Why Cultural Alignment in Hiring Is Important?

Cultural alignment in hiring ensures a win-win relationship for both the employer and the employee. There are noticeable benefits when everyone and everything in your organization is in sync.  

For instance, the team is successful at delivering wins for clients, work processes run smoothly and new ideas come up that can lead to business growth. But when not in sync, it could undermine years of hard work you’ve put into establishing a strong foundation for your company. 

Employees with high cultural alignment are likely to be more productive. They may also stay in your organization for a long time. That’s why employers must measure cultural alignment and incorporate the results into the hiring process to achieve better QoH or Quality of Hire. QoH is nothing but a metric that can measure the impact an employee has on the organization. 

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What Is Cultural Alignment? 

Cultural alignment is the process of aligning the organization’s values, culture, and goals to that of the employees. Let’s say, there’s an organization and its culture is all about taking risks, direct feedback, and collaboration.  

In that case, an individual is considered to have a high cultural alignment if they also share the same value as the organization. However, if the individual values predictability, aversion, and self-reliance more, they are said to have low cultural alignment.  

Importance of Cultural Alignment in Hiring  

Employers mainly use two methods to achieve cultural alignment. One is by selecting and recruiting new employees who share the same organizational values. The second is by helping old employees socialize and adapt to the values.  

The first method seems to be a lot easier than the second. That’s why employers mostly go for cultural alignment during the hiring process. Besides, cultural alignment in hiring can result in many significant benefits, such as 

Effective Communication: 

Since employees share the same values, there is a minimal chance of misunderstanding or miscommunication within the team.  

Predictability: 

Sharing similar goals or motives will promote confidence among co-workers, and they will be able to predict each other’s behavior. 

Likeability: 

There’s an old saying that “birds of a feather flock together.” In this context, employees with similar values will get along even better. 

Trust: 

As employees will have similar thoughts on what is acceptable or unacceptable in a situation, they will tend to trust more and have each other’s back in time of need. 

When organizations implement cultural alignment in hiring, they will ultimately hire top performers who can help them achieve a higher QoH score. This score can lead to better results for the organization in the future.