Culture Add vs. Culture Fit in Hiring

The culture add attitude strives to acquire useful components that your culture lacks, as opposed to the culture fit mindset, which aims to employ and keep more of what is currently beneficial to you. In other words, culture fit protects familiarity and comfort, whereas culture add seeks out individuals who appreciate an organization's norms and culture while also bringing something unique that benefits your business.

The true disadvantage of a cultural fit attitude is that it serves to reinforce any preexisting prejudices. Hiring for culture fit means you are likely to employ more of the same and dismiss individuals - even extremely promising ones - who do not suit the present culture. For example, if your current culture is primarily formed of twenty-something male computer programmers. At its worst, culture fit justifies bias and favoritism, resulting in unjust treatment of anybody who does not conform to predetermined cultural stereotypes.

It might be difficult to embrace culture add, especially if your firm has previously placed more emphasis on cultural fit. You won't - and perhaps shouldn't - commit all of your resources at once; instead, actively shift the needle little by little and see how your hiring strategy evolves. Here are a few advice:

1.Examine your values

Your company's values serve as the cornerstone and pillars around which it is built. They serve as both the foundation for your existence and the model for how you want your staff to conduct themselves.

Your workers' adherence to your ideals and their continued relevance must be determined.

Determine each of your values first, then assess how each has affected your business over time. For instance: Do employees identify with each value? Does the culture you wish to have match your values?Then, inquire as to what values you desire but do not already possess.

2.Hire people who are not in your field

Do not confine your search to job fairs and recruitment websites that are dedicated to finding applicants for particular positions. Like all cultural groupings, professions have a tendency to foster some kind of restricted thinking. Naturally, employees must possess the necessary hard skills, but individuals from various professions and educational backgrounds sometimes have unexpected transferable knowledge.

3.Increase culture add by using referrals

Make sure you have an employee referral scheme in place; word-of-mouth recommendations have incredible impact.

Referrals are reciprocal; when current workers or recent hires recommend your business to a potential applicant, the applicant gains knowledge about your culture and organization before applying, enabling them to make an informed decision. And only those who meet your requirements for diversity are referred to you.

Just make sure your current staff are aware of your focus on cultural addition to boost diversity.

4.Adjust your mentality

Finally, maintaining the status quo, keeping things familiar and comfortable, and not pushing limits are all parts of cultural fit.Finding individuals who share your beliefs and contribute something more is the goal of culture add.If you adopt the attitude of adding to your culture, you concentrate on acquiring the variety that your culture is missing. However, this is just the beginning of altering your thinking.

After hiring someone, you must follow through on your commitments. There is no purpose in recruiting for cultural fit if a person with a different opinion joins your company only to have their opinion quickly disregarded.

Here is when Diversity and Inclusion's "inclusivity" is put to use. You must make sure that everyone feels included and psychologically comfortable in order to promote different thinking; otherwise, they won't speak out and share diverse views.

Any company's success will always depend on its culture and corporate principles. Changing your recruitment strategy from defensive to proactive and preparing your corporate culture for the future rather than being restricted by the past are two benefits of moving from culture fit to culture add.

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