From company values to behaviours
Shifting from values on a wall to behaviours people actually live
A fragmented community
Specialist Holidays Group was formed from the coming together of several distinct travel brands — Crystal Ski, Thomson Lakes & Mountains, Hayes & Jarvis, and others. Each had its own identity, its own culture, and its own loyal following. Bringing them under one group created an identity crisis of sorts: people still felt connected to their individual brand, but not necessarily to the group as a whole.
The challenge wasn’t just structural — it was human. We needed something that could create common ground across all of these brands and teams; a shared sense of what it meant to work at SHG, regardless of which brand you called home.
Behaviours over values
Rather than a set of values posted on the intranet, Spreading Smiles was a programme to shift focus to behaviours — giving people a more tangible, day-to-day way of defining the culture they wanted to be part of. It changed how teams talked about what “good” looked like, and gave leaders something concrete to model and celebrate.
The outcome
Spreading Smiles gave people something they could actually hold onto — a shared language for what good looked like, regardless of which brand they came from. The behaviours were embedded into performance review frameworks, giving leaders and teams a concrete way to talk about culture in their day-to-day.
More than an asset, it became a reference point. Something that helped shift the conversation from “what do we stand for” to “how do we actually show up” — and in doing so, created a genuine sense of belonging across a group that had never quite had one before.
