When I joined as the first People Manager at Granular Energy in November 2024, one of my first tasks was to create a people roadmap. That started with 30 in-depth conversations across the team to understand how people experienced life at Granular Energy. Through those conversations, priorities for the people function began to take shape.

It became clear to me that before we designed scalable people processes, we needed to start by defining our values. I see values as the foundation of a company’s operating system — not just a poster on a wall, but a guide for how we do our best work together. Curious how we did this? I’d like to take you through our process.

This started long before I joined

The first conversations about values started in December 2022. The team revisited them at an offsite in October 2023, reflecting on what had evolved and what still felt true. When I joined a year later, in December 2024, I helped facilitate the final steps to shape and embed them.

In short: these values weren’t cooked in a single workshop — they’ve been shaped by many voices over time. For the team, they weren’t a surprise. They simply put into words what already felt true and shared.

What makes us, us

At a recent team offsite in Brussels, we asked each other: “can you describe a situation where a colleague showed traits that are very “us”. What were those traits?”

These stories revealed consistent themes: kindness, ambition, deep care for our mission, and a strong bias for action. From those patterns, our company values emerged — not as aspirational slogans, but reflections of who we are and what we want to hold on to as we grow.

Here’s where we landed:

🌍 We are driven by our environmental mission

We care deeply about the environment, and we focus on driving real change. This mission fuels us every day.

🛠️ We are pioneers who get things done

We are transforming the energy sector yet care about the details and complexities of how the system works today. This deep understanding of the details increases our ability to make smart, practical decisions. We operate efficiently and remain flexible and proactive— to innovate and create meaningful impact.

🤝 We value collaboration over ego

We believe great achievements come from listening, learning, and working together across all levels. By being kind, inclusive, and transparent, we create an environment where every voice matters.

Turning values into behaviours

Values are only useful if you can see them in action. So we translated each one into observable behaviours — things we like to see and things we don’t.

For example:

We are driven by our environmental mission. This means prioritising sustainability even when it’s not the easiest option. That’s why we choose trains over flights whenever possible — and why we only hire in locations within reasonable train travel distance to our team offsites.

These behaviours help turn abstract values into something you can recognise, reward, and use to make decisions.

Bringing values into everyday work

At our most recent offsite in April 2025, we did a workshop on how to embed our values into our current processes or add new practices that reinforce our values.

In small groups, we explored how to embed them across five key areas:

1. Meetings – weaving values into how we discuss and decide
2. Communication – letting values shape our tone and tools
3. Customer interactions – showing up as our authentic selves
4. Recruiting – hiring for values fit and values add
5. Rewarding – celebrating behaviours that reflect who we are

The result? Small, practical rituals that keep values alive — not just at offsites, but among other things in our interactions, celebrations, benefits, performance approach, and compensation philosophy.

The best kind of feedback

I was already planning to write this post when something happened that made me wonder if we even needed to. In a recent interview, a candidate shared their impression of Granular: collaborative, innovative, and sustainable. If that’s what people pick up from the outside, then our values are already doing their job — quietly, in the background, just by how we show up.

If you're curious to hear more, I love talking about how our values come to life in the day-to-day. Whether you're thinking about joining the team or just want to learn more — feel free to apply for one of our openings or reach out to me on Linkedin for a coffee.