In today’s job market, building a great culture and work environment for staff has become more important to employers than ever before.
Companies are on are on the lookout for candidates who will enhance their business, bring something new and introduce new perspectives. As such, culture-driven hiring is becoming as important as making decisions based on competencies and capabilities.
For candidates, a business that demonstrates a culture they can get behind and be proud of has become hugely important in their decision-making process and sits high on the list of desirables when it comes to their job search.
With the candidate market as competitive as it is right now, finding the right people who are going to add to your culture and your business as a whole can be a challenge.
However, if you’ve committed to building a great culture, it’s important not to compromise on what’s important to your business and what you want to find in your candidates.
If you do, you may miss out on these 4 long-term benefits of hiring with ‘culture add’ in mind…
Greater commitment to the company
The first and arguably most important benefit of hiring with culture add in mind is increasing employee retention.
Really understanding what your values are, what you want to achieve as a business and where each individual employee can contribute to this is so important.
When there’s a genuine intention behind trying to build a culture that’s unique, diverse and inclusive, employees will feel a true sense of belonging. In time, this sense of belonging will translate itself into greater buy-in and a greater commitment to the company and what they’re trying to achieve.
Better collaboration and productivity
Hiring people who fit the way things have always been done has serious limitations for business.
We know that a lack of diversity has a significant impact on company performance and simply bringing people into the business who think and act the same way as everyone else means there’ll be no new ideas and no one to challenge the status quo.
When teams bring their different experiences and points of view together, all the barriers and ‘groupthink’ aren’t there, so innovation, collaboration and productivity can thrive.
Ultimately, recruiting candidates who are going to enhance your culture will help create a team of people with complementary skill sets and ways of working, which will lead to more productive and meaningful collaboration.
Increased employee job satisfaction
There’s not much job satisfaction for someone who enjoys their work but hates the environment they do it in.
By creating a diverse culture and environment, where people can be themselves, you’re setting employees up to enjoy both – which can drastically improve the rate of job satisfaction at your company.
It’s important for employees to feel they’re making a meaningful contribution to the business, both in terms of the work they’re doing, and in terms of adding to the internal culture. Those that do, will feel far more satisfied with their work.
Candidate attraction and growth
Being vocal and transparent about a commitment to hiring for culture add, as well as making this commitment clear across multiple touchpoints, will have an impact on the candidate market.
When candidates can see businesses that actively hire people with different experiences and from different backgrounds and industries, there’s a good chance they are more likely to apply for vacancies themselves.
Couple this with the increased benefits culture-add hiring has on employee retention, engagement and job satisfaction, and growth becomes far easier.
Final thoughts
Companies that focus on finding candidates that will add to their business and enhance their existing culture and work environment, will go from strength to strength.
With more importance being placed on this by today’s candidates, and their desire to join companies that are dedicated to creating inclusive and diverse cultures, understanding the long-term benefits should help businesses to focus their hiring strategies accordingly.