In a previous article I highlighted the need for employees today to feel a sense of belonging with their organization. It’s perhaps understandable, therefore, that managers would strive to achieve a degree of cultural fit when they recruit.

There’s a lot to support such a view. Indeed, a few years ago research from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that a poor cultural fit can cost somewhere between 50-60% of that employee’s annual salary.

What’s more, research from the University of Iowa found that when employees have a strong cultural fit not only with their new employer, but also with their boss and new colleagues, they are both happier and more productive than their peers who suffer a cultural disconnect.

Cultural fit

To add further weight to this argument, research from Columbia Business School found that systems designed to measure cultural fit can help when it comes to instilling company values as well as retaining employees and supporting productivity.

The researchers highlight how the decentralization encouraged by the pandemic has meant that many companies have deployed tools such as HighMatch to measure for cultural fit. The tools aim to systematically measure applicants for their alignment with company values.

When the researchers examined how employees that were chosen in part by such a tool, they found little initial evidence to suggest that they performed any better than those who were not chosen by the tool. However, this changed over time, such that their performance outstripped their “less culturally aligned” peers.

“Hiring is complex, time-consuming, and expensive – so it’s imperative that businesses try to get it right.  This research shows that systems that measure culture fit can be a game-changer: they can help identify employees who will become high-achievers over time,” the researchers explain. “But businesses that adopt this method, however, must account for the potential problem of candidates tricking the system.”

Open and shut

So, it seems like a pretty open and shut case, right? Hiring for cultural fit clearly produces better, more engaged, and more loyal employees. All of that can indeed be true, but we don’t want our organizations to be homogenous.

For instance, research from Bocconi University suggests that the best way to be creative and innovative is to create ideas in the company of strangers and then develop those ideas with people you know well.

The study found that during the idea generation phase, weak ties were particularly useful because they expose us to new and interesting points of view, which opens us up to a range of new possibilities.

When it comes to expanding and executing the idea, however, the study found that it’s best to work with people with whom you have strong ties. The researchers found that these people are most likely to focus on the idea and provide criticism in a more constructive manner.

On the margins

Having an incredibly strong culture can also be exclusionary for those that don’t fit the mold, which can be problematic. Research from the London School of Economics explores how we respond when we don’t fit in at work. The study investigated workplaces in both the UK and the U.S. across a number of industries and occupations, with an understandable variation in how people tend to respond to not fitting in.

Cultural misalignment occurs in a number of circumstances. For instance, new co-workers or managers might join a team, or the company could be restructured. Cultures and practices within the organization could be explicitly changed such that the organization no longer reflects that which they originally joined. Sometimes these differences were overtly identified by a colleague or a manager, whether in terms of the employee’s personality or their performance distinguishing them from the group.

Respondents did however reveal a more nuanced perspective than a simple in/out perspective on cultural fit. Most revealed that even when they didn’t experience a good fit in some parts of their work, they did in others.  For instance, they might have poor relationships with a boss or colleagues, but good fit for their jobs. It’s a state that is largely subject to ongoing change.

When people experienced this disconnect, they tended to respond in one of three ways:

• Resolution – this strategy tends to play out in a number of ways, with leaving the job an option that was usually considered, but then discarded as undesirable. Instead, people would attempt to change their environment or themselves.
• Relief-seeking – these strategies tend to be defensive in nature and are primarily aimed at mitigating the negative feelings that emerge from not fitting in. They seldom tackle the root causes.
• Resignation – the final strategy was deployed when the previous two had failed. Resignation isn’t necessarily actually leaving a post, but rather becoming resigned to the situation. This manifested itself in either distancing oneself from the environment, or taking pride in being a misfit.  Nonetheless, many of the employees who fell into this camp did leave eventually.

Standing out

Despite the craze for “quiet quitting”, if you find yourself as something of an outsider, there are some more constructive approaches you can take. A Berkeley study suggests that your ideal strategy might depend on where you sit within your organizational structure. 

For example, if you’re culturally distinct from your colleagues, then it’s important that you integrate well with the structure of your organization. By contrast, if you’re not part of any well-established groups at work, then it’s more important to build cultural alliances with your colleagues.

“Most people recognize that, if they fail to differentiate themselves from their peers, they are very unlikely to get ahead,” the authors say. “Yet fitting into a company creates a larger, motivating sense of identity for employees and enables them to collaborate with others in the organization.”

This can result in the understandably difficult scenario of trying to fit in and stand out at the same time. The most effective employees were identified as “assimilated brokers”. These were employees who had a high level of cultural fit but low levels of network cliqueness. 

So-called “integrated nonconformists” also did well, as they were well integrated with their peers but poorly so with the overall organization. The worst performers were referred to as “doubly embedded actors”. They were part of a dense network of employees and were also culturally compliant. These people were so embedded in the status quo that they were unlikely to ever be innovative, and the data suggests they were also most likely to be fired. 

The final category was disembedded actors who had neither alignment with their organization nor with colleagues. These employees were so disenfranchised that they would seldom last long.

“The assimilated broker has connections across parts of the organization that are otherwise disconnected. At the same time, she knows how to blend in seamlessly with each of these groups even if they are quite different culturally,” the researchers explain.

It’s clear that there are some benefits to hiring for cultural fit, but it’s also important to note the ways that it can exclude rather than include. Hopefully the studies outlined above will illustrate both how people might respond when on the outside and also provide some tips on how they can be reintegrated into the fold.