4 ways to ensure you hire candidates with the right culture / personality fit

If you’re a hiring manager, you’ve probably been there: You’ve found a candidate who is great on paper, but they’ve barely managed 12 months on the job. Whilst this happens all the time and it may not necessarily be anyone’s fault, there is a possibility that your candidate has left due to a misjudgement of cultural fit.

Hiring skilled people is one thing. But hiring skilled people who are going to fit in well into your corporate environment is quite another.

Here’s our tips on 4 ways to ensure you always make great hires.

Look for longevity

Look to those who have stayed within your business for a long time and find out why they have stayed and what they like most about working there. These people are key to exploring your workplace culture because as much as they are experts by experience, they have also been major players in creating it.

Also, when looking at candidate CVs, don’t underestimate the problems that might arise by hiring someone who has a choppy CV. Unfortunately moving around is a habit that is likely to reoccur.

What’s great about your working environment?

Consider the characteristics of those who appear happiest working within your organisation and examine the ways in which the environment suits these people best. For instance, you may feel that your large open-plan office fosters a great social, energetic and lively work style and atmosphere. Those who are team-players and keen to get involved might thrive best here, whilst those who are easily overwhelmed and enjoy a small company feel might be better placed elsewhere.

Examine your values 

Gauge the value of what your company offers, potentially via an employee survey, to understand what employees feel are most important and most valued benefits of working for you. Hiring successfully is as much about what the candidate can give you as it is ensuring you can give them what they need to stick around. If you understand your offering fully, you can consider at interview whether the candidate will be satisfied.

Work Patterns

All businesses have inherent work patterns which are more apparent to outsiders than they are for those who are part of the routine. It is worth taking a step back to consider how the working day takes place - the norms in your office might not suit everyone. For example, your roles may demand a longer working day than average which is compensated for with higher than average salaries. On face value your high salaries may attract new recruits who then discover the long working hours and don’t stick around. By identifying these elements you can present them at interview and deter those who would have been put off by it anyway at a later stage.

Here’s how to keep your team happy when it’s 25 degrees outside

Ever notice how hot and sunny weather can hit productivity and increase sickness absence? The human body is not designed to work in sustained high temperatures and lethargy can easily creep in to the working day, particularly if businesses aren’t flexible when hot days set in over the summer.

Here’s our top tips for maintaining attendance and performance in your team:

Plan ahead

Most businesses don’t test their fans and air conditioning until a hot spell arrives – but how do you know they will still work if they’ve been stored since last summer?  Be smart and test your systems in the Spring.

Know the rules

We’ve all heard the temperature myths from time to time – ‘if it goes above 25 degrees you are supposed to send us home’! Not so fast: The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 says that your employer must maintain a reasonable temperature where you work, but it does not specify a maximum temperature. There is, however a minimum temperature of 16°C, or 13°C if your work involves considerable physical activity.

Hydrate your workforce

In hot weather, it is important to make sure your staff have access to cold drinks. Hydration is crucial to happy, healthy staff, so consider giving staff extra breaks to rehydrate if they are not allowed to drink at their desk, or consider relaxing that rule for water.

Relax the dress code

Even where business dress is important, relaxing the dress code a little in hot weather will make staff more comfortable and therefore more productive. Think about short sleeved shirts and no ties. Customers will understand as they will also be suffering.

Small gestures go a long way

If there’s one way to get your team going, it’s free canned drinks, strawberries or even ice creams. Give your leaders a small budget now and again and these little gestures will go a really long way.

Introduce flexibility

Offering flexible start and finish times will help staff avoid stifling heat while commuting at busier times.  You might even permit home working for those staff who are able.  If, however, you do this, make sure everyone is aware of who is working, where and when and make sure sickness absence and staff holiday is still both accrued and deducted for remote workers.

The key to all the above is engagement. There’s no point in offering things to your employees if the team does not want them. Ask your staff what would make them happier and find the right balance. A happy team is a productive team, which offers a win/win for employers and employees.

6 Leadership Qualities to Develop If You Want To Be a Great Manager

These personality traits can be developed and nurtured to help further your career and your role as a leader, at work, in your community, or in life in general.

Even if you’re not currently a manager, or don’t wish to be, these qualities can still be really useful in the workplace and help you on that road to promotion:

1. Empathy

The ability to understand and share the feelings of another is incredibly important in any workplace environment and can help manage conflict. However, it’s become even more important as businesses compete to better understand the needs of their customers. Customers don’t want to be analysed. They want brands to understand what they want and need. Empathetic leaders tend to function better within a company and can fuel growth by bringing the team together more efficiently.

2. Optimism

You might think that, if someone is being optimistic, it indicates confidence (and in some cases arrogance) in a successful outcome. Whereas blind optimism and egotism isn’t a good thing, optimistic leaders can inspire and motivate teams with energy and positivity.

3. Forgiveness

No one enjoys the boss who lords every mistake they’ve ever made over their head. There is real power in allowing employees to take calculated risks, but they have to know it’s not going to be held against them later. Doing so kills creativity and motivation. It causes people to think twice before bringing a new idea to the table, or experimenting with a new process or product. Learn how to forgive mistakes to nurture creativity and inspiration and your team will pay you back ten-fold.

4. Altruism

Looking after colleagues and helping them to do better, feel better, and perform better will create a good, productive atmosphere in the office. Famously, no man is an island. Shared credit will help you all look better to board. Although this isn’t a traditional leadership quality, those with great power and strength will always look to those around them for help.

5. Eloquence

The ability to speak and write persuasively has gained importance in the age of digital communications. People expect leaders to communicate and they want to be “wowed.” An eloquent speech can close a deal. An eloquent memo to staff can quell fears, dampen dissent, or inspire people to reach new heights. Practice your writing and speaking to become a more effective, persuasive leader.

6. Modesty

No one likes to hear how awesome someone else is all the time, especially when it’s someone blowing their own horn. Let your work speak for itself. Confidence can a great trait, but should be tempered with modesty to gain the most respect.

This article was based on an idea by Larry Kim.