We know that you are looking for top-quality candidates for your organization. You’ve scoured resumes and LinkedIn for those top candidates and we know you are probably excited about some of your prospects.
But we have some news for you: even the most diligent employee with the right hard skills, yet who doesn’t quite fit in with the office culture, still won’t be the best candidate for you.
Why is aligning with the best candidates for your organization so important?
Because it’s not just the hard skills a candidate possesses that are key to your organization’s success! Culture, or personality and soft skills, matter just as much if not more so. And here’s why it should matter so much to you.
First Things First
First, it’s important to understand what workplace culture is. When you have an understanding of that, you’ll start to understand why it’s so important, but we’ll take a deeper look at all of those in a minute. Workplace culture is the summation of shared values, characteristics, and behaviors of a company and its employees. When looking to hire someone with cultural fit, you should look at their personality traits, organizational style, leadership style, values, ethics, and even their goals.
Workplace culture isn’t just some buzzword or trend either. In fact, we found that 9 in 10 Americans felt that culture fit was important when considering a new job. That’s a huge number! So in other words, job seekers want to work for a company that they align with culturally. And you should want it too.
Each office and company has its own personality. Each employee as an individual also gravitates toward different workplace cultures. For example, some people might enjoy a high-pressure workplace while others enjoy a more laid-back, collaborative approach. So it naturally goes without saying that someone who thrives in a high-pressure, work-alone atmosphere is not going to enjoy working for an organization that likes to take its time and collaborate to get projects done.
When people don’t love the workplace culture, they are less happy and will leave earlier than they otherwise would–which brings us to our first reason why hiring for culture alignment is key to your organization’s success.
Turnover Rates
We bet hearing the word turnover gives you the hives–unless it’s a plate of apple turnovers a coworker brought in to share with the office! Who doesn’t love a nice warm and sweet fruit turnover!? But we digress.
We mentioned that an individual is more apt to leave earlier if they feel they don’t align with the company they work for culturally. If you are constantly hiring people who don’t align with your culture, you’ll have high turnover rates.
High attrition can be extremely costly. You are constantly having to put your resources into listing open positions and into hiring. But it’s not just the money that makes it costly. It’s the time spent constantly hiring as well. Your HR department definitely has more on its plate than just hiring new people. And having to focus so much on hiring can cause them to get behind on their other duties.
The great news is that we also found that nearly 60% of employees will stick with an employer for longer if they like the company culture. On average an individual who likes their office culture will stay with the organization for just over six years. Compare that to those who left a job for bad culture fit after only 2.8 years. Good culture fit literally leads to the average employee sticking around for twice as long!
Productivity, Creativity, and Motivation
Beyond cutting down on turnover rates, better alignment on culture also leads to increased productivity, creativity, and motivation of your employees. When they fit in with the company culture, you’ll find that they are happier in their jobs. Feeling positive about your work can have a huge impact on your job satisfaction, motivation, and productivity.
Think about it this way, when you hate showing up to your job every day because you just don’t fit in, are you going to be excited to actually do the work? Or are you going to be sick to your stomach every weekday morning? When you are unhappy, you just don’t do your best work and that can really affect a company’s bottom line!
Companies have found that when they hire for culture fit and they focus on the mental well-being of their employees, their employees have higher job satisfaction rates. This higher satisfaction in their work leads to increased motivation and productivity. Don’t believe us? The numbers speak for themselves! Over 90% of workers said that a good cultural fit reported a positive impact on their motivation and productivity!
Good cultural fit also leads to improved creativity. When an employee feels like they fit in, they are more likely to share their ideas–even the ones they feel are a bit out of the box or crazy. And that sharing leads to even more sharing amongst your employees. This gives companies so many more ideas to overcome the challenges they face, allowing you to pick the best possible, creative solution. When you and your employees can overcome your industry challenges, you’ll all be much more successful!
The Closer
So now that we’ve dug a bit more into why culture alignment is so important and how it literally affects the success and bottom line of your company (not to mention the health of your employees), you are probably wondering how you can do a better job of hiring the best candidates for you.
The old way of hiring is a bit crazy. No really, it is! You are asking people to condense their skills and personality down to a short and sweet cover letter plus a resume. And the interview process isn’t much better. Candidates are always wanting to put their best foot forward and practice so they can give the right answer.
Though it isn’t easy for job seekers either. It’s hard for them to get to know your organization through this process too and companies decidedly have the upper hand. 72% of employees didn’t realize the job they accepted was a bad culture fit until after starting their new position.
Because of this literal insanity, we wanted to create a new and better way to make hiring decisions. That is why we created our Culture Fit Assessment! Our team of clinical psychologists and psychometricians developed this comprehensive pre-employment assessment using validated science. It shows both company and candidate their accurate culture alignment based on 26 characteristics.
For decades, we’ve been basing our hiring decisions on education, hard skills, and employment history. It’s time to use science and technology to make better hiring decisions. It’s time to start using Workzinga!
