have embraced the values with great enthusiasm, seeing them as reflecting, and enhancing, what matters at Ravensdown. WE has already become part of the everyday vernacular, both as a rallying call and as a means of holding each other accountable. That’s truly embedding values at every level of the organisation.