Employers will go to great lengths to screen job candidates, interview and check references in the quest to make the best hire. Some even take a more scientific approach, deploying a structured interviewing process or putting a potential employee through the paces in the workplace in what amounts to an audition.
There is another critical question that, consciously or unconsciously, lies at the heart of any hiring process: Will this candidate mesh well with his or her co-workers and managers? What about with the company’s values and overall culture? But cultural fit is tough to gauge — perhaps because it’s also difficult to clearly define.
“It is an incredibly vague term, and it’s a vague term often based on gut instinct,” says Wharton management professor Katherine Klein, vice dean of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative. “The biggest problem is that while we invoke cultural fit as a reason to hire someone, it is far more common to use it to not hire someone Twitter . People can’t tell you what aspect of the culture they are worried about.”
If that sounds a lot like the kind of language country clubs once used to exclude applicants, that’s because discussions around cultural fit can also involve certain euphemisms for what amounts to justifying prejudice, or at least, bias. “It’s usually this sense that this person doesn’t seem ‘like us,’ like she or he won’t party well or play well,” continues Klein. “There are all sorts of biases that can — and do — creep in.”
Cultural fit, of course, does have a legitimate role in the workplace. “But in many organizations, fit has gone rogue,” argued Lauren A. Rivera in a recent piece in The New York Times. The associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management interviewed 120 decision makers, and found them deploying subjective personal criteria rather than screening for candidates who could thrive on established organizational values. Wrote Rivera: “Bonding over rowing college crew, getting certified in scuba, sipping single-malt Scotches in the Highlands or dining at Michelin-starred restaurants was evidence of fit; sharing a love of teamwork or a passion for pleasing clients was not.”
“The biggest problem is that while we invoke cultural fit as a reason to hire someone, it is far more common to use it to not hire someone.” –Katherine Klein
“How you measure that cultural fit is the key,” says Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard. “It’s not that we should throw out cultural fit wholesale; it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But the question is, can we get at it through these other qualities? I think we’re using these other qualities as a proxy for, ‘Is this person going to fit in here?’ So we’re making a leap, a large assumption based on these similarities.”
The Odd Person Out
There are good reasons to screen for employees who will fit in culturally — depending on whether and how that gets defined. “When people don’t fit the organization, they don’t feel comfortable,” says Rothbard. “They often don’t get selected, and if they do, they don’t enjoy their experience and they leave.”
Sometimes the skill set is there, but the kind of social bonds that grease the wheels of relationships are so lacking that friction follows and misery prevails — as is the case for a woman we will call Cynthia, the office manager at a small Philadelphia plumbing company. Interactions in the office are often fraught with tension and bickering when Cynthia calls co-workers on their use of malapropisms, or what she perceives as a lack of logic in both small talk and work-related discussions.
Some tensions would seem to stem simply from bad management — “I wonder if I asked my bosses what my daughter’s name was if they’d know,” she notes as one example — while others, she says, can be put down to cultural differences. “I think what makes me the odd person out is there is a part of me that doesn’t want to take the time to socialize with people I don’t have anything in common with. I think I am interested in relationships, and I am interested in politics. It’s not even about having different politics – [my co-workers] just don’t want to talk about politics. If you try to engage them in conversation about something going on in the outside world, if you say something about what was going on with the economy in Greece, they don’t want to talk about that at all.”
In this case, what the company didn’t know hurt it — and the employee. Cynthia is playing out the dynamics described by University of Maryland emeritus professor of psychology Benjamin Schneider in his Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA) framework. In 1987, Schneider proposed that the collective characteristics of people define an organization, and that over time, this happens as a natural outcome of the ASA cycle: Like-minded individuals select each other to be part of an organization, and sooner or later, the “misfits” leave.
Cynthia in fact has decided to quit her job and seek work with a temp agency — in part so she can gauge the culture of a new workplace before committing to it long term.
But her workplace may be diminished by her absence. Research also shows the benefits of diversity in the workplace — diversity of ideas, personality and life experience in additional to racial, religious and gender diversity. “If we value diversity, and I think we do, and if we want to get the benefits, and I think we do, we have to recognize that it has to be managed,” says Rothbard. The case of Cynthia “is really challenging, because they are not ever going to come to terms over the use of the English language, so having an intervention around that is probably not going to happen.” But one thing that could work, Rothbard adds, is to have an intervention around “work-related things that everyone can all agree on and see value in — focusing on building a sense of cohesion and closeness through-work-based activities.”
“The only way that culture in the workplace is effective is if there are sets of values that help the company achieve its strategy.” –Sigal Barsade
Klein says a solution may require a different kind of conversation than is currently happening. “She may think, ‘These people don’t like me and I feel like an outsider,’ and they may feel she doesn’t like them and respect them. A good manager or leader is able to build esprit de corps.”
Cultural fit emerged as an intriguing factor in a study Rothbard co-authored with Gina Dokko and Steffanie L. Wilk titled, “Unpacking Prior Experience: How Career History Affects Job Performance,” published in 2009 in Organizational Science. The authors found that while employers hire for relevant experience — a positive — long experience in a previous job had a countervailing negative effect, bringing with it something the authors call “cognitive baggage,” and so the overall effect washed out. But the washout became a positive when one of two other factors was present. Says Rothbard: “What we found was when the supervisor said the employee was flexible, the negative effect went away. And the other variable that made that go away was cultural fit. So when we asked a new employee, ‘How well do you fit?’ and they said ‘I fit really well,’ that negative effect was not there, either.”
Better Fit, Better Financial Performance
Good cultural fit isn’t just about avoiding employee churn. It’s also about financial performance. Schneider in 2013 noted the speed with which culture “became the darling of the management consulting world,” and that it “presented some issues because academics were not quite sure … what culture was and what it represented — and even whether it was appropriate to try to link organizational culture with the financial success of corporations.”
An answer came in 2014 from a study of one sector that strongly suggested that culture can have an impact on a company’s financial performance. The content and strength of culture was examined in “Parsing Organizational Culture: How the Norm for Adaptability Influences the Relationship Between Culture Consensus and Financial Performance in High-Technology Firms,” by Jennifer A. Chatman, David F. Caldwell, Charles A. O’Reilly and Bernadette Doerr. The study, published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, found that “firms with higher levels of consensus across many norms, as well as an intensive emphasis on adaptability that may promote conformity without the inertial effects of uniformity, performed better financially over a volatile three-year period.”
Cultural fit should not, however, eclipse the importance of heterogeneity. Diversity in the workplace has long been valued as a way to introduce new ideas, but researchers have found other reasons for cultivating heterogeneity. Information was processed more carefully in heterogeneous groups than homogenous groups, according to “Is the Pain Worth the Gain? The Advantages and Liabilities of Agreeing With Socially Distinct Newcomers,” by Katherine W. Phillips, Katie A. Liljenquist and Margaret A. Neale, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Social awkwardness creates tension, and this is beneficial, the study found. “The mere presence of socially distinct newcomers and the social concerns their presence stimulates among old-timers motivates behavior that can convert affective pains into cognitive gains” — or, in other words, better group problem solving.
“When people don’t fit the organization, they don’t feel comfortable. They often don’t get selected, and if they do, they don’t enjoy their experience and they leave.” –Nancy Rothbard
Culture Clearly Expressed
Of course, it’s more efficient to focus on a set of corporate values rather than personal cultural traits from the start. Bonding with a potential employee about Scotch or scuba diving as a guide for whether he or she would make a good co-worker is “actually antithetical to cultural fit,” says Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade. A better test revolves around values: “How much of a team player are you? How detail-oriented? What type of emotions do you tend to display or suppress — anger, fear, love? The only way that culture in the workplace is effective is if there are sets of values that help the company achieve its strategy,” Barsade notes. “When there is thoughtfulness around what the values are and you tie that to hiring, then you have best hiring practices.”
It’s wise for companies to have not more than three core organizational values, and to communicate those values clearly in the hiring process, Barsade says. “For example, you can have values around being results-oriented, or if you are a financial services firm you attach high value to paying attention to detail,” she notes. “There are companies that would like to be more innovative — not just that the products are innovative, but also that HR is being innovative and the cafeteria staff is being innovative. There are values of ethics, of teamwork, of respecting people and diversity, of customer focus and more.” She adds that there are values based on a firm’s emotional culture: “For example, the degree to which you are allowed or should be having fun, allowed to show anger, or expressing companionate love — that is, showing affection, caring, compassion and tenderness for other people you work with.”
Structured interviews can help ferret out some of these qualities. “It will vary by position and company, but everyone should get the same questions, so multiple interviewers are asking the same questions that are framed, among other things, as they relate to values,” Barsade suggests. “If there is any way to see the candidates in action or give them an opportunity to display the behavior, that can work. You want to set up a fair, consistent, transparent hiring practice that really allows you to understand whether people share the values of the organization.”
The most critical thing, Barsade says, is that “leadership has to enact the culture – [it] has to believe it and live it. Then … make sure the structure supports the culture — the rewards system, the policies.”
So, in their search for the best hire, are companies heeding the wisdom of compelling studies and data arguing against gut instinct and in favor of a more systematic search for cultural affinity? “I would argue that it’s not happening enough,” says Barsade. One reason, perhaps, is that many are still resistant to certain tools, like structured interviews, that can help sift for evidence. One study, “Belief in the Unstructured Interview: The Persistence of an Illusion,” by Jason Dana, Robyn Dawes and Nathanial Peterson, found that interviewers who conducted unstructured interviews were worse at predicting future performance than when they were given access to the interviewees’ background information alone.
Still, there is more awareness than there once was, and some say we are seeing a steady awakening of employers to screening for cultural fit. Says Klein: “Slowly but surely, yes, the best companies are.”
The alternative is dealing with the consequence of employees who, when asked how badly they want to find a new job, respond like Cynthia. “Oh boy, in a big way,” she says. “And I will.”
Join The Discussion
5 Comments So Far
Alessandro Daliana
Is culture, and by extension cultural fit, always important for a company and hiring decisions?
From my hiring experiences, whenever I asked a potential employer about their company’s culture, I would get blank stares at me. This happened often enough for me to stop asking the question. However, upon further reflection, even those companies I did work for who did “publicize” a company culture, it was more about appearing to be cutting edge than actually living by it; company culture was lip service.
Nowadays, company culture seems to be the asset around which asset-light companies are trying to make a return. This especially true for internet-based companies, like Zappos, who don’t have a very strongly defendable asset base underpinning their value creating processes. Thus, culture – inside and outside – the company is a very important asset on which to build relationships. (Please see my article “Leading a Customer-Centric Business” http://www.returnonkeycomponent.com/leading-a-customer-centric-business/)
Whereas, a company with a strong asset-base, like, say, a biotech firm with multiple patents is less dependent on culture and cultural fit as part of their strategy.
Rick Wingender
I find the whole concept of “culture fit” to be laughable. It’s really the same thing as a white sheet with two eyeholes cut out of it.
The simple fact is, the concept of “culture fit” is irreconcilable with the professed desire for diversity that virtually all organizations claim to aspire to. I am not referring only to race, color, sexual orientation, age, or religion, I’m also talking about simple personality traits. Robots that can only nod their heads and speak politely do not give you a competitive advantage. Supposedly, the reason that we have a desire for diversity in our workforce is so that we can benefit from the resulting diversity in perspectives, opinions, and experiences. “Meshing well” is not only over-rated, it’s not really even always desirable.
I once had a boss – a smart guy that I really respected – tell me that if we both always agree on everything, then we are redundant, and one of us has to go. He valued people that shook things up, even if that sometimes meant hurt feelings. Another boss and I had occasional, heated arguments in his office about how to run the business; he was passionate and so was I. We always worked through it, but more importantly, when we opened the door and emerged, we were almost always on the same page, and almost always were successful, and we always knew that the other had at least listened and understood. We also had a great relationship based on respect for each other’s intellect.
“Culture Fit” is a ridiculous term for another reason. Too many recruiters, HR people, and hiring managers buy into the idea that their company has a unique culture. I have a news flash for those people: you do not. In my personal work experience, and in my communications with former co-workers that have moved on, or came from other companies, as well as acquaintances at other companies, or people I knew from school, I find that most companies are pretty much the same, culturally. This is caused by the constant movement over the past few decades of employees from company to company (causing a certain homogeneity), by the proliferation of HR laws, and by communications and media coverage over the internet. I find the nuanced, subtle differences between companies to be more a result of differences between departments, led by particularly different managers. There is probably more of a difference in culture between (just for example), the accounting department at Coke and their Marketing team, than there is between Coke’s Marketing team and Nike’s.
“Culture fit” is also something that can develop over time, and often does. Just like a marriage takes work, so do working relationships. I would rather have my HR people stop working so hard at finding “culture fits”, and instead, promote a management training program that develops managers into leaders. Leaders are managers who get the most out of their people by recognizing and utilizing the strengths each person brings to the organization, as well as praises and rewards adaptability in their subordinates. But in the 2000’s, I see less and less emphasis on this kind of leadership, and more and more emphasis on this “plug and pray” mentality, that often fails, and often results in the employee being blamed (and even terminated) for not being a good “fit”.
The simple fact is, the concept of “culture fit” is irreconcilable with the professed desire for diversity that virtually all organizations claim to aspire to. The bottom line, for me, is that recruiters, HR managers, and hiring managers should stop spending so much time trying to figure this out; because they can’t, and it’s folly to try. It takes two to tango, and it takes a few months to know for sure if the new person and their manager will mesh – or at least be productive. So, they should instead go back to concept of hiring people who have great experiences, who are smart, creative, analytical, accomplished, etc., and then train them and their managers on the nuances of the local office politics.
Jim Dundas
“Cultural Fit” is not at odds with a diverse workplace. The most powerful example is at Google. Google is one of the most diverse workplaces in the world but they have a very tight culture that they screen and hire for.
Kim Barrington
I have to concur with Rick’s position above. The whole idea of cultural fit is much the same as (and I sort of hate to quote him, but he’s right) the idea of free trade if someone isn’t a good negotiator is a flawed premise. Cultural Fit in the hands of HR people today is simply a catch phrase giving them an ability to be dismissive of many vs the few. Further, as Rick has suggested, having a group who wants to be buddy buddy and polite and never question or speak up….well Hitler asked for that too. That mindset doesn’t create disruptive innovation or innovation for that matter.
And Jim Dundas, Google’s demographic data on their employees shows a high gender discrimination policy. But figures, a Silicon Valley douche is suggesting Google’s got it down to a science: think again. Diversity is the name of the game, bigot.
Felicity Menzies
Do the benefits of hiring for cultural fit outweigh the benefits of workforce diversity? Why not foster an inclusive culture and have the best of both worlds!