Most organisations can tell you what their values are. Far fewer can show you how those values influence the decisions people make, the conversations they have or the way they work together.
Following our work with UPP on its award-winning wellbeing programme, we were asked to create a vision and values document that would do more than communicate a corporate message. It needed to help colleagues across the business understand what UPP stood for, why it mattered and how those values should be reflected in everyday behaviour, whether they were working on campus developments, supporting university partners or managing student accommodation.
Heartbeat
We treated the document less like an internal policy and more like a publication. Rather than presenting the values as a list of statements, we built a narrative around the organisation itself, connecting its purpose, ambitions and culture with real examples of how people contribute to the student experience. Editorial layouts, considered typography and generous photography created something employees would want to pick up, while the writing translated broad corporate principles into language that felt relevant and practical.
The result was a document designed to support conversations, onboarding and leadership, helping transform the values from words on a page into behaviours that could be recognised across the business.
Impact
The finished publication became an important internal communication tool, reinforcing UPP’s culture at a time of continued growth and helping create greater consistency across teams, sites and disciplines. By giving employees a clearer understanding of the organisation’s purpose and values, it strengthened the foundations for future engagement initiatives and complemented the wider employee communications work we continue to deliver with UPP.
