Group shot of diverse happy confident colleagues

Why Culture Add Outweighs Culture Fit

Why Culture Add Outweighs Culture Fit

Homogenous work environments with teams of people who are all the same lead to flat, one-dimensional results. Innovation is lackluster.

Successful teams contain people from all sorts of different backgrounds, with new perspectives and unique experiences. This diversity squashes groupthink. It offers a wide range of problem-solving abilities and creative ingenuity—all key ingredients to success.

Companies prioritizing culture add over culture fit set the foundation to remain competitive and cutting edge. 

Here, we’re exploring the nuances of culture add. Join us as we highlight how it differs from culture fit and share strategies to ensure it becomes part of your hiring practices and company values.

What is Culture Add?

Culture add is more complex than simply hiring people who fit in with current company culture.

The goal of culture add is to update the hiring process and find new hires who contribute positively to the current workplace culture while offering something new.

Rather than passively allowing current employees to shape existing culture and continuing to hire people who fit the status quo, culture add hiring is a proactive approach. It defines goals and objectives, and examines strengths and weaknesses throughout the organization to determine what’s missing.

Therefore, hiring managers hoping to benefit from culture add must first examine current culture — redefining or clarifying it as necessary — before updating the recruitment process. 

Once that is clear, it’s much easier to find top talent with the necessary skills and qualities.

See also: Allyship in the Workplace: How to Build a Culture Around Diversity and Support

Why Culture Add is Important

Rather than ending up with a group of people who are all the same, hiring for culture add helps define and promote what you’re looking for in a candidate beyond the baseline qualifications. 

Culture add provides an additional component to the recruitment strategy, targeting individuals with the unique perspectives, viewpoints, or skills needed to strengthen existing teams, based on predefined criteria.  

Hiring candidates with the attributes currently missing from company culture is incredibly advantageous, as diversity within teams has shown to increase:

  • Profitability
  • Retention rates
  • Overall innovation

Using culture add to help inform hiring decisions provides a clear metric of what to seek out in a candidate, qualities that align with core values, business goals, social impact, and more.

See also: How to Write Inclusive Job Descriptions to Attract Better Candidates

Culture Add vs. Culture Fit

Most people are familiar with the term “culture fit.” For a while, it was the gold-standard “gut feeling” belief that hiring similar people from within the same demographic was the best thing to do. 

The thought process went something like this: since they were the same as the other team members, they’d “fit.”

Of course, it’s easy to see how problematic this is. 

For one thing, the recruitment strategy and interview process surrounding culture fit focused on ways a particular candidate would succeed based on existing traits, instead of seeking to find characteristics that were missing from the team. 

No heed was paid to looking for a candidate with a unique skill set, diverse perspectives, or any other positive attribute they could add to the team.

Second — and most worrisome — is that clinging on to culture fit as some sort of aspirational hiring strategy  resulted in countless cases of:

  • Unconscious bias
  • Favouritism
  • Blatant discrimination

Culture add is a pro-diverse workforce: it’s all about bringing diverse teams of people together and leveraging those different perspectives to help inform decision-making, problem-solving, creativity, and more.

Ultimately, culture adds results in increased employee engagement and an overall supportive work environment. Each individual contributes their unique gifts and talents to help achieve a common goal. 

How to Determine Which Aspect of Culture to Include

In order to maximize the benefits of culture add, it’s important to have a clear understanding of which aspects of culture are important and what you’re hoping to elevate.

It can be helpful to review company values, look at business goals, and redefine the target market segment. Even taking a look at current employees and their strengths and weaknesses can help identify what’s missing.

As you go through that list, here are some helpful questions to ask:

  • Do your employees accurately reflect the consumer, or are there perspectives and pain points of current customers with different backgrounds who don’t have adequate representation in your payroll?
  • What aspect of the market would you like to tap into, and who can help you do that? What insight, knowledge, or experience do they have?
  • As a company, what are your strengths?
  • What are your weaknesses, and what qualities and competencies do you need to include in order to reach your goals?

How to Integrate Culture Add into Recruitment Strategy and Hiring Practices

Black woman giving an interview

One of the best ways to maximize the benefits of culture add is to be clear about what you’re looking for and then tailor your processes accordingly.

Here are some ways of achieving that.

Expand Your Recruitment Efforts

Review your recruitment strategy: 

  • Are you actively recruiting in the right places?
  • Are you wording your job descriptions in a way that appeals to the candidates you’re seeking?
  • Are you taking the necessary steps to uncover where the people you’re looking to hire typically convene, and then directing your recruitment efforts there?

For example, if you want to increase diversity within your business, consider partnering with an organization that supports the type of candidates you hope to attract.

Companies that partner with us at Obsidi® are platformed in front of an audience of over 90,000 Black tech professionals, most of whom are in the mid-level stages of their careers.

Partnering brands have instant access to an incredible range of diverse talent, where they can post their job openings, host Obsidi® Tech Talks, and more. If you’re interested in joining some of the biggest names in tech and partnering with an organization they use to find talent, become an Obsidi® Partner today.

Integrate Culture Add Interview Questions

The best way to screen applicants for culture is by asking questions. Adding the right ones to the interview—and really listening to the answers—can help you identify the right candidate.

When brainstorming and creating questions, you want to make sure they’re tailor-made to help you pinpoint the culture add. 

Include all the departments involved in company hiring practices. Additionally, check with managers and team leads to gauge performance, current strengths and weaknesses, and any additional insights they may have.

Depending on what you’re looking to add, the questions you ask should be centred around gaining insights into each candidate’s diversity of thought, adaptability, problem-solving skills, ways they can positively impact the team, teamwork in general, etc.

Here are some examples of questions to assess if someone has the qualities you’re looking to add to the team:

Questions Related to Teamwork and Collaboration

“What unique skills or experiences do you have that could benefit the team?”

This question provides insight into the candidate’s past experiences and what they believe are important lessons they’ve learned. The examples provided don’t have to be employment-related.

“What’s your experience learning about and collaborating with people who have different cultural backgrounds or perspectives in the workplace?”

The perspective and approach someone takes when working with people from different backgrounds says a lot about that person and whether or not they’ll contribute positively to a multi-cultural or otherwise diverse team.

“Has there been a time when you took the initiative to improve team morale, and if so, can you provide an example?”

The answer to this question gives insight into a candidate’s:

  • Emotional intelligence
  • Their understanding and interpretation of what low morale is
  • The solution or tactic they chose to remedy it

“If you were asked to put together a team building exercise, what would that look like?”

The answer can reveal the candidate’s approach, attitude, and feelings about being part of a team.

“What do you believe are qualities that lend themselves to success within a team?”

If teamwork is integral to your organization, this question is valuable. The answer reveals the depth of understanding and experience someone has as part of a team. It showcases their participation and general knowledge of the sometimes quite complex dynamics within organizations.

Questions Related to Career Growth and Aspirations

“You are assigned a task that requires you to learn something new. What steps would you take to figure it out?”

This question is designed to provide insight into problem-solving. Listen for an answer that indicates they have what you’re looking to add to the team.

“How would you respond (and feel) if someone had constructive feedback on a project you thought you’d aced?”

This is an excellent question to help gauge how a person handles constructive criticism and how motivated and open they are to continuously strive for excellence.

“Have you ever felt incredibly stressed out and overwhelmed with a work-related project, and if so, what did you do?”

How a candidate responds can be quite telling. Most hiring managers look for someone who communicates their predicament, and seeks assistance or support.

“What new skills are you hoping to learn?”

This question may provide a peek into someone’s aspirations — and consequently offer a clue into whether they’re a culture add.

“How do you handle career setbacks?”

For most, the path toward any type of success is not linear. Asking this question can be quite telling in how the candidate deals with disappointment, including their perspective and framing of such occurrences.

“What type of company culture motivates you and makes you feel supported in your career aspirations?” 

A question that yields a straightforward answer about the culture the candidate is looking for.

“If you were not chosen for this position, what would you do next?”

This is an excellent way to get a candidate to unknowingly share whether or not they’re a culture add. For example, if they stated that they’d take an honest look at themselves and saw an area that needed improvement (maybe even taking a class or course on the topic), and you’re looking for more candidates who are introspectively analytical, their answer is an example of them being a culture add.

Remain Flexible

Culture add is dynamic, and the exact qualities you’re hoping to add may change with both employee and company growth.

Do your best to stay flexible. Update what culture add looks like in the wake of that growth and change, and keep an eye out for what works and what doesn’t. 

How to Facilitate Cohesion Within Teams to Maximize Culture Add

Most people are pretty good at working well with others, even if members of the group are different from them. However, that doesn’t mean you should just neglect team building altogether.  

Here are a few examples of methods you can use to make strong teams even stronger:

Team Building

Coworkers playing a game of Jenga together as a team building exercise

Many groan when they hear “team building,” thinking it will involve something cheesy or reckless, such as a trust fall.

The reality is team building can take on many forms … and it doesn’t have to be awkward or uncomfortable. The type of activity you choose should reflect company culture, and be aligned with the objective you’re hoping to achieve.

Communication 101

Good communication and active listening are integral to workplace success. Educating employees on the different ways of communicating can be incredibly helpful.

When employees understand their communication style and that of others around them — and are given the tools to express what they’re feeling in a non-accusatory way — they’re less likely to succumb to conflict or a potentially damaging misunderstanding.

Acceptance

Creating a safe place where employees feel free to be themselves and can focus on the task at hand, unencumbered by hiding who they are, is a wonderful environment to work in.

Seek to maintain a good culture of acceptance and inclusivity.

Conclusion

Those looking to revamp their hiring practices and find the perfect candidates to help meet their goals achieve that by including culture add in their hiring process.

Luckily, platforms like Obsidi® are ready to help you get started.