Culture Fit vs. Culture Add - What Is The Better Fit For Your HR Management?
The company culture plays a critical role in fostering the values, goals, and ideologies that keep a company together. It is a sum of attitudes held within the company and helps one make the right choice before they sign up to work with them.
As soon as different cultures were curated within organizations, the trend of finding ‘culture fits’ became a norm in several industries. From becoming a meeting point for like-minded people in an organization, the term turned into a weaponization trick that promoted tribal behaviors and strong biases against those who defied the norms.
As the concept of ‘culture’ evolved it turned into criteria that excluded countless aspiring employees due to the mere difference in their choice of TV shows.
What Is Culture Fit And Does It Matter?
Theoretically, culture fit is the recruitment approach that helps like-minded candidates transition to well-paid employees. It started as a basic idea that helped employees feel connected to their teams and employers, which in turn ensured retention and productivity.
But over the course of a few decades becoming a culture fit meant whether you could accompany the team leader on lunch or whether your company would be appreciated over beers and Major League Games.
Wondering how a basic question about your favorite sitcom during an interview can lead to disqualification?
Let’s illustrate it with an example!
During a job interview, the recruitment panel often poses seemingly harmless questions about your favorite sitcom or perhaps your views on a popular singer.
You may casually answer about your preference for Modern Family for its diverse representation of gender, ethnicity, and ages, over F.R.I.E.N.D.S due to its all-white cast and experiences. But to a conservative employer, this may seem like a red flag!
While their primary responsibility was to find the best candidate and now a best friend for themselves, it often leads to loss for the employer itself.
And this is precisely what culture fits as a disqualifier does. It eliminates countless talented individuals who have the potential to transform the company’s future!
In the age of awareness, it is apparent that the label of ‘culture fit’ for human resource management was used as a cover to omit employees with diverse experiences and backgrounds. Today, diversity, equity, and inclusion have become the cornerstones for effective job hunting and retention.
The workforce today is not divided by borders, gender orientations, the color of one’s skin or their ethnic background. As we navigate the tumultuous waters of postmodern employment trends, let’s take a deep dive at culture add and its outcomes.
What Is Culture Add?
There is nothing wrong in trying to preserve familiarity in a company but then it must be noted that more of the same accounts for less. Novelty in thought can get a problem solved faster as opposed to adding more cooks from the same school for the preservation of a spoilt broth.
It may seem easier to find an individual that fits the curated company culture for many organizations but that unfortunately can lead to biased decisions. Hence, taking the approach of ‘adding’ a new perspective to the company can prove to be advantageous in the long term.
Culture add is not just a phrase that can be swapped while advertising vacancies. It is a meaningful and positive change that can introduce fresh ideas and even lifesaving help for companies that are struggling to stay afloat during the post-pandemic recession.
There is no denial in the fact that diverse teams are smarter, and their intelligence quotient continues to go higher as more unique individuals continue to join them. Switching from culture fit to culture add has aided companies like Facebook and Pandora in multiple ways.
A few ways culture add can benefit an employer:
Removes implicit bias in the the recruitment process
Increases the potential for better decision making and problem-solving
Leads to a competitive advantage when it comes to DEI initiatives
Helps attract the younger talent that strives for diverse cultures and open communication
Culture add will only add value to your organization if you foster inclusion in the DNA of your company. It requires a systematic approach that breaks the shackles of orthodox, exclusive values that have penetrated the hiring processes for the years. If you welcome differences and embrace uniqueness at the first bloom, only then can the organization flourish in diversity in the later stages.
Final Thoughts
Employers genuinely need conscious effort to organically adapt diversity and inclusion in their recruitment processes. Shedding the shrouds of culture fit and the search of best friends instead of an eligible team mate can prove to be an excellent first step. As companies continue to add fresh perspectives to their teams, they will continue to grow in terms of value and finances too!
