Culture fit refers to the compatibility of a candidate’s attitudes and experiences with an organization’s culture. It is a hiring criterion used to select candidates who are likely to embrace the company’s norms and expectations. In other words, culture fit is an important factor in determining whether a candidate will be successful in an organization. The following are illustrative examples.

Agreeableness

Customer facing positions may have a culture of friendliness and respect for the customer that requires candidates who are social, caring, patient and trusting.

Politeness

A firm may seek candidates who will be polite and respectful to coworkers and customers. This may include elements of local culture such as saving face.

Openness

Firms that have a culture of aggressive innovation may seek candidates who are creative and open to change.

Conscientiousness

Teams in areas such as accounting and finance may have a culture of diligence such that they require employees who work in a structured, detail-oriented, principled and controlled fashion.

Extroversion

Teams in areas such as sales may require outgoing people who can engage customers and influence them. For example, individuals who frequently start conversations and like being the center of attention.

Cultural Capital

Cultural capital is the ability to influence members of a culture, super culture or subculture. For example, a team that sells sailboats that mostly recruits accomplished sailors who have interesting stories to tell.

Motivation

A team that is passionate about their work may seek individuals who are equally passionate. For example, software developers who are computer science nerds who entered the profession out of a joy for computing may seek similar candidates.

Work Ethic

Hard working teams may seek individuals who are accustomed to long hours and high expectations. Alternatively, a team that values work-life balance may seek like-minded individuals.

Tolerance for Disagreement

Individuals who can engage people they strongly disagree with in a positive conversation without becoming emotional. A critical capability for a firm that seeks intellectual diversity.

Handling Criticism

Employees who can accept criticism, evaluate it and move on without becoming overly emotional. Useful in a high performance culture that expects individuals to improve rapidly.

Personal Resilience

A general ability to handle stress and continue without a loss of enthusiasm.

Self Direction

The ability to set objectives, manage stakeholders and solve problems without help.

Brand Culture

Employees who are engaged in the culture, super culture or subculture served by the firm. For example, a snowboarding firm that requires all staff to have enthusiasm for the sport.

Culture Fit vs Discrimination

Culture fit is sometimes used as a euphemism for discrimination based on factors such as age, socioeconomic background or physical appearance. For example, a fashion brand that hires mostly women in their 20s may label an applicant in her 40s as a poor “culture fit”.

Culture Fit & Friends

Some individuals and teams view work as a social club such that they seek candidates who will enjoy social outings. For example, a manager who often organizes golf trips may seek candidates who can golf. This is typically viewed in a negative light but reflects a common reality. Some managers think of “culture fit” as “people I like.”

Culture Fit vs Intellectual Diversity

The wrong kind of culture fit can lead to groupthink that stifles creativity. For example, a firm that only hires extroverts may miss out on the creative energies and capabilities of individuals who like to sit quietly and think things through. In some cases, culture fit is focused on creating intellectual diversity such as a firm that seeks individuals with a high tolerance for disagreement.

Employee benefits are additional forms of compensation offered to employees as part of their overall remuneration package. These benefits can include things like health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, and professional development opportunities. In some cases, employee benefits may be taxed differently than wages, depending on the specific benefit and the tax jurisdiction.

Employee benefits are often used as a way to attract and retain top talent, as they can provide additional incentives for employees to stay with a company. Many employee benefits improve over time, such as retirement plans that vest after a certain number of years of service. By offering attractive benefits, companies can encourage employees to stay with the organization and can improve employee satisfaction and retention. The following are illustrative examples of benefits.

Profit Sharing

Profit sharing such as the granting of stock. These may be structured to vest over time such that employee loyalty and performance are rewarded.

Health Insurance

In a nation without a free public healthcare system, health insurance is a critical employee need. Where healthcare is provided by the government, employee health insurance may cover prescription drugs, vision care, hospital extras such as a private room, medical equipment and paramedical services.

Dental Insurance

Preventive, diagnostic and corrective dental treatments.

Life Insurance

Insurance on the life of the employee. Often a flat amount and/or multiple of the employee’s base salary. Some employers also offer dependent life insurance.

Disability Income Protection

Insurance that covers the employee’s income if they are ill or injured such that they can’t work. This often has two components: a short term plan that covers all or most of an employee’s base salary for a limited period of time and a long term plan that may cover a percentage of salary until retirement age.

Long Term Care

Covers long term costs of care if the employee becomes ill or is injured.

Pension

A plan that is structured to make regular payments to an employee after retirement. This may be a fixed sum that is paid to the employee by the employer in retirement or an investment plan that is contributed to by the employer and directed by the employee. In other cases, a pension is a guaranteed life annuity paid for by an employer and offered by an insurance company. Pension plans are a type of deferred compensation that typically has tax advantages for the employee.

Retirement Benefits

Beyond a pension, some firms offer other benefits to retirees such as health insurance.

Daycare

Programs to help employees find a suitable daycare for their children, particularly in areas where daycare centers have waiting lists. Some employers fully or partially pay for daycare. Large firms may offer daycare centers at their office locations. This can greatly simplify the employee’s commute and allow the employee to be close to their children during the day.

Parental Leave

Paid maternity, paternity and adoption leave. In many nations, maternity and paternity leave are mandated and benefits involve exceeding minimum payment levels or time periods.

Dependent Care

A flexible program that provides benefits for a wide variety of dependent care needs for children and adult dependents. This may cover a variety of child care and activities for children. It may also be used for expenses related to caring for sick or disabled dependents.

Education

Covering expenses related to education such as tuition, housing, travel and training costs.

Housing

Employer-provided and employer funded housing. This may include secondary costs such as utilities. Housing benefits are common when the employee is asked to work in a remote location or is on a secondment in a foreign country.

Time-Off

Paid vacation days, sick days, bereavement leave and days to take care of a family member with a serious health condition. This may be structured as individual policies for each type of leave. Alternatively, employees may be given a pool of days to use for any type of leave. Some firms do not regulate how many days an employee takes off as long as they continue to meet their objectives.

Commuting Allowance

Paying for the employee’s commute. Common in areas where employees usually commute by public transit. For example, it is common for Japanese companies to pay for an employee’s commute as most workers take the train. This may be done to encourage employees to use the most environmentally friendly, safe and low-risk commuting method available.

Transportation

Other transportation benefits such as a company vehicle or bicycles.

Travel

Travel benefits such as a network of company owned vacation properties that can be booked by employees for a low fee.

Relocation Assistance

Paying the relocation expenses of new employees.

Events

Access to events such as a sports event sponsored by a firm.

Entertainment

Entertainment such as passes to movies and theme parks. Doing something that benefit’s an employee’s family tends to be received well.

Memberships

Memberships such as professional memberships, social clubs and sports clubs. This may be necessary to a role such as a sales person who is expected to meet and entertain prospective customers.

Business Expenses

The ability to expense business related meals and entertainment is often viewed as a perk.

Wellness

Programs that encourage an employee to stay healthy such as a gym membership or access to specialists such as a nutritionist.

Food & Beverages

Food and beverages such as a coffee, tea and water service. Firms in an isolated location may offer a cafeteria that is free or subsidized by the company.

Employee Assistance Programs

Services that help employees with personal and work related problems. This is typically confidential and may include counseling for marital, family, financial, emotional and addiction issues.

Legal Assistance Plans

Access to experienced attorneys for personal legal matters such as estate planning, real estate matters and family law.

Products & Services

It is very common to provide employees with discounted or free access to your products and services. This may serve a business purpose such as a retail salesperson who is required to wear your brand. Alternatively, this may be offered as a perk. These are often unique benefits that may be difficult for other employers to match. For example, a bank that offers discounted mortgages to employees.

Working Conditions

Employees commonly view generous working conditions such as flexible work hours to be a benefit.

Employee engagement is a measure of how motivated, committed, and involved an employee is in their work. Research has shown that low levels of employee engagement can negatively impact an organization’s revenue, productivity, quality, and risk management. Engaged employees are typically more productive and motivated to do their best work, and are less likely to leave the company, which can help to reduce turnover and the associated costs of hiring and training new employees. Conversely, disengaged employees may be less productive, more likely to leave, and may create negative outcomes for the organization. The following are common approaches to improving employee engagement.

Recruiting

Engagement is heavily related to the drive and resilience of an individual. Some individuals will stay engaged through any stresses and obstacles because they are fundamentally unstoppable. Others may be motivated only sporadically and will be easily discouraged by stresses and problems. It is no easy task to discover and hire individuals who push in to every initiative to take the lead without ever becoming discouraged. However, this is the foundational basis for employee engagement. Hiring managers who become too systematic in hiring by looking at data on candidates and checking off qualifications may miss an important sanity check – does this candidate have energy, resilience and interest?

Compensation & Rewards

Employees who are fully engaged often play a critical role in the revenue, productivity and creative energies of a firm. Such employees are aware of the value they create and are likely to leave if compensation doesn’t reflect this value. Awarding high compensation to disengaged individuals who aren’t adding much value can encourage a culture of low engagement.

Onboarding

Onboarding is the practice of giving employees what they need to do their job from the moment they first arrive. This includes resources, access, information, introductions and social inclusion. Leaving employees isolated without the resources they need creates a bad first impression that can quickly damage motivation.

Hygiene Factors

Hygiene factors are basic expectations that employees have that don’t increase engagement when they are met but dramatically decrease engagement when they aren’t met. For example, a comfortable chair for an office worker.

Working Conditions

Working conditions include the demands, environment and terms of a job that are relevant to employee satisfaction. Employees may become disengaged if they find work overly stressful due to conditions. Working with employees to improve conditions is a common approach to employee engagement. For example, employees may be disengaged because they view working hours such as shift work to be unfair in some way. As such, implementing changes to working hours or how they are scheduled may improve engagement.

Work-life Balance

Employees may disengage to avoid overworking out of a desire to maintain their quality of life. For example, an employee who finds that when they take on a new responsibility they end up working on weekends may be quiet in meetings to avoid action items. Flexible work policies and a culture that allows employees to prioritize their work to deliver a reasonable workload can improve engagement.

Career Planning

Partnering with employees to help them plan and achieve career goals.

Training & Development

Providing opportunities to learn and acquire new skills. This includes things like mentorship, training and the opportunity to take on challenging work.

Recognition

Employees are commonly motivated by a desire for respect from their peers. As such, formal and informal recognition in a team setting can improve engagement.

Social Status

Some individuals are strongly motivated by a desire for social status such that providing status can improve their engagement. For example, an attractive job title, business class travel and formal authority may be viewed as types of status.

Job Security

Employees who see no risk of losing their job may eventually view a salary as an entitlement. Employees who see a high risk of losing their job may also become disengaged as they may start looking for a new position. A fair environment of competition where job security is earned with performance is most conductive to employee engagement.

Authority

Formal authority, even in small amounts, increases engagement in some employees. Where employees lack the authority they need to do their jobs, engagement is likely to be low.

Accountability

Holding employees accountable for the success or failure of work improves engagement. An environment where failure is ignored and successes not celebrated isn’t conductive to engagement.

Change Management

Change management is the leadership practice of engaging employees in change. This is a critical practice as employees commonly seek to preserve the status quo and may disengage or resist programs of aggressive change.

Communication

Communicating the urgent competitive pressures facing an organization and the reasons behind strategy as opposed to leaving employees in the dark as to why things are being done.

Employee Voice

It is unrealistic to expect employees to be engaged where you haven’t asked for their input. A one-way flow of decision making whereby employees are excluded from strategy planning isn’t conductive to engagement. In other words, employees are more likely to support an initiative they have helped to shape. This also allows opposition to a strategy to be voiced so that management have an opportunity to respond.

Performance Management

The process of regularly setting objectives with each employee and then evaluating performance against those objectives. This process can be used to set expectations for engagement and then reward employees who meet these expectations and work with those who don’t to improve.

Feedback

Beyond performance management, managers can provide regular informal feedback to employees to set expectations for engagement and indicate to employees where engagement was appreciated or lacking.

Autonomy

Giving employees leverage to define their role and deliver work as they see fit. Employees may value freedom and the ability to do things their own way. For example, a call center that encourages employees to develop their people skills according to their personality and character. This is more likely to bring engagement that expecting employees to stick to robotic scripts.

Organizational Culture

A baseline level of engagement is built into the culture of an organization. For example, a firm may have norms and expectations in areas such as response times, speaking up in meetings and accepting action items such that its not easy to disengage. Firms with intensive internal competition are less likely to have disengaged employees.

Leadership

Leadership play a fundamental role in motivating employees, managing performance and defining organizational culture. A few strong leaders can significantly improve engagement.

Epic Meaning

Employees who believe in a firm’s mission, ethics and leadership are more likely to have intrinsic motivation to see an organization succeed.

Employee retention refers to the success of a company in keeping its talented employees from leaving. High employee turnover can be costly, as it requires time and resources to recruit, train, and onboard new employees. In addition, the loss of employees can lead to the transfer of valuable knowledge and expertise to competitors, as well as disruptions in schedules, productivity, and efficiency. The departure of an employee with strong relational capital, such as a salesperson with close relationships with customers, can also result in a decline in revenue. Therefore, maintaining a strong retention rate is important for the long-term success of a company. The following are the common types of employee retention strategy.

Recruiting

Engagement is heavily related to the drive and resilience of an individual. Some individuals will stay engaged through any stresses and obstacles because they are fundamentally unstoppable. Others may be motivated only sporadically and will be easily discouraged by stresses and problems. It is no easy task to discover and hire individuals who push in to every initiative to take the lead without ever becoming discouraged. However, this is the foundational basis for employee engagement. Hiring managers who become too systematic in hiring by looking at data on candidates and checking off qualifications may miss an important sanity check – does this candidate have energy, resilience and interest?

Compensation & Rewards

Employees who are fully engaged often play a critical role in the revenue, productivity and creative energies of a firm. Such employees are aware of the value they create and are likely to leave if compensation doesn’t reflect this value. Awarding high compensation to disengaged individuals who aren’t adding much value can encourage a culture of low engagement.

Onboarding

Onboarding is the practice of giving employees what they need to do their job from the moment they first arrive. This includes resources, access, information, introductions and social inclusion. Leaving employees isolated without the resources they need creates a bad first impression that can quickly damage motivation.

Hygiene Factors

Hygiene factors are basic expectations that employees have that don’t increase engagement when they are met but dramatically decrease engagement when they aren’t met. For example, a comfortable chair for an office worker.

Working Conditions

Working conditions include the demands, environment and terms of a job that are relevant to employee satisfaction. Employees may become disengaged if they find work overly stressful due to conditions. Working with employees to improve conditions is a common approach to employee engagement. For example, employees may be disengaged because they view working hours such as shift work to be unfair in some way. As such, implementing changes to working hours or how they are scheduled may improve engagement.

Work-life Balance

Employees may disengage to avoid overworking out of a desire to maintain their quality of life. For example, an employee who finds that when they take on a new responsibility they end up working on weekends may be quiet in meetings to avoid action items. Flexible work policies and a culture that allows employees to prioritize their work to deliver a reasonable workload can improve engagement.

Career Planning

Partnering with employees to help them plan and achieve career goals.

Training & Development

Providing opportunities to learn and acquire new skills. This includes things like mentorship, training and the opportunity to take on challenging work.

Recognition

Employees are commonly motivated by a desire for respect from their peers. As such, formal and informal recognition in a team setting can improve engagement.

Social Status

Some individuals are strongly motivated by a desire for social status such that providing status can improve their engagement. For example, an attractive job title, business class travel and formal authority may be viewed as types of status.

Job Security

Employees who see no risk of losing their job may eventually view a salary as an entitlement. Employees who see a high risk of losing their job may also become disengaged as they may start looking for a new position. A fair environment of competition where job security is earned with performance is most conductive to employee engagement.

Authority

Formal authority, even in small amounts, increases engagement in some employees. Where employees lack the authority they need to do their jobs, engagement is likely to be low.

Accountability

Holding employees accountable for the success or failure of work improves engagement. An environment where failure is ignored and successes not celebrated isn’t conductive to engagement.

Change Management

Change management is the leadership practice of engaging employees in change. This is a critical practice as employees commonly seek to preserve the status quo and may disengage or resist programs of aggressive change.

Communication

Communicating the urgent competitive pressures facing an organization and the reasons behind strategy as opposed to leaving employees in the dark as to why things are being done.

Employee Voice

It is unrealistic to expect employees to be engaged where you haven’t asked for their input. A one-way flow of decision making whereby employees are excluded from strategy planning isn’t conductive to engagement. In other words, employees are more likely to support an initiative they have helped to shape. This also allows opposition to a strategy to be voiced so that management have an opportunity to respond.

Performance Management

The process of regularly setting objectives with each employee and then evaluating performance against those objectives. This process can be used to set expectations for engagement and then reward employees who meet these expectations and work with those who don’t to improve.

Feedback

Beyond performance management, managers can provide regular informal feedback to employees to set expectations for engagement and indicate to employees where engagement was appreciated or lacking.

Autonomy

Giving employees leverage to define their role and deliver work as they see fit. Employees may value freedom and the ability to do things their own way. For example, a call center that encourages employees to develop their people skills according to their personality and character. This is more likely to bring engagement that expecting employees to stick to robotic scripts.

Organizational Culture

A baseline level of engagement is built into the culture of an organization. For example, a firm may have norms and expectations in areas such as response times, speaking up in meetings and accepting action items such that its not easy to disengage. Firms with intensive internal competition are less likely to have disengaged employees.

Leadership

Leadership play a fundamental role in motivating employees, managing performance and defining organizational culture. A few strong leaders can significantly improve engagement.

Epic Meaning

Employees who believe in a firm’s mission, ethics and leadership are more likely to have intrinsic motivation to see an organization succeed.

Job orientation, also known as onboarding, is the process of introducing new employees to the company and their role. It is designed to help new hires become familiar with the organization, its culture, and their responsibilities.

There are several steps involved in job orientation, including:

1. Introduction to the company: This typically involves a tour of the facility and an overview of the company’s history, mission, and values.
2. Introduction to the team: New hires should be introduced to their coworkers and supervisor, and should have the opportunity to ask questions and get to know their team.
3. Review of policies and procedures: It is important to provide new hires with information on the company’s policies and procedures, including guidelines for attendance, dress code, and code of conduct.
4. Training: New hires should receive training on their specific role and responsibilities, as well as any relevant systems and tools they will be using.
5. Ongoing support: It is important to provide ongoing support to new hires as they adjust to their role and the company. This can include ongoing training, as well as regular check-ins with their supervisor or HR representative.

Job orientation is an important process that helps new hires become productive and successful members of the team. By providing a thorough and organized onboarding process, companies can ensure that new hires feel welcomed and supported as they transition into their new role.