How Important is "Culture Fit" at Your Business?

Over the best 15 years or so, there seems to have been a rise in “culture fit” with businesses. Culture fit is a vague concept usually used when evaluating an employee (“Does he/she still fit into our culture?” or when evaluating a new employee candidate (“Do we think he’ll fit into our culture?”). These questions are usually asked — out loud or not — in the context of “We are a special place to work and we want to be sure this person fits into our specialness.”

Hogwash, I say. Culture is a double-edge sword, used to protect the business while at the same time hurting the employee/candidate. Culture is also code for homogeneity. It is about bringing in people who “look like me, sound like me and act like me.” It’s not about inclusion, it’s about exclusion.

Culture fit is a failed ideology. As Monica Torres of HuffPost explains, when “companies prioritize how a person fits into their preexisting culture, it maintains the status quo … companies with diverse teams of different races, genders and sexual orientations are more likely to capture a new market, develop new products and understand target end users who are diverse, too.”

The culture in your business will be drastically improved if you stop thinking about. Instead, think about alignment. Identify the values in workplace. Responsibility, loyalty, consideration, honesty, integrity and so on. Explain how they relate to the workday environment. For candidates, ask them how these values work in their lives.

For more, click here.