The Importance of Cultural Alignment in Your Recruiting Efforts

By Rick Cassidy

Are you looking for a new employee to lead a key department or function in your organization? Most recruiters look for academic credentials, technical skills, references, and professional experiences while interviewing their potential leaders in their companies. Though these aspects act as valid indicators for a great employee, they may not help uncover the intangibles responsible for a perfect one. Despite having the experience and qualifications, you need to consider if the potential employee is a cultural fit within your company to qualify as an exceptional employee. Your hiring process should also include an assessment for company culture alignment to obtain optimal results.

Unfortunately, many organizations hire employees ideal for the position and not their company. Before hiring leaders to work in your company, creating an interviewing procedure that helps look for a potential employee that align with your company culture would be highly beneficial. Are you wondering why? The company cultural alignment recruiting process comes with many benefits.

Importance of Interviewing Leaders for Cultural Alignment

Employees spend most of their time building a career through dedication to their work. It is, therefore, essential that they love their work and workmates. Otherwise, the working environment may not be desirable and could result in employee turnover. As a recruiter, you should consider how new employees will impact your existing team and their productivity. Also, keep in mind how they will affect your company’s growth potential and health. If you aim to grow, your interviewing process should involve your company culture alignment requirements. Otherwise, you may invest in a bad hire.

The following are reasons why cultural alignment should be a top priority while recruiting and interviewing leaders for the right hire.

1. Hiring is an Investment

Hiring a new employee is a process that takes your energy, time and money. You wouldn’t want to make a wrong decision because it could amount to a loss. You start off by going through dozens of applications, reviewing them to look for the ideal candidate to interview. You may also need to involve additional people in the hiring process for transparency and to gain trust from the candidate. After hiring, you may spend funds on your new employee for training and basic employment needs such as travel, relocation expenses, technology and equipment such as a laptop, mobile device, and office supplies, not to mention time taken away from current employees to help train the new hire. Hiring the wrong worker could cost you a fortune.

2. Positive Energy and Increased Productivity

Has your organization ever had a worker that didn’t mesh well with your other employees? Typically, the energy around that employee is negative and surrounding employees are less motivated to work. Did you ever think about why? Most probably, while recruiting that employee, your interviewing process did not consider your company culture alignment needs. Though workers are different and come with varying capabilities, they should align at some level. As a result, they accommodate each other comfortably and share a collective purpose and culture. You may find a new employee performing his or her duties effectively but if with a negative attitude, fights the others, or brings any form of distractions to the others, the rest of the employees can get dragged down.

3. Team Morale

When you lose a great leader, your workers’ morale may get affected. But you can reinstate it by employing a new leader that passes your cultural alignment recruitment process. Recruiting an equally good or a better leader helps in encouraging your work team’s morale and confidence. But you can only hire an excellent leader if he or she complies with your culture fit. The following are benefits received from recruiting a leader that fits your company culture:

• Increased team capabilities, technical skills, and expertise
• Value that surpasses their primary job function
• A positive team change and work environment
• Inspiration and encouragement to excel

Though your organization’s culture is driven by its values, it is crucial to incorporate the values of your employees. Workers feel motivated and perform optimally when their values are respected and understood by their employers. It can sometimes be challenging to handle employees from different cultures, beliefs, and values from yours. As a result, you might experience resistance from your workers, while others may not trust you. It is, therefore, essential to also include diversity in your cultural values or fit.

How to Include Diversity in Your Company’s Cultural Fit or Values

Unfortunately, no laws exist to ensure people conform to each other’s culture. It is, therefore, vital to learning your employees’ culture. Open up about your differences and ask them to assist you to understand them. As a result, they will feel included and cared about, making them respond to all your questions. Your workers will also gain trust and feel free to get information from you on how to conform to your organization’s culture. At the end, you get to reap so many benefits from the diversity. Unfortunately, many recruiters struggle on how to make their new hires align to their cultural values.

How to Ensure New Hires Remain Aligned with Your Organization Culture

1. Employ the Right Workers

Do not employ anyone just because of his or her qualification and alignment to the job posting. Ensure that he or she conforms to your company’s values and culture. For the right hire, your recruitment process should also include a company culture alignment qualification. Such workers bond strongly with their employers and find satisfaction in their work.

2. Monitoring Relevant Values

Values help a business to grow, but others can cause negative impacts. Also, some values lose relevancy with time. It is therefore essential to review your values regularly and retain only those that impact your organization positively.

3. Equal Values for the Leaders

Your company’s leaders play a significant role in creating cultural alignment and people. A toxic leader can destroy not only your cultural values but also your company’s social status. To avoid such, all your company leaders should share the same positive values. Replace leaders with negative values for they can demoralize workers and affect your company’s performance.

4. Measure Culture Adoption

Thanks to the advent of technology, you can now measure your worker’s rate of culture adoption through specially designed software. Also, you can perform regular surveys to your employees to determine whether their values align with those of your organization.

5. Behavioral Change Reading Through Recognition

You can read your company’s value change based on its history and your leaders’ direction. With time, you get to know if employees adhere to cultural values by their performance and that of your company. For better results, encourage recognition between manager-to-employee and peer-to-peer.

Each company has departments set to carry out specific roles. Not everyone can recruit or hire a new employee in your organization. It is the responsibility of the human resource manager and his or her team. With the right recruiter, you will have a team that prioritizes your company culture cultural alignment when hiring employees. The following are great examples of companies with a tremendous human resource department that regard culture and cultural alignment in their hiring, onboarding process, and/or training.

Examples of Companies that Prioritize Cultural Alignment

Warby Parker

Since 2010, Warby Parker has been making and selling prescription glasses online. It uses no middlemen, which is why their glasses are of high value for the cost. Its company culture instigates “culture crushes.” The company’s success is a result of a culture dedicated team.

Chevron

Unlike other oil and gas companies, Chevron’s employees respond well to the company’s culture. After comparing themselves with workers from similar companies, its employees indicated that “the Chevron way” supports them and is dedicated to safety.

Parker Hannifin

Parker Hannifin is an engineering company and leader in motion and control technologies, supplying parts to numerous industries around the globe. They take on the approach that high ethical standards and employee empowerment are the keys to having a winning culture.

CHG Healthcare

CHG Healthcare is a staffing company who was recently named to the top 100 companies on the Glassdoor Employee Choice Award, recognized as a best place to work in 2020. Their approach to company culture is simple, “Putting People First.”

Conclusion

As illustrated above, it is essential to recruit workers that align with your company’s cultural values. Inclusive of qualification and experience, use your company culture alignment requirements to hire the best employee. As a result, you will enjoy optimal results from workers who are comfortable and happy with their work and place of work, making your organization skyrocket in development.

We realize that finding the perfect candidate inclusive of relevant experience, skills, AND culture isn’t always easy. Our team at Sky Search Partners has extensive experience in supporting this process with our partners and are always available for a call to discuss how we can help in your hiring needs.

About Sky Search Partners

Rick Cassidy, Sky Search Partners president, founded the firm for one primary reason: We love putting people to work. Sky Search Partners has developed a rigorous platform for engaging, researching, and connecting with the most successful executive talent. The firm executes with a laser focus on to identify candidates precisely aligned to search specifications. A proven formula of integrity and “people first” enables it to build trusted relationships with organizations and top-tier talent across key disciplines, job titles, national markets, and industry classes. This enables client organizations to create their “dream team,” especially in highly competitive environments where results are imperative.