Why do people hire based on culture fit?
Culture is essential to an organisation – it makes employees loyal, committed and happy. It defines your business and also gives it a personality. It may mean competition in a sales environment, collaboration in a legal team, or individuality and independence on a design brief. However, ‘culture fit’ does not mean cloning in the workplace. However hiring based on culture-fit may be discriminatory. Education, culture, race, gender and age are all areas where discrimination can occur. In this sense unfortunately ‘cultural fit’ is often used as a mechanism for perpetuating this bias.
Managing risk in these areas is integral to a companies success. As a result, ‘culture fit’ should be centred on mutual values systems. These are things that bond an organisation professionally rather than personally. This will provide a strong foundation for a productive and inclusive workplace culture. Learn how to make this happen for your company in this article.
If you need further guidance, or are confused on your employment policies, contact one of our lawyers here.
The potential issues with ‘culture based’ hiring
Culture based hiring can be construed in different ways. For some it means affirming the businesses key values through finding like minded, and similarly motivated people. For others, whether this be subconsciously or explicitly, it is a process to discriminate against candidates based on their personality traits and backgrounds. An example may include employing someone that would fit in well at after-work drinks.
Both federal and state level legislation protect potential employees from discrimination during the recruitment process – including the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW). Moreover, the Australian Human Rights Commission provide ‘A quick guide to Australian discrimination laws’ which may be useful to discerning these relevant pieces of legislation.
Discrimination in the recruitment process not only opens you up for a lawsuit, but also undermines the diversity of your workplace. Different opinions and perspectives are integral to building a business, and diversity ensures this is taking place. However, diversity does not just mean symbolic representation of physically diverse groups. Diversity also needs to include differing attitudes, backgrounds and experience in order to find a holistic workforce who challenge one another.
Where is the line between culture fit and discrimination?
In order to achieve an inclusive and culturally sound recruitment process and workplace, culture should centre of shared values. The blanket term ‘culture fit’ is ripe with contention, and may rather be replaced with ‘value fit’. These value-based culture concerns may include:
- A similar approach to working (collective versus individual),
- A passion for the industry/product/subject matter prevalent,
- A similar work ethic,
- A similar approach to problem solving, decision making, and conflict resolution, and/or,
- An inclination towards risk taking/competition/adrenaline/etc.
Whilst still specific to the potential employee, these factors are not discriminatory in nature.
6 steps for ensuring your company’s culture-based recruitment strategy is not discriminatory
There are steps that can be taken to ensure your company never has to deal with a discrimination claim, due to hiring based on culture-fit. For example, these suggestions may help your company feel more confident that its recruitment process is legally sound:
Define your culture
What we mean by this is specifying what exactly your culture is and ensuring this is obvious. In doing so, your objectively obvious ‘culture’ – based on skills, values, passion and merit – will be open to potential employees to analyse. These should be tangible things that can be measured, and set as KPI’s. Recruits should be able to easily access this in job advertisements and company policies.
Hire the objectively best person for the job
Here, we mean check, double check and triple check any bias in the recruitment process. Make sure all reasons for employment are entirely professional and based on merit. Again, this should be quantifiable and obvious. hiring based on culture-fit should not be your only method for recruiting to your team.
Multi-person recruitment panels
Following from the point above, unconscious bias is hard to combat. The best way is through a larger recruitment group, rather than a single person. Diverse recruiters means many diverse perspectives. Where one recruiter may have a subconscious bias towards individuals with similar education backgrounds, another may have one towards someone their age. This acts as an integral check and balance against subconscious bias.
Use recruitment tools
Many companies are embracing innovative tech for their recruitment process. Quantifiable and non-discriminatory culture should be able to be measured through these mechanisms. By eliminating the human element, you eliminate the obvious or unconscious bias. Whilst there are still problems with technology based discrimination through pattern recognition, having different methods for recruitment, some human and some tech, may be useful.
Check in on company culture
Checking in on culture through quantifiable analytics, or surveys, is key to identifying bias in your workplace. Collecting this form of data regularly, and working with it to improve grey areas, is key to protecting your business.
If there are issues, change it
Do not be afraid to bring in new discriminatory policies, or safeguard your recruitment process. Culture is an ambiguous area and needs special and consistent attention. Including a lawyer in this process is important – contact one of our lawyers here.
Conclusion
Hiring based on culture-fit is ambiguous at best. It is a mechanism ripe with legal issues, and fertile for discrimination suits. It is important to ensure your culture is based purely on professional and quantifiable value systems. Hiring someone because they will fit in well at after-work drinks may constitute discrimination. Protecting your company from discrimination claims on the basis of age, sex, race or disability is important to protecting your reputation. Ensure your policies and employment mechanisms are air-tight by contacting one of our lawyers today.
