The argument: Hiring for culture fit is ideal.
PRO
Patrick Bosworth
Founder and CEO, Leadership Choice
Cultural fit is typically described as the likelihood that someone will adapt to or mesh well with the core beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors within your organization. Leaders in charge of the hiring process will often say that training for the specific skills required for any given job is easier than teaching someone to adapt to a culture in which they do not fit.
Poor cultural fit can negatively affect turnover rates, costing companies a significant amount of money. This, however, may be only a fraction of the total cost of poor cultural fit when compared to lost sales, reduced productivity, poor customer experiences, and reduced morale that result from bad cultural fit issues.
Most companies have an individual who is extremely talented but does not fit the organization’s culture. These employees may have been hired onto the team based on their ability to drive great results, but the approach they take to do so alienates their peers, damages customer relationships, and sacrifices long-term company profitability for short-term individual gains.
Hiring for the right cultural fit can mitigate the negative outcomes associated with bad fit. By focusing the selection process on cultural fit, companies can onboard the right candidates who, aside from having the right functional skills, also reflect the organization’s beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
Culture can also be a differentiator to attract talent in a difficult job market. The U.S. job market continues to tighten, with the unemployment rate as low as 3.9 percent at the end of 2018. This results in job openings remaining unfilled for months at a time. To differentiate their brand in the job market and get an edge on attracting new talent, companies will often emphasize their culture to prospective employees. This ranges from foosball tables in break rooms to unlimited vacation policies or flexible work arrangements.
A 2015 survey of job applicants in HR Magazine reveals that the most important criteria in potential employers are work-life balance, flexible work arrangements, salary, and cultural fit—in that order. From the job applicant’s perspective, culture can refer to many things but boils down to a sense of belonging. Employees who do not feel they fit in the organization will either leave the company early or stay but with reduced productivity and morale compared to their peers.
Organizations need to openly communicate their culture as an aspect of their employee value proposition. This will lead to attracting and retaining talented individuals who are looking for the right fit.
Hiring for culture fit is a requirement for an increasingly Millennial and Gen Z workforce. Attracting and retaining Millennial and Gen Z talent is a new challenge for managers. In a recent Business and Economic Horizons survey, 74 percent of managers said they are concerned with their company’s ability to retain employees from these generations. Millennials and Gen Zers have improved communication and collaboration skills, which they often use to quickly gather and disseminate information across the organization. They tend to be more responsive to ethical issues and issues of social, cultural, and environmental importance. Instead of loyalty to an employer, these generations are more likely to be loyal to family, friends, and their own self-identity.
Hiring for cultural fit can help a company focus its efforts on creating an environment that resonates with younger generations in a way that keeps them focused and motivated to use the talents and skills that will contribute to business outcomes. Doing so will help organizations adapt to the complexities of a continuously evolving workforce.
CON
Travis Thompson
Director, Organizational Effectiveness, American Express
Despite best intentions, hiring for cultural fit is hard because fit is difficult to define and screen for in the selection process without being negatively influenced by personal bias. Patty McCord, who was the chief talent officer at Netflix from 1998 to 2012, cautions hiring managers to be careful with cultural fit, because it often boils down to “someone they’d like to have a beer with.” This is an issue because the people we envision ourselves hanging out with in a social setting are likely to have a similar background, affecting the diversity of our team and organization.
Cultural fit can lead to negative outcomes associated with a lack of diversity. Culture is often associated with personality characteristics, which can be difficult to judge and do not effectively predict long-term success at work. Overemphasizing cultural fit may inadvertently lead employers to hire individuals with the right personality for the organization but who lack the talent or ability to do the work. Additionally, it may lead to overlooking talented individuals who do not have the perceived charisma necessary for the hiring organization.
The reality is that multiple personality types can be effective for many types of work. Instead, companies should look to match on values, which are often associated with behaviors and have the potential to be observed more objectively.
Culture can be a differentiator when focused on how the company gets work done. Another way of looking at culture is as “a way of thinking, a specific way to see problems and solve them, a sense of belonging to a team,” says Marian Aurelian Bargau in the Valahian Journal of Economic Studies. The perks that many Silicon Valley tech firms have introduced have left their mark across many industries competing for talent. Corporate perks are important, but a 2018 American Banker survey indicates “the ability to solve interesting problems” is a factor that is gaining importance.
When today’s job applicants join a company like Google or Facebook, are they joining because they can play video games during breaks? Or are they drawn to the opportunity to work on influential platforms and see the difference their efforts have on the world? Companies should look at positioning the value of the work they do in a way that communicates the culture they are trying to maintain and focus on highlighting applicable perks.
I recall working for a company with an attractive work-from-home program that was cutting edge for its time. It attracted and retained a lot of talent and gave employees the options to work in the environment best suited for their role. When the company began to retire the program, it lost many employees, myself included, because there was not a common cultural bond holding us together beyond the corporate perks.
Hiring talent based on shared values is a requirement for a multigenerational workforce. Although employment of Millennials and Gen Zers is on the rise, many Baby Boomer and Gen X employees remain in the workforce. Putting too much emphasis on catering to the cultural and environmental needs of one or two generations will come at the expense of isolating the others. Instead, companies should focus on what all generations have in common, which is often best achieved through emphasizing shared values.
Having a purpose and working for an organization whose employees have shared values is a requirement for all generations in the workforce today. The vision and values employees share will lead to improvements in morale, stronger engagement, increased satisfaction, and improved performance. Generational diversity will be an asset to the evolving workforce if employees can positively influence corporate culture through shared values.
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