You might never have thought about your company’s core values. They might not influence your day-to-day work or how you interact with your coworkers. And because of that, you might just be missing out.
Core values, when implemented properly, guide everything a company does, from business decisions and product innovation to hiring and company culture-building activities. Seventy-six percent of employees believe a well-defined business strategy—a mission, a vision, and core values—helps cultivate a positive work culture.
But how do you spot a values-driven company? That answer might seem elusive, but evidence of companies that live their values can be found in employee reviews and ratings on InHerSight, in the stories hiring managers tell during interviews, in the opportunities employees enjoy while working for an organization, and in the goals companies achieve when they set out to do so.
Let us show you how to get to the heart of the matter. We spoke to three women employees at Volley, Inc, a leader creating voice games for smart speaker platforms like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, smartphones, and connected TVs, about their company’s core values: Best-in-Class, Play Together, and Shoot Your Shot.
These values drive how Volley hires and advances employees, how their teams work and bond, and how the company and products evolve. This is what it looks like when a company lives its values, according to three women who work at Volley.
Volley develops voice-controlled games and entertainment apps for smart speakers, but their strong scores across the board in our Culture category speak to more than just Alexa. Inclusion-minded and actively recruiting candidates from underrepresented backgrounds, this company also likes to have fun, with team lunches, Friday happy hours, and very active #food and #pets Slack channels. Learn more about Volley's culture, benefits, and open positions now!
Core value #1: Best-in-Class
What it's all about
"At Volley, we make the best products in the categories we choose to enter. While we’re not afraid to launch something new that might not work out, we also won’t ship anything less than the best product in its space. We are dedicated to quality and craft in everything we do. Some companies want to offer the cheapest products, while others simply aim to maximize profits. We want to be Best-in-Class."
How Volley lives Best-in-Class
Jaimie Diemer is a software engineer at Volley who got her start through a coding bootcamp. “I spent most of my adult life as a server in fine dining, but when the pandemic hit, I knew I wanted something more stable,” she says. After graduating, a former bootcamp classmate of hers told her there was an opening in Volley’s apprenticeship program, so Diemer applied. “After my last round of interviews, I had the chance to speak with the vice president of engineering about the things most important to me: company culture, work-life balance, and opportunities for learning and growth. He had all the right answers, and though I was hesitant that a job could be that perfect for me, well, I was sold!”
Now she works on Volley’s Song Quiz—one of the highest-rated games on Alexa. “Song Quiz is a Best-in-Class product in every aspect of the value. From the visuals to the seamless user experience, it's such a fun game to play,” Diemer says, adding that the teamwork she’s experienced has embodied the company’s Best-in-Class value, too.
“As a newbie to this team and this job, I was also new to the tech industry, and the Song Quiz team helped to make me feel right at home,” Diemer says. “We check in with each other daily, review and refine our processes every couple of weeks, and there is a large emphasis on pair programming.”
Beyond that, Diemer says it’s Volley’s responsiveness to employees that drives the Best-in-Class value home. “Volley cares about what its employees have to say,” she says. “Be it through anonymous surveys, frequent 1:1s with managers, office hours, or our open-door policy, Volley is always working to enhance the employee experience. We often have guest speakers, most recently discussing things like combating microaggressions and stereotypes in the workplace. There is a strong focus on diversity and understanding each other, and it goes a long way. For me, things like access to fully-covered health insurance for employees and dependents and a strong emphasis on work-life balance show that Volley strives to be the best for its employees. When it comes to our company values, Volley doesn't just talk. Volley walks the walk.”
Core value #2: Play Together
What it's all about
"Our products are designed to bring friends and families closer together. We also care deeply about nurturing this same spirit of togetherness in our work. Playing together means bringing a creative, imaginative mindset to work each day. It means celebrating wins and building camaraderie with teammates. We love a good challenge but we don’t have to face obstacles alone. We have our teammates at our side. At Volley, we’re always looking for opportunities to Play Together."
How Volley lives Play Together
Christina Morris, events and culture lead at Volley, is responsible for planning the company’s team-building activities and celebrations. Like Diemer, she took a nontraditional path to her current role. “Pre-pandemic, I had been in the hospitality industry for over a decade, mostly working pastry in restaurants but doing a bit of everything,” she says. “When COVID-19 hit San Francisco, I was working for two full-service catering companies that had to completely shut down operations for the foreseeable future, so I decided to see where else I could apply my skills. If you told me two years ago I'd find myself in tech supporting a team that creates voice games, I'd never have believed you!”
At Volley, Morris started as the office manager, but was promoted after her planning skills, creativity, and “near-obsessive eye for detail” shined through at more than a few internal company events. Volley’s Play Together value clearly resonated with her from day one.
“Playing together is so important to me because of the connections it creates,” Morris says. “We all work so hard on our respective projects that it's easy to get bogged down and lose the fun of making games for thousands of users to enjoy! When we play together—whether it's the crew who goes to the rock climbing gym, people grabbing dinner in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood, our hackathons, or a major event like our holiday party—employees get to relax and have meaningful, or silly, conversations with colleagues across the whole team.”
Morris says her events live up to the Play Together value when “...everyone is fed and reasonably happy, and that we have no injuries (you may laugh, but we found out that bubble soccer can be rather hazardous!)”
In 2022, for instance, the company’s annual retreat took place in Pescadero, a town in Northern California. Morris says the event felt like a big win for her. “There was seemingly endless, labyrinthine coordination on the back end, but once we arrived, it was incredible to see everyone unwinding, enjoying the activities, engaging in playful competition, and chatting around the campfire and at happy hour,” she says. “I emceed our inaugural Volley Superlatives, a joyful experience that also prompted a lot of good-natured ribbing. I loved seeing the winner's reactions! I slept for probably 13 hours straight upon our return, but I'm excited to do it again this year!”
Core value #3: Shoot Your Shot
What it's all about
"At Volley, we take calculated risks in new markets with the potential for massive rewards. We’re betting that the revolution enabled by voice technologies is just getting started and we want to lead the way forward. Shoot Your Shot means using your unique talents to do something ambitious and creative that only you can do. It also means accepting ownership—once you shoot your shot, you own the results. We value people who 'get shit done' at Volley. Go do the thing that needs to be done. Don’t second-guess yourself and don’t be afraid to take risks."
How Volley lives Shoot Your Shot
Volley’s Chief of Staff Rachel Deleon refers to herself as a “Professional Jill-of-all-Trades” and says the company’s Shoot Your Shot value, which encourages employees to innovate beyond their own job description, directly aligns with the fluidity of her role.
Deleon oversees People Operations, internal and external communications, certain legal and insurance components, and other more general things that keep Volley’s executive team and overall company running smoothly. That means she’s constantly assessing the state of the organization and brainstorming solutions. “By nature, this sort of means I’m always shooting my shot,” she says. “On countless occasions, I’ve come to our CEO with an idea and have received nothing but support.”
Prior to Volley, Deleon had managed customer experience teams, ran internal communications, and launched and scaled brands. “I dabbled in just about every area of marketing you could think of,” she says. “For a while, I was concerned that not sticking to one career path was going to hurt me in the long run. As it turns out, it was actually crucial to what I do now!”
Volley’s Shoot Your Shot mindset is one of her favorite aspects of the company’s culture—she says it comes up all the time. “I’ve never been at a company that was so flexible in terms of allowing folks to take big chances and to do things that were so far out of their day-to-day roles,” Deleon says. “We’ve had some of our best products come out of hallowed Volley traditions like our biannual hackathons, and some of our most innovative products have originated from folks who had a wild idea they wanted to give a try. There are people at Volley whose jobs on paper look pretty standard, but internally, their days are filled with all kinds of things that aren’t ‘standard’ for their role at all—myself included!”
