Preventing corporate culture clash

Hiring staff and then finding out they don’t fit in has high emotional and financial consequences for all involved

Picture the following scenario: A new employee in a leadership position joins the organization with her own vision of how things should be done. But it doesn’t mesh with the way things are done. Disagreements erupt. Fingers are pointed. Morale starts to plummet, top talent starts heading for the ¬exits and the management team is left scrambling to stop the bleeding.

While the new leader had all the right skills and experience the organization was looking for, her core values clashed with those of the organization. At the core of every organization there is a set of beliefs and values that shape and direct the attitudes and actions of employees. When the values ascribed to by the larger group conflict with individual values, culture clashes can arise.

Avoiding this culture clash is tricky. Many people are blind to their own values, to the values of their team or organization and how these values conflict. Understanding an organization’s underlying values isn’t easy, because they aren’t always transparent. Thinking and talking about values is going deeper than most professionals are interested in, or have time to worry about in a bottom-line-driven corporate world.

However, even the most rational, profit-hungry executives realize it is critical to pause, even if for a moment, to go below the surface and unearth the roots that keep the organization strong and healthy.

Culture clashes can be prevented or minimized if all parties involved have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the underlying beliefs and values that motivate and shape their attitudes and behaviours. But how can one easily make that type of assessment?

Many HR professionals have first-hand experience with assessment tools designed to help ensure current and potential staff members match the skill and aptitude requirements of their jobs. However, these do not usually measure values. But there are a few assessment tools available that can help measure and compare the values or culture of a person, team or organization.

A simple paper assessment form can let current or prospective employees assess their own personal values. What’s more, assessment tools provide detailed descriptions of workers’ strengths and weaknesses as well as deeper, often unconscious, patterns that may cause issues.

The same assessment tools can be used on a larger scale to evaluate the culture of a team or organization. When an entire department wants to evaluate its team culture, or an organization wants all employees to participate in a collective assessment of the organization’s culture, it is more practical to use web-based versions of the assessments.

The online versions also allow for more detailed reporting. They provide the ability to break out the reporting of the results to allow for comparisons. This can be particularly helpful if there are clashes between departments, locations of a business or between management and staff.

To find out what values to look for in an individual, the organization must first undergo its own assessment to identify its culture. Then the cultural filter can be used to target recruiting efforts at candidates most likely to succeed within that culture. Or it can usher in a desired culture by identifying candidates with characteristics the organization currently lacks but would like to add.

Once employees are hired, HR needs to articulate to them the values that the organization prizes the most. HR also needs to communicate the unwritten rules to new employees. The more new employees understand the culture, the better the chance they will thrive.

A deeper cultural understanding can also help employees who are technically competent, but who have trouble fitting in. The goal should be to help these individuals succeed within the organization or to help them find employment that fits better with who they are and what they value.

There are a few specific ways companies can integrate a cultural understanding into recruitment and staffing processes:

•The interview processes: Generate questions that help the HR team engage potential candidates in a dialogue that reveals whether or not the candidate has a history of living the same values the organization holds sacred.

•Team development: Sometimes there is a weakness in the team the organization wants to shore up. If the marketing department is stuck in status quo thinking, and has determined it needs a new member that strongly values change and challenging the conventions, then the hiring questions can focus on identifying candidates who have a history of living these values. It is also important to inform these employees that while they might have problems fitting in because of their different values, the organization wants to include these values in its own culture.

•Recruitment advertising: Aligning recruitment advertising to call out to professionals with not only specific skill sets but also culturally aligned beliefs and values is a surefire way to avoid culture clashes down the road. There are two main styles of recruitment ads: those in which companies strongly promote culture, and those in which companies primarily promote the skills necessary to do the job. The clearer a recruitment advertisement communicates the organization’s culture, as well as the culture it hopes to build, the easier it is for job hunters to know whether they will fit or not. It saves everyone time, money and hassles.

In the end, these strategies help avoid culture clashes and elevate the existing culture to a higher level. Corporations need to unearth and nurture their cultures by getting below the surface to the values of employees and determine how corporate and employee values are aligned. By doing this, the heart of an organization, its culture, will beat strongly for many years to come.

Brenton Schmidt is a brand consultant with Waterloo Ont.-based MFX Partners. He administers the OTCI (organizational and team culture indicator) to help organizations determine their cultures. He can be reached at [email protected] or www.mfxpartners.com.




What to do
Assessing an organization’s culture

Uncovering an organization’s culture requires unearthing its true collective values. One way to identify the culture is to survey employees. One such survey, the Organizational and Team Culture Indicator, asks employees to rank various value statements from “almost never descriptive” of the organization (or department) to “almost always descriptive.” A few examples of the statements are:

•prides itself on being fair to everyone;

•makes work fun;

•values a can-do spirit;

•rewards people with radically different ideas;

•makes it a practice of encouraging employees to speak their minds; and

•rewards expertise

Each of the values ranked by employees is connected with a range of possible cultural types. Once the dominant culture has been identified, HR then needs to consider the following:

•Is the dominant cultural type that drives the organization the right one for the future?

•What are the strengths of this cultural type and how can HR help improve them?

•Which types of individuals would be ideal to help strengthen the culture?

Once HR has identified the culture it has, and determined whether or not it wants to change that culture, it can then start recruiting the right type of people.




What else to do
Hiring to fit the culture

Once an organization understands its culture, or the one it wishes to create, it can start to hire candidates who exhibit the desired traits. One way to do this is to use an individual assessment tool during the recruitment process. Individual assessments typically ask candidates to rank values as being ones that describe themselves well or not well. These values then connect back to a list of common leadership styles and cultural types.

For example, a “caregiver” cultural type and style of leadership would typically be found in service or care-based organizations and teams. Organizations with this cultural type should look for individuals who also share the values of the caregiver. These would be individuals who value sacrificing for the greater good, being of service and helping those most in need.

They would also likely exhibit strengths such as excellent customer service, caring for others, inspiring employees to be caring to one another and fostering a nurturing and warm workplace environment.

These assessment tools can help focus a deeper one-on-one discussion with candidates. The recruiter should dig to more fully understand how the candidate has demonstrated the values she ranked highest for herself.

For example, if she strongly associated with the value of “empathy,” then the questions could include:

•Give a specific example to demonstrate what being empathetic means to you.

•Why is this important to you?

•What value does it offer an organization like ours?

•Give an example of a time when your “empathy” was rejected. What happened and how did you respond?

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