What Are Cultural Fit and Cultural Add?

Recruiting the right people to your team is one of the most important roles that you'll perform as a manager – and one of the most challenging.

Get it right, and you power your team to fly. Get it wrong, and you can cost your team money, time and resources, and hinder its work.

So, what could be more promising than to hire people who will blend right in and get straight down to work? Both parties would know where they stand, and do what needs to be done without any fuss.

This article looks at why this "cultural fit" approach to recruitment is not always what it's cracked up to be, and proposes an alternative approach: "cultural add."

What Is "Cultural Fit"?

The term "cultural fit" refers to the extent to which an individual is aligned with an organization's values and behavioral norms.

Hiring people for their potential cultural fit is a popular recruitment strategy. Research shows that many employers are keen to hire people who are culturally similar to themselves and the rest of their team. Key factors here can include life experiences, leisure interests, and self-presentation styles. [1]

Cultural fit is often a high recruitment priority, but it's rarely the only consideration. Good hiring managers also assess applicants' competencies, experiences, and soft skills, such as emotional intelligence and creativity.

The Pros and Cons of Hiring for Cultural Fit

It's easy to see why some managers hire for fit: people who are "like you" tend to blend in more easily than people who are "different" in some way.

They contribute more quickly, stick around for longer, and are happier in their roles. They help managers to save time and money because they don't need to be replaced as often, and they help organizations to strengthen their cultural identities, too.

And who doesn't enjoy being in a team with people they like? The "likability factor" is a powerful element in teams of people who "click" and work effectively together, and who manage to have a good time in the process.

But there's a downside – a dark side, even – to cultural fit. Hiring only people who share the same perspectives, strengths and weaknesses creates monocultures – uniform workforces and ways of working that rarely produce the best outcomes.

A team of people who excel at seeing "the big picture," for instance, may fail because it lacks individuals who focus on the detail. So, they overlook key factors and fall prey to groupthink. Ultimately, their projects can suffer.

Worse still, hiring for fit tends to amplify biases and prejudices. People who are "different" might be rejected or excluded, deliberately or unthinkingly, because managers assume that they will be difficult to work with and won't stay around. This risks illegal discrimination, and stifles the diversity that teams need to innovate and compete.

What Is "Cultural Add"?

Cultural add is a concept that takes the best aspects of cultural fit and addresses its potential pitfalls. But it's more than just a semantic tweak – it's a shift of emphasis and practice.

Cultural add emphasizes hiring "culture contributors," rather than people who fit the status quo. Culture contributors are people who reflect and share your organization's ethics and values, but who also have something new to offer.

This moves the emphasis from conformity to diversity – of thought, perspective, experience, personality, and other characteristics.

It helps managers to build teams of the most able people, rather than the most popular, and builds cultures that are more fluid and diverse. And diversity has been shown to boost innovation, especially when people feel connected with their co-workers. [2] It's also a key driver for business success. [3]

How to Hire for Cultural Add

When you're hiring, it's easy to fall into the trap of instinctively thinking, "I like you; you'd fit in," even when you already have processes in place to keep decisions objective.

So, how can you minimize the risk of hiring purely for fit, and prioritize cultural add? Here are five tips to bear in mind:

1. Define Your Culture

You need to define your culture rigorously and precisely, to know what you're not going to change and what a job candidate could add to it.

Defining culture is rarely a simple task. A good approach is to ask a cross-section of people from your organization to identify the themes that characterize its culture. Then, ask them to pinpoint specific, measurable traits and behaviors that demonstrate this culture "in action." (Our Seven Dimensions of Culture article may be useful here.)

2. Guard Against Bias

We all have unconscious biases. We may be unaware of them, or afraid to admit to them, but we have to suppress them to avoid hiring solely for cultural fit.

Here are some tips for keeping bias, prejudice, stereotyping, and misperception out of your hiring process:

• Write neutral job descriptions and advertisements. Focus on the essential skills and education needed to do the job. (Be careful in your wording. For example, phrases such as "highly experienced," "recent graduate," and "high-energy" can be read as proxies for age.)
• Hold competency-based interviews. Assess candidates' skills, values and attributes objectively, to find out what they could "add" to your team.
• Use objective, measurable assessments. Tools such as Aptitude Testing, Psychometric Testing, or Inbox Assessments enable you to assess people for the specific traits, skills and values that you need.
• Compose broad interviewing panels of people with varied backgrounds.
• Involve your HR team. Your HR department can clarify your organization's hiring strategy. Also, by including an HR representative on interview panels, you can ensure that a neutral, moderating voice participates in the hiring decision.
• Hire from a broad pool of applicants. Word-of-mouth hires, and consistently recruiting from the same agencies and programs, tends to reinforce existing biases.
• Avoid discriminating on the basis of demographic traits. Age, disability, gender, religion, race, and nationality, for example, are often legally protected classes, and are rarely acceptable grounds for recruitment decisions.

3. Assess for Cultural Fit

"Culture" and "fit" still matter when you're hiring for cultural add. After all, you won't want a team comprised of "misfits" who clash and quarrel. You'll want people who will respect, protect and uphold your mission, vision and values.

So, check that your employer branding accurately reflects your culture. This will also help potential recruits to decide for themselves whether the culture is right for them.

Say "no" to applicants who would clearly be a poor cultural fit, or who would likely create discord and unrest if you hired them. (Behavioral assessments can help you to objectively assess whether a candidate would be a poor fit.)

4. Search for the Cultural Add

What each applicant could potentially contribute to your goals, sales and successes matters at least as much as their character. A candidate who, at first, appears to be "too different," or "not the best fit," may have exactly what your team needs.

So, abandon any fixed ideas about your "ideal recruit" and adopt a more open-minded approach.

Tell candidates that you're looking for a cultural add, and ask questions about their attributes and individuality. What "something new" could they contribute to your team?

5. Leverage the "Add"

Hiring for cultural add isn't just about building a diverse workforce. You also need to leverage the varied skills, ideas and experiences of your new recruits.

You may need to start by encouraging greater openness and mutual respect, particularly if your team currently has little diversity. Any hostility, or an aversion to novelty and originality, could spark clashes, create division, and discourage the new talent that you've worked so hard to recruit.

Finally, sit down with your new recruit to discuss how you might work with them to use and share what they bring to the team.

This could involve adjusting procedures or workflows, or finding new ways to accommodate them in the team. The more open-minded and flexible you can be, the easier it will be for "different" people to blend in with – and add to the success of – your team.