From Melody's Desk: July 9, 2020

Dear Team,

In 2016 UVAFinance developed five core values through conversations and discussions across the organization. Earlier this year, we surveyed the UVAFinance team – which has had a number of changes since 2016 – to see if we still hold the same values important. 100 people responded to the survey, and I’d like to share their feedback with you and unveil the resulting changes to our values.

The Survey

First, we asked UVAFinance team members how important each core value is in your daily work. Overwhelmingly, respondents saw providing service excellence (at 94%) and impeccable information (at 91%) as important. Being a collaborative partner (at 86%) and having valued and high performing teams (at 80%) were also confirmed as being important.

Next, we asked which value you would choose to eliminate if you had to. These results were consistent with the responses to the first question:

Lastly, we offered an opportunity to add a new value. More than a quarter of respondents (27%) replied that no new values were needed, but the rest of our respondents had some ideas. The larger the text in the graphic below indicates the frequency that potential new value was offered:

Resulting Changes

At the end of May, I shared these results with the UVAFinance extended leadership team, requesting feedback on how we should modify our core values. After engaging break-out sessions, we determined that we could re-frame “innovative action” to better capture our goals of continuous improvement and transformation. 

I also recognized that a slight modification to “valued, high performing team” will better reflect recent dialogue and the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusivity issues. Therefore, our new UVAFinance values are (drum roll, please….):

By the end of the summer, you will hear more about these values, as we develop consistent definitions and identify specific behaviors for each core value. This will enable us to hold a common understanding and expectation of exactly how we all work and represent UVAFinance with these values.

Thank you for your thoughtful responses to the survey. As always, if you have questions or concerns, please reach out.

Stay healthy, masked, and socially distant!