Written By: Jillian Miles
Do you ever find yourself saying “It just wasn’t a good fit” about why someone leaves your company, voluntarily or otherwise? If I happen to be around when you do, I will beseech you to answer, “But what does that mean?!”, with big cartoon question marks dancing around like a scene out of Ally McBeal.
What do we really mean when we say someone isn’t a good fit? I think it’s simple. It comes down to unmatched values. People have distinct work and life values just as they have unique DNA. I think DNA is to family what values are to the workplace (Are you having a flashback to the SAT? DNA: Family: Values: Workplace). Values are out there being ignored, staying unmatched, and both employees and employers end up saying, “It just wasn’t a good fit”. We can do better.
In 2016, SHRM reported on the work of David Naylor and Ryan Naylor (no DNA match there) in the realm of values-based hiring. My favorite quote came from Ryan: “Clearly, values and cultural fit have an impact on talent acquisition and talent management that lasts far beyond the hiring process.” Retweet! But this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Debi Wolfe, SVP People, Culture, & Strategy at Hays, brought us forward with her 2018 Forbes article where she powerfully said:
It’s time to go beyond “company fit” — which notably can lead to hiring people who look and sound like the majority of the company, potentially hurting goals related to diversity and inclusion. Hiring for matching values, rather than corporate fit, lets you find employees who mirror the way you think about your brand and your core concerns.
Yes, Debi! Matching values can help you find talent that is 1) more likely to be invested in the work and the team, 2) more likely to care about the overall success of the company, and thus, 3) more likely to stay. If you can find a way to look at candidate values independent of knowing whether those candidates “look and sound like the majority of the company”, you can reduce bias and end up with a more diverse candidate pool. Further, when you inevitably end up with two candidates with equally strong hard skills, matching values can help you objectively evaluate the soft skills dimension. That’s what we believe at MatchFIT.
The MatchFIT Assessment is an Organizational Values Questionnaire, developed from research on Organizational Culture, that allows us to not only capture an organization’s culture profile (company DNA) but also identify candidates who naturally fit into that culture based on their own unique values, known to us as Workplace Culture Preferences (candidate DNA). MatchFIT is a workplace DNA test.
So let’s start matching values, and stop saying “It just wasn’t a good fit”. With MatchFIT, #fithappens.