Successful Hiring and the link to Organisational Culture

Many companies and organisations spend thousands on search companies and recruitment firms so that they can find the high-performance people that will join the company and make a real long term difference. However, many of these high performer’s find it challenging to adjust their style of leading and operating to the new culture of the organisation, the way of working of the leadership, and the teams of people. Having invested time and money, during the recruitment and also during the induction phases of joining a new organisation, the high performer then struggles to work and operate within the new culture and after less than a year hands in their resignation. The organisation is back to square one, starting the time consuming process all over again and having spent a considerable amount of money.

Recent Challenges Companies are facing.

McKinsey recently published some research on how companies are scaling up and growing. From start-up to centaur: Leadership lessons on scaling April 29, 2024. In this article the authors are looking at what the main growth challenges are for CEOs and leadership teams who are looking to upscale quickly. Fostering the foundation for growth involves “hiring slow and firing fast”. Making the time to recruit the right people who fit the culture is one of the biggest growth challenges organisations face. In addition companies looking to expand into new areas or grow different functions are experiencing the same growth issues. “Successful companies are considering a candidate's cultural fit before hiring and taking the time, sometimes months, to ensure they hire the right person.”

So what is Culture?

Organisational Culture is defined as the behaviour of humans within an organisation and the meaning that people attach to those behaviours. According to David Needle (ref. Business in Context: An Introduction to Business and Its Environment. Needle (2004)) organisational culture represents the collective values, beliefs and principles of organisational members and is a product of such factors as history, product, market, technology, and strategy, type of employees, management style, and national culture. So Culture includes an organisation's vision, values, norms, systems, symbols, language, assumptions, beliefs, and habits.

How to measure culture fit?

Often culture is not considered when selecting high performance people. Making time to consider what attributes and personality traits that might indicate an individual’s successful fit to culture and way of working can help to ensure the right people are selected during the recruitment process. This obviously can save a huge amount of time and effort for both individuals and organisations in the long run as the engagement, motivation and intention to stay is higher not just for the individuals but their entire team and wider workforce who are often negatively impacted by a vacant position.

Making hiring more objective

Taking an objective approach to cultural fit can make the selection process less influenced by gut feel and can limit personal bias. By looking at personality and motivational preferences that are important and relevant to the organisational culture, along with the leadership behaviours that are recognised and used daily; matching these to a candidates preferences and behaviours and feeding this into the selection process adds that objective element that ensures more successful placements and retention of high performing people and leaders into a company.

As a consequence of this approach real scale up and sustainable growth is more secure for organisations that are looking for long term success. If you would like to know more about how we can help you to hire successfully for the longer term, please get in touch - email info@gfbgroup.com or call us on +44 (0) 333 090 2580