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Hiring for Values Vs. Culture

Almost every company today looks to find a strong culture fit for potential hires, but a common issue arises when we look beneath the surface - a lack of diversification of ideas, backgrounds and voices. Why is this? FourthLine’s Sam Tyler gave his views on our recent Q&A with award winning speaker Sonya Barlow around the topic of value fit vs culture fit.

“When you’re hiring for culture, you’re hiring for people that look and feel like you…”

Herein lies the problem – hiring directly for a culture over values leaves you more susceptible to an unconscious bias during the recruitment process. When hiring for a culture fit, often, you are hiring someone who may come from a similar background and look like you. Values are what drive the work within an organisation. Obviously, if team-members have opposing values then they will clash. However, if you strive to hire candidates based on “values” rather than “culture”, this can result in a more diverse and effective team, that can bring varying skills and experience to the table.

“How is this individual displaying [a quality] through transferable skills and transferable experience, rather than just trying to fit into the mould...”

It’s clear that the values that an individual holds shape the way they act and communicate in the workplace, but we don’t all have to have the same life experiences or background to share the values that guide us. This is the reason that hiring for value fit over a culture fit is a lot less likely to hinder diversity, and a lot more likely to reduce the unconscious biases we can hold.

“Diverse talent within your teams increases profits by a minimum of 17%, productivity by 23% and increase happiness within your business by 85%” – taken from Forbes Harvard Business Review

Achieving a diverse workforce is more than just fulfilling legal compliance and good faith efforts - diverse talent is now a competitive advantage as shown by the Forbes Harvard Business Review. A workplace that puts the interests and concerns of its employees first can recruit and retain the highest quality of workforce. Moreover, diversity in the workplace (to be achieved from hiring for a value fit) has been shown to make a business more profitable due to acquiring the best talent, increased innovation, and a sense of resonation with customer/investors.

“It’s so important to train staff and colleagues and to provide them with the foundations and introductions to diversity and inclusion...”

The culture fit hiring model is an outdated concept. If employees share your organisation’s values, then they can learn to embrace and share a work culture. So why is it that so many businesses are hiring for culture fit over a value fit? Quite simply, it’s more difficult – finding employees that share your values is more difficult than finding employees who look and act like everyone else on the team. However, the result is a more dynamic, creative and happy workforce aligned around a common purpose.

 

FourthLine has produced a  Q&A between Dan and Sonya that you can watch through the link HERE.

In addition, FourthLine is working with businesses to initialise and evolve their Diversity and Inclusion agendas. If you wish to organise a free 15-minute consultation around this then you can schedule a call with our Director, Dan Waltham below.

Schedule a call

How FourthLine can help:

FourthLine is working with a number of financial service firms to help them with Operational Resilience enablement and Outsourcing and 3rd-Party Risk Management, through a mixture of end-to-end consulting and resourcing options.

October 29, 2020
Jakes de Kock
Jakes is FourthLine's Marketing Director. He specialises in omni-channel, tech-enabled inbound marketing strategies to drive business growth within the b2b sector.
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