Forget culture fit: Why hiring for culture add is key to business success
For 90% of employers today, culture fit is an essential piece in the recruitment puzzle. In theory, this sounds logical. When your talent’s working style and values match those of your company, turnover goes down and employees excel. And as remote working becomes increasingly common, culture is the engine that helps drive self-directed teams.
But in recent years, the concept of culture fit has come under scrutiny. Research shows that culture fit can exclude diversity as interviewers – consciously or unconsciously – favor candidates with similar backgrounds and traits to themselves. And homogeneity is bad for your bottom line – companies with diverse leadership produce 19% more revenue from innovation than less diverse teams.
So how can businesses hire for success, especially when building a remote team from diverse backgrounds? The answer lies in hiring talent who can add to – rather than simply fit into – your team’s culture.
When Mai Luong, Business Lead at Glints Vietnam, began scaling up her operations, she found her team making little headway despite working together tirelessly. After taking time for self-reflection, she realized why: her team had been caught up in repeating the same methods that had previously brought them success. But the same methods could only take them so far – at this point, none of them could perceive what improvements they needed for progress.
“Businesses do need to look for talent who share their vision and mission so that the team can work together with a common purpose,” explains Mai. “But when companies start scaling up, culture fit can limit them from moving to the next level. They need a 360-degree view of the business, but the team has the same perspective and can’t see their own blind spots.”
Stanford research has shown that startups that prioritize hiring for culture fit are significantly less likely to fail. Yet once these startups went public, their growth rate plateaued. In other words, homogeneity stood them in good stead while they were focused on their core product. But when it comes to expanding into different markets and innovating new products, diversity is a must.
Another blind spot commonly occurs when companies overlook more individualistic talents in their pursuit of culture fit. Ronson Zhang, Tech Recruitment Manager at Glints Singapore, recalls instances where startups would pass on sales talent who did not fit the mold of a team player – and lose out on business growth as a result.
“A company with a very harmonious working culture might want salespeople who collaborate well as a team,” Ronson shares. “But many sales talents tend to be individualistic ‘hunters’ who prefer working on their own – yet they achieve great results.”
“Businesses must then ask themselves: is the goal simply to have culture fit, or to build a team with different personalities for different functions?”
Related: 5 ways to establish work culture in your remote teams
In the last couple of years, a new hiring approach has been making waves: culture add. Whereas culture fit looks for similarities, culture add is about welcoming talent who can add fresh, different perspectives to your team.
In some cases, culture add can mean looking for someone with out-of-the-box ideas to disrupt a stagnating enterprise. In others, it can mean hiring someone who brings commercial awareness to an inexperienced team. Ultimately, it’s about filling in the blind spots that can block your business success.
For Nohan Lintang, Senior Team Leader and Head of Customer Success at Glints Indonesia, hiring for culture add empowered her team to problem-solve better.
“As a new manager, I wanted to build a team who’d always see eye-to-eye,” she admits. But being in perfect agreement soon proved limiting. “At meetings, everyone would be looking at a problem from the same viewpoint – but we couldn’t get a hold on actually solving it.”
Things improved when she began consciously hiring talent with different styles of working. “Now that our team is more diverse, it’s healthier because everyone can both express and accept different opinions,” she says. “We’re more adaptable to change.”
Teams with diversity of thinking are 20% more innovative and 30% more successful at tackling risks, according to Deloitte. It’s no surprise that employers in Asia are fast catching on. Mai shares that more businesses in Vietnam are now open to hiring talent from unconventional industries or backgrounds. “Vietnam’s economy is moving very fast, so those who stay conservative will be left behind,” she explains. “Other companies will snap up these talent.”
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How can employers start interviewing and hiring for culture add – especially if you’re tapping into Southeast Asia’s rich remote talent pools? Here are five tips from Glints’ experts.
Culture fit can go wrong when it begins hampering your business growth. To get back on track, reflect on your core organizational goals. Is your goal to build a unique brand identity or to drive revenue growth? What do you want to accomplish in the next two to three years?
The next step is to consider if your team’s cultural values fit your desired business outcomes. “You’ll have a basic set of ‘culture fit’ values you want in your people, but does this help you achieve your organizational goals?” Ronson explains.
If it doesn’t, that’s your cue to start hunting for different viewpoints and personalities to add to the mix. “You might realize you need a finance manager with SME experience instead of MNC experience. Or a business development lead who might not be much of a team manager, but can give you the highest revenue growth.”
The strongest team is one that has diversity in perspectives, enabling you to compensate for one another’s blind spots. “Everyone wants a good candidate that ticks all the boxes, but there’s no such thing as a perfect individual,” Lintang points out. “All you can do is ensure that your team complements one another’s weaknesses.”
One way to identify areas of weakness is a team SWOT analysis. Set up a Zoom brainstorming session with your team to map out your internal strengths and weaknesses, drawing on your recent projects as reference – what went wrong or well, and why? Understanding your blind spots can guide you to seek out fresh viewpoints when expanding your team.
Related: How to lead effective brainstorming sessions to 5x your team’s productivity and collaboration
Remote work is changing the game around company culture. In today’s increasingly remote world, traits for workplace success include a knack for self-management, the ability to work independently, virtual communication skills, and more.
In such a self-directed environment, some of your previous standards for culture fit may no longer be relevant. For one, having an outgoing personality or being a team player might be less crucial than being a self-starter who can execute ideas independently. As long as your talent has the right traits to work effectively, you should stay open to having different working styles and personalities on your remote team.
“For culture add, I believe managers must look beyond personality tests when interviewing,” says Lintang. “As long as the candidate ticks the fundamental boxes for your company, it’s fine to hire someone who works or thinks differently.”
Related: Make remote work work for you with these 4 steps
Analytical thinking and innovation ranks among the top-ten work skills of tomorrow, according to the World Economic Forum. Adding innovative thinkers to your team can help you problem-solve creatively and stay ahead of the curve.
One way to test for innovation at the interview stage is by posing scenario-based questions. You might ask the candidate to imagine, for instance, a scenario where they have to solve a challenge on a limited budget. This helps you get a sense of their thought processes and their creativity in approaching problems.
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When hiring cross-border talent, employers must be prepared for certain cultural differences across countries as well. “Each country or region will have their own general characteristics and ways of communication,” Ronson says. “For example, Singaporeans tend to be more pragmatic and outcome-focused. In contrast, Indonesians often value relationships over results, even in corporate culture.”
Speaking to recruitment experts can ease these initial cultural barriers.
“At Glints, our talent experts will share our expertise on regional talents’ characteristics, and help analyze any other key points from their resumes,” explains Ronson. “Our role is to help employers bridge any gap in expectations for a successful hire.”
Being well-informed about cultural differences will empower you to identify and attract diverse talent for your team. To learn more, check out Glints’ Greater Southeast Asia’s Rising Tech Talent Pools, which offers an in-depth look into the strengths, traits, and cultures of five key talent pools across Greater Southeast Asia.
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This article is brought to you by Glints TalentHub. Leading companies are actively building their borderless teams in Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and beyond. However, the prospect of going borderless can be daunting due to complex regulations and cultural ambiguities. With Glints TalentHub, you’ll have a dedicated team of in-market legal, HR, and talent experts by your side at every step of the way.
Glints TalentHub offers an end-to-end, tech-enabled talent solution that encompasses talent acquisition, EOR, and talent development. We empower businesses to leverage the strengths of regional talent efficiently to build high-performing, cost-efficient teams.
Schedule a no-obligation consultation with our experts to receive a tailored proposal today.
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