In recent years, maintaining a positive company culture has been made a priority for most businesses, and rightly so. There are a series of behavioral interview questions dedicated to making sure that your company is finding someone that aligns with your mission statement and values. Finding the right people for your team who inspire, motivate, engage, and know how to keep others on track hold much value and can help with good employee retention. These are people that see their own success by helping others to succeed.
Finding a culture-fit employee doesn’t end with the interview process. Assuring these employees are acclimating well during the onboarding process and maintaining positivity throughout their employment falls primarily under the manager’s responsibilities. Managers need to do periodic check-ins with their employees and not wait until a yearly review where they may be blindsided by issues that should have been addressed and/or resolved earlier. The employee needs to feel comfortable going to a manager who will be receptive to listening to any ideas or concerns that the employee is expressing. And because these are individuals that met the culture criteria, managers should take extra care to understand and help find resolution because we simply don’t want to lose them. This means that managers have to be a culture fit too and lead by example.
This brings us to the qualified-employees, the ones that check all the boxes of experience and/or education to help make the role a success. Qualifications should not be dismissed or down-played. How many times have you worked with someone wondering not only how they got through the interview, but also somehow lasted years at the company? They may be a positive person, but not necessarily successful at the various functions of their role. “Thank you for baking cookies for our department and organizing Bingo Night, but you don’t know how to sort data on a spreadsheet and you work for accounting, practically the inventors of the spreadsheet.” Working with unqualified employees can have a real negative impact on culture. Having to make up for an unqualified employee’s deficits and comprehension of the core principles of the role can be demoralizing to those that have put in the time and effort for their own roles.
Finding employees that meet the qualifications and fit the culture should be the end goal. Ones that bake cookies is just an extra benefit.
PreethaAloor.com 