Values and culture fit

What are values?

Your values are the things that you believe are important and guide the way you live. They are relatively stable across time and across different contexts. However, values may influence behaviour more strongly when they are relevant to the context. For example, if you value achievement, that may be more likely to drive your attitudes and behaviour at work than in your personal life. Talogy defines work values as “the importance individuals place on different aspects in their working life, which helps to guide their judgement and behaviour in the work environment.”

Values are not typically defined by their absence or presence, but by the order in which they are prioritised. For example, most people will value stability to a certain extent, but where this falls in relation to their other priorities will differ.

What is meant by culture add?

Culture add refers to the idea that organisations should move away from hiring for culture fit, and instead focus on hiring people that can contribute something unique to their culture. It is often advocated as a means of increasing diversity.

How to hire for a good culture and value fit

The first step to take when hiring for culture fit is to have a deep understanding of the organisation’s culture. Many organisations will have a defined mission statement, a set of espoused organisational values and common practices or norms. These are typically influenced by the organisation’s founders or current senior leadership and managed by Human Resources. However, sometimes the reality doesn’t match up with this, especially if the organisation historically hasn’t been hiring with culture fit in mind or has experienced significant change since the culture and values were initially defined.

To understand what your organisation’s culture and values are, you could conduct a survey with current employees, or conduct focus groups with a neutral facilitator. As culture is often driven by leaders, interviews with senior leadership that explore the organisation’s mission, purpose, and vision can also help to define the culture.

Once you have a clear idea of your organisation’s culture and values, it is important to incorporate this into the selection process in a robust way. Often, decisions about an applicant’s ‘fit’ are made by subjective judgements formed by the hiring manager or other individuals involved in the hiring process. Research has shown that people are not very good at forming accurate judgements of another person’s fit, and their determination of this will often be influenced by the degree of perceived similarity between themselves and the applicant. This is where hiring for culture fit can go wrong and pose a threat to diversity; an applicant’s fit should have nothing to do with whether they support the same football team as their hiring manager, for example.

If possible, assess for culture or values fit early in the selection process, before you have met the candidate face to face. This can be done using a values assessment. When you do interview them in person, use a structured interview format and stick to job-relevant criteria. Avoid focusing on personal interests or hobbies or trying to identify common life experiences.

Finally, remember that culture fit is a two-way process. While you are trying to make judgements about candidates’ level of fit, they are doing the same, trying to gain insight into the culture of the organisation to decide if it is right for them. Portray an honest representation of your organisation’s culture and values. For example, there is nothing to be gained by telling candidates how much innovation and new ideas are encouraged even when this is not the case. If hired, they will ultimately discover the organisation was not the right fit for them, increasing the likelihood of them leaving.