Why Cultural Fit is Important when Hiring New Talent

88%. 

That’s the percentage of employees, surveyed in a Deloitte study, who believe workplace culture plays a key role in business success.

Workplace culture is essentially the personality of your business, made up of various characteristics and embodied by each person who works in the company. 

Which is why establishing cultural fit when hiring new talent could have a profound ripple effect on the success of your scaleup.

When new hires are a good match for your workplace culture, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all cookie-cutter versions of the same person, but rather a diverse group of people, all driven by similar vision and values as those of your company. 

Understanding company values

Clearly defining your company’s values is the first step in determining what your company culture will be. Your company values are principles and fundamental beliefs which guide the way your workplace functions, how you treat your team and customers, and how you recognise and reward hard work or high performance. 

Once you’ve figured out what these values are, you’ve got to ensure every part of your company reflects them - especially your employees. You can help your team, and prospective employees, understand what the company values are by: 

• Including them on your company’s website 
• Utilising them in content marketing strategies 
• Emphasising them during new hire onboarding and in your employee handbook
• Creating company rewards for anyone spotted living out one or more of the values 
• Add a blurb about the company values to your job postings 
• Having them printed out and stuck up on your office walls

Essentially, your values should be a focal point of your company, as they are the foundation of your company culture. 

What happens if new hires don't align with culture?

When a new hire is a good cultural fit, it means their personality, work ethic, social skills and other soft skills mesh well with others on their team. It means the way they contribute, collaborate and communicate at work benefits the whole team, as well as the clients, users, or customers. It means they are happy and engaged when they come to work every day. 

But sometimes you might get it wrong and a new hire is not a good cultural fit. Research from Robert Walters found that 73% of professionals have left a job because of poor cultural fit, and 82% have worked for a company where they were not happy with the company culture. 

When this happens, employee morale takes a dip, as does productivity; it’s hard to motivate and inspire someone who is unhappy at work. This won’t only be costly for your business, but their negative attitude could impact the morale and productivity of their whole team too. 

The same sentiment applies to new hires at senior management level. If you hire a manager who is a bad cultural fit, their negative attitude will have a ripple effect on the rest of the team.

The danger here is that a manager who is a bad cultural fit could also impact the way the team works, how the business functions, and future hiring decisions. Because they are in a senior position, they might hire others who are also a bad cultural fit which will in turn impact those who are already working there, and also impact the way your workplace culture is perceived. This could result in some team members resigning, as the company culture and management no longer aligns with their values. 

How to ensure everyone is on board with company culture

To avoid a situation where your teams are impacted by new hires that aren’t a good cultural fit, you’ve got to implement what Lee-Anne Edwards, CEO and founder of talent matchmaking firm, OneinaMil, defines as ‘culture-driven recruiting’. 

According to Lee-Anne, this method of recruiting prioritises aptitude and attitude. She believes that when your recruitment process is focused on this, you will “attract people with matching attitudes and, once you hire them, they will stay with you because they’ll actually like showing up on Monday mornings.”

When interviewing new hires, you could ask them questions aimed at assessing whether they would easily fit in to your company culture, such as: 

• What would your ideal work environment be? 
• How do you collaborate with others? 
• How would you handle workplace disagreements? 
• What constitutes good communication skills?

But getting new hires on board with your company culture is a two-way approach. You need to assess whether they’d be a good cultural fit, and they need to assess if your company culture is what they’re looking for. 

Here are a few ways you can make sure new hires know what they’re getting into and can embrace the workplace culture you’ve established: 

1. Be transparent during interviews about your work environment and processes.
2. Let them know about any company events, gatherings, or traditions that they can get involved in. 
3. Have them spend a day at the office, participate in a company event, or join their potential future team for a lunch, as part of the hiring process, so they can get a feel for how things run. 
4. Give selected candidates a 3-month probationary period of working for your company so that both parties can decide if it’s a good fit. 
5. Check in with new hires during their first week or month to assess how they are feeling about the company atmosphere. 

Best ways to promote culture across business

So now you have established your values, and you’ve put them up on your website, and everyone in, and outside of the office knows what they are. But how do you get your team to live out these values and buy into the culture? If your current team isn’t buying into and promoting your culture, it’s going to be more difficult to know what to look for when it comes to a cultural fit.

First, be aware of what your workplace culture currently is. Find out what it is about your workplace that excites your team and makes them want to show up for work on a Monday morning - or maybe what makes them not want to be there at all. Use that to change or reorganise your values and processes if needed. 

Next, find out how you are perceived by those outside of your organisation - what is your employer brand? If it’s not what you hoped it would be, it’s time to chat to your marketing team, and curate an employer branding campaign to promote an accurate representation of your company culture and the values you stand for. 

Finally, give your team agency in developing company culture. Although the biggest influence should come from senior leadership who should set an example in shaping the company culture, it’s important to create opportunities for other employees to contribute to the development and implementation of it too. This could happen through suggestions of setting up an “after work drinks station”; or helping to define the process for providing constructive feedback to colleagues; or offering input on how team meetings should be run. 

The pros and cons of hiring for cultural fit

As is the case with most things, there is always a list of pros and cons, and that’s not because cultural fit isn't important, but rather because most companies go about it in the wrong way. So, before you make it the next big quarterly priority, consider the pros of doing it well, and the cons of doing it poorly: 

Pro #1: High employee engagement 

When an employee feels that a company’s values align with their own, they immediately are able to find more meaning and purpose in their day-to-day work. It not only means they view the workplace as a positive and inspiring space to be in, but means that, as a result, they’re going to want to contribute to it as much as they can.

This high level of engagement will have a direct impact on their productivity, and therefore their output, which at the end of the day, benefits your bottom line. 

Pro #2: Cost-effective 

An engaged employee, who is happy in their working environment and ethos, is also one who is more likely to stay for the long-haul. This means your retention rates go up, and you save money on the cost of recruiting and training new hires. 

Pro #3: Attracts top talent 

Research from Columbia Business School found that 90% of people surveyed “indicated a strong belief that the quality of a company’s culture is inextricably linked with its perceived ‘value’ in the world.”

This is because when you’ve got a team who fits into your culture, they will naturally live out your company values to the people around them. They might share about their ‘awesome workspace’ or ‘team that feels like family’ on their social media pages, or when talking to friends, and in turn, this elevates your company’s status and helps to catch the attention of future talent. 

Con #1: A negative impact on retention 

We spoke about how a focus on culture fit could have a positive impact on retention, but if you are blind to the reality of your company culture, it could have a negative impact.

You may promote certain values on your website, and job adverts, but if the lived experiences of new hires doesn’t equate with those promises, they will leave. This is also why it’s important to be transparent in the hiring process and not upsell your company in a misleading way. 

Con #2: A bias towards future hires 

If you choose to hire employees who embody similar values to your company, you’ve got to be cautious that you’re not just hiring the same type of person repeatedly.

This is why keeping education and experience as priorities in the interview process is equally as important as hiring for cultural fit. It will ensure you can build a diverse team, who can bring different perspectives and fresh ideas to the table, but still fit in with your culture.

Con #3: People can lie 

Remember, just because someone says they have certain values, doesn’t mean they actually do. It’s very easy for a prospective candidate to read through your company values before their interview and make sure they say all the right things, simply because they need a job.

This is why hiring for cultural fit can’t just be in the interview process, but also should form part of your reference checks, onboarding, and probationary work period. 

So, if you want to attract top talent - in a climate where many tech scaleups are fighting to be the next best thing - prioritising cultural fit, and developing a company with a positive, welcoming and rewarding culture, is going to be what sets you apart from the rest.