PaderSprinter: Value development that connects |

With nearly 50,000 passengers transported daily, public transport provider PaderSprinter is a central pillar of mobility in Paderborn and beyond. Around 270 employees give their best seven days a week, almost around the clock.
To build the foundation for efficient yet respectful collaboration, the company – supported by Kaltwasser Kommunikation – developed its corporate values together with its employees.
Kaltwasser Kommunikation designed and facilitated this participatory process, which lasted approximately one year.

The Challenge: Embracing Diversity, Uniting Differences

The shared values form the foundation of collaboration and connect employees across departments and individual differences.
At PaderSprinter, these differences were especially evident in the varying needs of the workshop, driving services, and administration – as well as in the perception of the existing corporate culture and the degree of identification with the company.

Together with PaderSprinter, we developed a multi-phase process that placed employee participation at its core.
The goal: not to define values top-down, but to co-create them from within the organization.

The Approach: A Mix of Participation and Multi-Channel Communication

To involve as many employees as possible in developing the company’s values, we relied on a diverse set of methods: one-on-one interviews, group workshops, and company-wide surveys formed the backbone of the participatory process.
Special focus was placed on leadership – in their role as role models, multipliers, and key figures in the change process. 

Our Set of Measures:

Transparent communication:

Early information sharing and inclusion of all employees
Posters announcing the process and inviting participation

In-depth insights:

One-on-one interviews with employees from all areas and top management
Analysis of the perceived company culture and identification of key pain points

Collective development:

Group workshops with participants from all departments
Visualization of interview results into “value boards” with quotes, terms, and visual elements
Company-wide print survey to validate and expand the value set

Refinement and finalization:

Small-group workshop with key representatives and top management
Joint definition of PaderSprinter’s final corporate values

Anchoring and integration:

Special leadership briefings to prepare for their role in anchoring the values
Employee events featuring the official presentation of the values by top management
Development of a communication concept with dialog-driven and informative measures

The Results: Key Values for a Shared Culture

Values that connect:
In a joint, iterative process, employees defined six core values – creating a strong foundation for respectful collaboration.

A new understanding of culture:
Through intense engagement with the existing company culture, PaderSprinter sharpened its awareness of the ongoing need to develop the organization from within.

Greater mutual understanding:
The participatory approach encouraged perspective-taking and deepened empathy for the day-to-day realities and needs of colleagues across the company.

Evolving leadership roles:
The value development process showed that leadership roles must also evolve. In the next step, we are working with PaderSprinter to develop a tailored training program.

The end? Far from it:

Defining values is just the beginning. To ensure the values are lived and embedded in the company culture, every employee plays a role.
A newly formed values team will continue driving the process and keeping the conversation alive.