How to Hire Employees That Fit Your Company Culture

What Is Company Culture?

A company's culture encompasses both the written and unwritten behavioral norms and expectations of the company. It can include the value of work-life balance, the organizational structure of the company, company mission statements, and much more.

Company culture is the unifying element that turns individual employees into a proper team. It is the factor that makes a business truly unique. Essentially, company culture is the personality of your business.

Why Hiring Employees That Match Your Company Culture Is Important

Hiring the wrong employees can lead to higher employee turnover rates as a result of dissatisfaction from new hires, and frustration from current employees. So, hiring the right employee that fits into your company culture is an essential step for maintaining said culture. 

Finding employees who are a good fit for your organization produces the following benefits:

• Improved employee retention
• Enhanced employee performance 
• Improved internal alignment on company goals and strategies 
• Improved employee disposition toward company leadership

How to Hire the Best-Fit Employees

Companies must identify and have a deep understanding of their company culture first, in order to find the right candidates to hire. 

For instance, if your organization relies heavily on individual performance rather than collaboration, then a team-oriented employee might not be the best fit. 

If your company values team performance and relies on collaboration in the workplace, then someone looking for personal recognition or an applicant that prefers working alone might not be best suited to d work for your company.

How to Use Personality Screening in the Recruiting Process

Developing a personality screening process that can assess the cultural fit of a potential new hire can be accomplished with the following steps.

1. 1. Identify your company culture. Conduct a company-wide survey to ask employees about their motivations, values, core competencies, etc. Find similarities between those answers and define the key characteristics of your culture, which will help avoid hiring discrimination as well.
   2. Create a brand to describe your organization. Including culture or company descriptions in things like job listings can allow candidates to filter themselves in or out before even applying. Providing messages from executives and testimonials from various employees can help to humanize the brand.
   3. Understand the federal and state hiring laws that apply to your business. This is important so that pre-employment screening is compliant and no questions are asked that shouldn’t be.
   4. Create metrics for measuring cultural fit. This will ultimately be dependent upon the culture you are trying to build or maintain.
   5. Incorporate behavioral and situational questions. These can help to determine if candidates have values and competencies that match the company’s culture.
   6. Create an online screening assessment. Using metrics and culture defined in previous steps, create properly validated assessments that meet legal and professional standards.
   7. Teach proper interview techniques. Ensure managers understand how to properly interview for behaviors and other soft skills.
   8. Role-play. In the last round of interviews, try role-play scenarios to observe candidates “in action” and to see how they handle different situations. 

Important Things to Consider When Hiring Employees

Although finding a cultural match is beneficial, sometimes it might backfire when a company makes culture its sole priority There are several other things companies need to keep in mind in the hiring process:

• Just because an applicant fits in well with your company does not make them a good worker. Therefore, companies should make it a priority to identify those who will fit in well with the organization, and search for good workers within that pool of talent.
• Companies also need to watch out for compliance risks with regard to discrimination accusations when hiring for cultural fit. Using "not a good fit for the culture" might be insufficient reasoning for a hiring decision because of a lack of quantitative proof. 

Final Thoughts on Hiring For Cultural Fit

Hiring employees that fit into the company culture is the first step to business success. However, companies should follow certain protocols in the recruitment process and be aware of legal risks when focusing on the cultural aspect of hiring.

Human resources should continuously monitor company culture, and then design policies that align with it. HR should constantly be asking if the organization is truly what it claims to be, if company culture needs to be modified, and if it is remaining compliant with all hiring laws.

If you ever encounter difficulties resolving this issue on your own, it's always wise to seek out professional guidance from an HR service provider.

Source: https://www.zywave.com/