What You Need to Know about Culture Fit Benefits

To understand cultural fit, you must first understand the concept of company culture. Company culture is the beliefs, values, behaviors, and norms that are espoused by a company. The mantra of ‘the customer is always right', office happy hour on Fridays, and freedom for employees to express and share ideas, are all examples of beliefs and values that contribute to company culture.

‍Company culture is the reason that at some jobs, employees show up sharply at 8 wearing suits and ties, and in other people stroll in between 8 and 9 in jeans. Company culture encapsulates everything from the company's values to how direct reports and managers communicate and interact with one another.

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How Does Company Culture Impact an Organization

A company is not just defined by its products or services. These days, how it acts, how it engages its people, and how it contributes to society are equal factors in determining an organization's ethos. This is why culture is such an important aspect of building a strong brand.

‍Once people understand your business culture, core beliefs, and vision for the future, they better understand the company's mission and how it operates. At the same, from a business standpoint, understanding your organization's culture will help inform the choices you make from top-level management strategies all the way to the recruitment process and hiring decisions.

‍Company culture especially has a big impact on talent acquisition. Knowing what kind of candidate will likely succeed in the business helps HR teams screen a potential job applicant, find strong team members, and build diverse teams. After all, when acquiring new talent, it's important for a company to determine the candidate's values and assess culture fit. Poor culture fit with a company can result in both the company and the candidate being unhappy down the line.

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Cultural Fit Definition ‍

But why is hiring for culture fit important? What can happen when you hire new job candidates with a poor cultural fit? To know how this can impact your organization it's important to fully understand what culture fit is and how it helps with employee engagement, promoting diversity efforts, and ensuring greater job satisfaction.

‍Cultural fit means the idea that an individual's values, ideas, and beliefs should align with the company's culture. It suggests that an employee will exhibit superior job performance and stay longer with a company that share the same values. In addition, it also tries to determine what cultural impact potential colleagues will have on an employer's organizational culture.

‍Cultural fit can be very useful when used as a recruitment strategy by HR professionals, particularly when you examine whether or not a candidate's personality aligns with your company's core values. For example, if your values innovation, kindness, and integrity looking for those qualities specifically in candidates can help you find cultural fits.

‍Dr. Elliot Jaques coined the term organizational culture in 1951 in his book The Changing Culture of a Factory. In the book, he examines a British manufacturing company and examined the group behavior of its employees. Then in the 1980s, academics started to research the idea of culture fit more closely.

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Research in the Harvard Business Review [1] identified eight types of company cultures:

‍Caring: A caring work culture is defined as collaborative, welcoming, and supportive work environments where positive relationships are supported and encouraged. Working as a team is highly encouraged in this environment.

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‍Purpose: Purpose-oriented work cultures focus on the greater good and how the job that they do aligns or contributes to that. These work environments focus heavily on the impact employees have on their communities.

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‍Learning: Lo be technology-driven.

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‍Enjoyment: Ence of contentment for its employees.

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‍Results: A results culture prioritizes outcomes and the accomplishments of goals. Meeting deadlines, targets, and metrics are what drive this environment, and employees are rewarded based on these accomplishments.

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‍Authority: An authority-driven workplace culture is characterized by strength, boldness, decisiveness, and competitiveness. These types of workplaces value winning and tend to be more individualistic.

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‍Safety: A safety work culture is defined by caution, preparedness, and risk-consciousness. Unlike a learning workplace culture, this workplace will avoid unnecessary risks even if employees may learn from them.

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‍Order: An order work culture is focused on respect, traditions, and norms. This workplace likely emphasizes strict processes and procedures and leaves little room for out-of-the-box thinking.

If you speak to different people across an organisation, especially from different teams, they may all have slightly different interpretations of the employer's work culture. Understanding the type of work culture that exists is important for hiring managers so that they can appropriately examine culture fit for new hires.

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The Dangers of Hiring for Cultural Fit ‍

However, it's also important to note that cultural fit can be subjective. Some experts describe wanting to have a beer with someone being a barometer for a cultural fit candidate. Essentially, cultural fit tends to be reduced to likability, which can't be measured and standardized when interviewing candidates. Sometimes there's no particular reason why you like one person but not the next.

‍Research shows that hiring managers tend to look at candidates favorably [2] who make them feel good about themselves because of shared interests, experiences, and characteristics. If you're not careful, with a clearly defined interviewing process, you can end up putting a bigger emphasis on fit (or likability) than on skills, talent, and qualifications.

‍Some hiring managers fall into the trap of thinking it may be easier to teach a person the skills or talent they need to be successful in the role than to teach them the innate personality characteristics that will make them a good cultural fit.

‍Placing too much emphasis on likability can introduce personal bias into the recruitment and can create an unconscious bias in the hiring process. This bias has historically kept women and minorities out of certain workplaces because cultural fit has typically translated into people who look, act, and think like the people doing the recruiting or hiring. Sometimes without knowing it, some recruiters use culture add metrics that could impact their every hiring decision.

‍And this is waste, because research has shown that organizations with diverse leadership and workforce, tend to outperform those without it. This is why getting utilizing cultural fit correctly is so important. While you want to be sure your new hire will fit well into your team, you also want to leave room for diverse new employees that can bring something new to your company.

‍In addition to creating bias, the misuse of culture fit often leads to a homogenous work environment, which is bad for business. Companies need diversity of demographics and diversity of thought to thrive. Diversity of thought is how they get fresh ideas and perspectives when solving business problems and reaching business goals. For example, a company with very enthusiastic, risk-taking employees would suffer without more temperate, conservative thinkers on the team to help balance it out.‍

On its face, people that will fit into your company is a good thing. If the person understands the culture and is a good culture fit, they'll likely be happy employees, work well with their managers, and remain an employee with higher job satisfaction. Conversely, if they don't fit in with the company's values, they're likely to be disengaged. However, cultural fit should be more about how the candidate aligns with the values or priorities of the organization, versus likability or similarity, so that diversity isn't compromised.

‍HR professionals need to encourage a standardized interview process such as using rubrics to score applicants to ensure you're applying to the same standards consistently. Decide upfront how much of the decision will be based on fit, as opposed to skills, talent, and experience, and stick to it for every candidate. Adopting a clear definition of culture fit for your company that emphasizes alignment with your company's core values, will allow you to reap the benefits of culture fit without sacrificing diversity [3].

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For Cultural Add

‍Companies often who will fit into the current culture and uphold the status quo, but some organizations may benefit from disruption too. For example, if you have a more innovative company culture, maybe you'll benefit from a COO with a more cautious outlook to bring a different perspective to the job. Having a variety of perspectives creates balance and helps combat bias and introduces new ways of thinking, something that is important in business.

‍When screening potential candidates or during the process of candidates, evaluating a person on what they can add to the work culture instead of how they fit is another way to approach the interview process. When you look for cultural add in a candidate your focus is on what they can contribute to the work environment that you don't already have and how their personality traits can enhance the workplace.

‍For example, imagine your office employs a lot of sociable people with really big personalities. If you interview potential employees whose personalities are more introverted, employing a cultural fit strategy might cause you to think these people wouldn't be a fit because they are not like the workers currently in your office.

‍However, using a cultural add strategy the employer would see the value in bringing in an employee with a different personality type. Maybe in addition to being introverted, she's a good listener and analytical thinker. for cultural add allows you to create an environment where there is a diversity of thought, where values fit and complement one another, where innovative thinking thrives, and where people can be creative and challenge each other.

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Once you define exactly what your company culture is, you will benefit from for culture fit in these ways:

Reduce employee turnover

When employers understand their employees, this can have a positive impact on the business's ability to retain its talents. As with every industry, employees who feel valued are more likely to be engaged and motivated to commit a longer period in helping their company attain its goals.

While increasing employee retention is important, decreasing employee turnover rates significantly impacts a company's bottom line by:

• Reducing expenses allocated to candidates in a job search
• Cutting training costs
• Increasing productivity

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Attract top talent

While having a good salary and benefits package may give your company a competitive advantage, culture fit is also one of the key factors that candidates consider when choosing to accept a job with an employer. If a candidate has doubts on whether they would be a great cultural fit in the company, they are less likely to accept a job or stay long in it.

Remember, human capital has a direct impact on a company's financial performance.

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Have a positive brand image

Employees are not only there to help your business achieve its goals. They are also there to be your greatest ambassadors, as long as they share the same guiding principles. Making sure your employees are happy can go a long way in creating a positive brand image and attracting others to do business with and for your company.

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‍Is There a Good Culture Benefits Platform?

In conclusion - whether you hire for cultural fit, cultural add, or a combination of both, an organization's culture is an important part of company strategy [4]. A good organizational culture, if nurtured, can be an asset, so it's important to protect it and consider it in your recruitment efforts.

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‍Qualee's culture benefits platform allows organizations unlimited access to tools that help to measurably improve their employee experience. Create a strong and nurturing company culture with Qualee and sign up for our FREE Starter Plan today.

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[1] https://hbr.org/2018/01/the-leaders-guide-to-corporate-culture [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangers-of-hiring-for-cultural-fit-11569231000 [3] https://hbr.org/2019/09/hiring-for-culture-fit-doesnt-have-to-undermine-diversity#:~:text=Research%20shows%20that%20adopting%20this,are%20typically%20more%20at%20risk [4] https://hbr.org/2018/01/the-leaders-guide-to-corporate-culture