Culture
is a primary factor in any organisation’s long-term success; it is one of the
main assets of a company that remains stable and consistent in the face of
constant change. A company’s culture
includes the policies, systems and processes, as well as, shared beliefs and
experiences that demonstrate its values. Organisational psychology guru, Adrian Furnham,
defined cultural fit in an organisation as “congruence between the norms and
values of the organisation and those of a person”. Cultural fit is a valued concept as it ties
the values of the individual to the values and vision of the organisation. Employees hired based on their culture fit with
the organisation are found to have increased happiness, loyalty to
their company, as well as, higher productivity
and levels of commitment when
sharing similar values to an organisation.
Now
think about your own organisation. It may be that some of your current
employees express characteristics, language and values that exist within the
current organisational culture. However,
you may find that other employees do not have the same experiences and
attitudes, and may be working towards different goals in your organisation. Diversity in opinions and people is very
important, however, individuals that are not
culturally fitted may find it more
difficult to become part of the organisational team, may take longer to
contribute than others, and may not stay as long.
Employees
who fail to fit within the environment are more likely to leave and find an
organisation more congruent to their views and beliefs. According to the Society for Human Resource
Management, employee turnover caused by poor cultural recruiting costs half to
two-thirds of an employee’s annual salary. The costs of turnover and importance of
cultural recruiting are too significant to ignore. Thus, it is very important to establish
cultural fit as a goal from the beginning to the end of the hiring process for
both the employer and the prospective employee.
Not
only are costs avoided through successful cultural recruiting;
competitive advantage as a company can be gained. If recruitment and selection procedures can
successfully measure an employee’s cultural views and beliefs, you will be
hiring people that will fulfil the current cultural environment of your
company. Thus, performance, productivity
and profits will increase and value will be added to the workplace; while
competitors continue to contribute to higher turnover rates with unsuitable
employee recruitment processes. This was
demonstrated in a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate
School of Business, where James Collins and Jerry Porras studied eighteen US
companies that remained at the top of each of their industries for more than
fifty years. It was found that these
organisations placed a large emphasis on hiring, developing and managing
employees based on the cultural fit each business wanted to achieve. Consequently, employees thrived in their
environments and retention rates were greatly increased. Success for an organisation can be confidently
attributed to using cultural fit to hire people today that will drive the
future for your organisation tomorrow.
With
all this taken into consideration, how can you better identify candidates
during the recruitment and selection process that fit the culture of your
organisation? Here are six practices to
enable your organisation to continue growing successfully:
Communicate company values
To
recruit candidates with similar values to the organisation, it is important to
communicate company values as early as possible. When company values are accessible, candidates
have a clear idea of what the company expects and whether they can contribute
to enhancing these values as a new employee. Candidates value an honest and real-world
representation of the organisation’s morals and ethics, and can pre-evaluate
whether to apply for the role. This will,
in turn, reduce recruitment and interview time for Human Resource managers,
increasing efficiency in their roles and lowering unnecessary training and
turnover costs that competitors are facing. Some clients request that Psych Press place
their values ‘upfront’ when creating an online recruitment platform, with a
checkbox to indicate they have been understood.
Personality assessment
Resume screening is a useful tool in
shortlisting candidates. However, large
amounts of evidence, such as from Harvard Business School, suggest the reliability of resume reading as
a screening process in isolation is akin to tossing a coin. Worse, it is seen as a major source of bias
and reason for a lack of diversity. Personality testing can increase
reliability and fairness dramatically to help narrow the recruiting focus to
only candidates with the required competencies suitable for the company, where
they can then be further interviewed. Results from personality, values and attitude
assessments provide concrete and unbiased metrics to judge candidates equally
in relation to both a role and the organisation. Candidate work ethics can be gauged via
the results too. A psychometric scale
examining candidates’ level of diligence is much more likely to differentiate people than an
interview question that may induce a common answer. The use of the psychometric assessment in
recruitment processes avoids the hiring of unsuitable employees, as well as the
turnover costs that come with these unreliable decisions.
Ask alternative questions
Be
unconventional and ask questions which help in determining if a candidate is
culturally suitable for the company. Ask
questions surrounding their ideal workplace, what problems they have faced in
other workplaces, how they resolved them and ways in which they define an
employee who would be successful in differing organisational environments. These unexpected and thought-provoking
questions are vital in assessing the candidate’s view, values, and
problem-solving skills in an organisation. Unconventional questions require
candidates to respond without practiced, formalised answers and provide a more realistic
impression of their capabilities.
Listen to the candidate speak
The right opportunity to allow the candidate
to speak and ask questions is by giving them time at the end of the interview. When the candidate can lead the conversation, this provides a
rare insight into their personality, and what interests and queries they hold
about the organisation. For example,
candidates who appear more inquisitive and intrigued may value learning and
intricate details. Initiating
conversation is more challenging than answering common questions during an interview, thus attributes such as
confidence and quick-thinking can be evaluated. Such information is likely to be a useful gauge
as to whether the candidate is a suitable fit for the company.
Expose candidates to company culture
With
a final short-list or with your preferred candidate, it may be possible to
present them with the cultural aspects of the company through exposing them
directly to the everyday life in the organisation. Try bringing them around the office,
introducing them to managers and employees of different divisions, exposing
them to interactions and meetings required throughout the day, allowing them to
listen into phone calls, inviting them for lunch and/or even giving them an introductory trial run on the job. This opportunity allows the candidate to gain
a rich understanding of the company’s expectations in its cultural environment,
as well as giving insight into how comfortable the candidate is amongst other
employees. This exposure in the last
steps of the recruitment process is rare among competitors, and will create
good press through exceptional candidate care.
The staff they interact with in this context could also have perceptions
of the candidate they may care to share.
Ensure fairness
To enable the accurate identification of
candidates that fit the culture of your organisation, the recruitment and
selection process needs to be fair and equal. It is known that aspects of a candidate’s
identity, such as their ethnicity, age, gender identity and possible
disabilities may shape the expectations and behaviours of the interviewer and
the ultimate outcome of the interview. This is due to reliance on inexplicit criteria
and subjective judgements. To ensure objective comparability when comparing
candidates, unbiased assessments are crucial. They enable candidates to be measured without
undue interviewer influence, providing reliable and valid results.
Without
taking into consideration a candidate’s cultural fit before hiring, you risk
damaging the companies’ culture by selecting employees who are inconsistent
with current values and beliefs, creating unnecessary costs in turnover and missing
out on opportunities to grow. By
ensuring candidates are appropriate for your organisation’s environment,
recruitment time and resources are decreased while competitive advantage is gained
through the increased efficiency of diligent
employees.
Diligence is a vital personality attribute required
by employees on all levels and a powerful predictor of values towards work
ethic. The use of a psychometric personality assessment can support the
selection process by identifying ideal, dedicated candidates.
The Business Personality Reflections® is a personality
questionnaire that measures business-related traits to assist in selection and
personal development decisions.
Developed by Psych Press, this assessment contains 70 personality scales
that can be tailored to any organisation’s needs. Below, you’ll
find more information about the Business Personality Reflections® Diligence scale.
Diligence
Diligence refers to an individual’s capacity to set goals and their
motivation to achieve these goals. The Diligence scale in the Business
Personality Reflections® questionnaire was designed to
measure an individual’s industriousness.
Diligent individuals will set high standards and work meticulously to
attain these standards. A diligent person
in the workplace will not only produce greater quantities of work, but will
also produce work of a higher quality.
Those who are not as diligent are less inclined to set goals and are
less likely to complete set tasks by certain deadlines.
A sample item for the Diligence
scale that you may see on the Business Personality Reflections® could
be:
“I believe one
will achieve more if they set higher goals”
High scorers on this scale tend to be individuals who are more likely to
be motivated to achieve set goals on both an individual and organisational
level. These individuals are also more
likely to continue to maintain their drive to work hard in spite of external
challenges. Low scores on this scale are
indicative of individuals who are less likely to have the self-control to
continue to strive towards a set goal in the face of difficulties.
Diligence is an important factor in predicting work performance. Work ethic, or the capacity to work
diligently, has been found to be a predictor of salesforce task performance
(Ntayi, 2008). Furthermore, diligence was shown to be an important factor in
successful work performance for graduates (Quek, 2005). Employees who are conscientiousness (the
higher order factor of diligence) are also less likely to feel job
dissatisfaction and psychological distress in roles that have a high degree of
ambiguity (Miller, Griffin, & Hart, 1999).
Organisations that recruit a diligent individual can better ensure
deliverables due to their hardworking nature.
Diligence should be a staple trait that employers should seek if they
require driven individuals who will deliver results regardless of the
environment they work in.
You might consider using the Business Personality Reflections®
Diligence scale in positions that
have:
- Frequent time-restrictive deadlines
- Individually-orientated projects that require personal motivation
- Minimal supervision demanding individual self-reliance and responsibility
- Intensive periods of difficult or tedious tasks that demand accuracy
As organisations need diligent employees to ensure deliverables,
you can maximise
your organisation’s potential by utilising the Business Personality Reflections®
either as a standalone traditional assessment, or as part of
an online recruitment screening platform developed by Psych
Press. If you would like to learn
more about the Diligence scale or
the Business Personality Reflections®, please simply enquire now
for a free trial.
