When ‘culture fit’ is really a bias cover
Assessment not always a valid one for job candidates
Creating the right company culture is crucial when building a company that your employees, customers and shareholders love.
By identifying and empowering your organization’s unique attributes and quirks — and welcoming a diversity of people from all sorts of backgrounds — you create a powerful message that distinguishes you from the competition.
The right culture tied to the right mission and supported by the right inclusive team can create an unstoppable force in building the kind of company you want. Numbers back this up as well. According to Deloitte’s 2017 Human Capital Trends Report, inclusive companies earn 30 percent more revenue per employee than others do.
As with anything, however, a dark side of culture exists. What starts as a way for employers to distinguish their organizations and create a force for good often ends up being used as an excuse to screen out, and even fire, employees who are not good “culture fits.” Rather than providing a unique group for new hires to join, the new “company culture” offers an excuse to keep some people out of the company and bring in a team of people who are look, think and/or work the same.
The assessment that someone is a bad fit often comes from bias of excuses and discomfort versus a true assessment of performance or capability, creating a homogenous team or company. What began as an engaging way to include diverse groups now does the exact opposite: It excludes them.
Consider the way conversations of “fit” usually play out:
“Why did that great candidate get screened out?”
“Wasn’t a good culture fit.”
And, that’s that.
The term is so fluid, the notion of a “poor culture fit” is indisputable. Fluid definitions provide the perfect cover for poor talent decisions.
When you are building or leading a team and hear someone say a candidate or employee is not a culture fit — or are tempted to do it yourself — I’ve found it effective to probe the following key areas to make sure the argument is valid:
Name: Asian-looking names receive 20 percent fewer callbacks, regardless of other qualifications. Names that are perceived as African-American generate even fewer callbacks.
GPA: It’s no secret that candidates with higher GPAs receive more job offers, but the GPA’s correlation to performance in the workplace is flimsy at best. Why are you asking this in an interview process and why does it matter?
College or career pedigree: Same as GPA, and equally irrelevant to workplace performance.
Age: Older candidates might be seen as inflexible and technologically primitive, while young candidates might be seen as risk taking and inexperienced. Make managers uncomfortable and hire someone from a different generation than them. Religious or political persuasion: In some places, being a conservative is the name of the game. In other places, if you are a conservative, you are excluded; it goes both ways. Religious or political views should not disqualify anyone from a job.
Unconscious bias and the natural tendency to gravitate toward people similar to us can play out in hiring decisions. With the way company culture is exploited, it becomes a crutch that supports our own implicit bias.
Are there times that “not a culture fit” is real? Of course, but of the candidates screened out for poor fit and employees fired for the same reason, I would estimate that only 10 percent actually fail to fit in the company’s culture.
If your company culture is so exclusive that more than 10 percent don’t fit, there is a problem with your company, not the candidate.
To succeed in the digital age and to build the company you truly want, organizations need to be able to accommodate as many diverse viewpoints and skillsets as possible.
Anytime someone comes to you and says, “this person isn’t a culture fit,” don’t just buy in and agree; probe, test and seek to determine what the truth is about the candidate or employee and make that an expectation on your team or at your company.
In some cases, the person making the assessment may in fact be the one who isn’t a culture fit.