With the best of intentions many employers craft, edit and perfect culture statements full of noble principles, only to then have them ignored or used as the butt of ongoing jokes. Why?

There are a variety of reasons. Some of them include:

• Employees know the HR consultant wrote it. Senior management hasn’t really bought in and won’t play by the same rules.
• The values promoted don’t transfer into actual behaviors employees have seen in action.
• Employees whose workplace behaviors fall short of the cultural ideal get rewarded with bonuses and promotions anyway.

What to do? Start by making sure your values are framed in terms of well-defined behaviors. For example, one company has the Core Value “Embrace Change.” In behavioral terms, this could be phrased “Deals successfully with ambiguity and change.”

To be sure your values are put into action, make sure all performance feedback includes implementation of core values and behaviors. Then, don’t reward performers who aren’t walking the cultural talk.

Finally, develop your culture statement within your management team with input from a task force of employees. If you just slap standards designed by an outsider into your handbook, it is often received with skepticism—as it should be. It doesn’t take a lot of time to develop a cultural behavioral statement, so why not put in a couple of hours to have a culture your employees will respect?