When you’re hiring a new employee, your first priority is probably finding the person that most closely meets your expectations for the skills and experience required to perform in a particular role. After all, aren’t these the most prominent considerations when perusing job applications?
But, how many times has a new hire come onboard, only to be deemed a “poor culture fit”? This is one of the most common issues I see in my work as an employee onboarding consultant. In fact, according to a study developed by Robert Half, 66% of CFOs and Financial Directors surveyed, failed to judge a candidate’s cultural fit correctly, at least once. But, the good news is – there’s a solution.
Employee values matter
Even when all the skills and experience line up with your expectations, if an employee’s values are misaligned with the core values of the organisation, you’ll see long-term negative impacts in three areas. According to Ian Boreham, these are:
- Work attitudes: levels of employee motivation, commitment and job satisfaction suffer if values are misaligned
- Turnover: when work attitudes are suffering, the employee experience (EX) suffers too, and turnover is imminent
- Prosocial behaviours: disruptions to teamwork and resource sharing occur, which risks letting competitive behaviour overshadow cooperative behaviour among the team
How do you promote values alignment?
Values alignment doesn’t always need to be in place before a candidate is selected for the role. Rather, it should form part of a structured onboarding process where employees are encouraged to explore their core values, learn those of their new organisation and determine behaviours that help them identify when each value is being expressed.
When you support this idea that employee values matter, you’ll find employees frequently exhibit workplace behaviours that underpin the organisation’s core values, but also make decisions that reinforce their alignment – for the good of their own “fit” but also the company’s success.
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Greg Weiss is Australia’s Leading Career Coach. He is the author of “So You Got The Job! WTF Is Next?”. The book prescribes a proven, practical 7-step framework for new employees so they succeed, rather than fail their probation periods and beyond. Find out more about the book at https://www.wtfisnext.wtf/
He is the Founder and Director of Onboff an online training and coaching platform that helps HR specialists, coaches and recruiters to deliver exceptional onboarding and offboarding experiences for employees.
He also hosts The Keep: The Employee Experience podcast and runs CareerSupport365.
