The Cultural Fit Factor: Creating an Employment Brand That Attracts, Retains, and Repels the Right Employees

By Lizz Pellet

Documenting how employment branding can save money by attracting talented, capable associates that complement their organizations, this reference underscores the importance of any company having clearly defined values. Addressing how individuals no longer wish to compartmentalize their lives or separate themselves from how they contribute at work, this handbook emphasizes the significance of ensuring that all staff members share the same standards, guaranteeing that they will operate powerfully together. The potential roadblocks of incongruent belief systems are also explored, explaining how they can be detrimental to the growth and momentum of any organization. Demonstrating how to establish the ideal culture in any given workplace, this examination is key to forming the most efficient team in any professional environment. Presented in an accessible and engaging manner, a practical key assessment tool for employee branding is also included, focusing on the need for identifying organizational balance and alignment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Society For Human Resource Management
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781586442835

Book preview

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information regarding the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering legal or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent, licensed professional should be sought. The federal and state laws discussed in this book are subject to frequent revision and interpretation by amendments or judicial revisions that may significantly affect employer or employee rights and obligations. Readers are encouraged to seek legal counsel regarding specific policies and practices in their organizations.

This book is published by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM®). The interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations in this book are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publishers.

© 2009 Lizz Pellet. All rights reserved.

This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Society for Human Resource Management, 1800 Duke Street, Alexandria, VA 22314.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the world’s largest association devoted to human resource management. Representing more than 250,000 members in over 140 countries, the Society serves the needs of HR professionals and advances the interests of the HR profession. Founded in 1948, SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China and India. Visit SHRM Online at www.shrm.org.

Interior and Cover Design: Shirley E.M. Raybuck

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pellet, Lizz.

The cultural fit factor : creating an employment brand that attracts, retains, and repels the right employees / Lizz Pellet.

     p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58644-126-5

1. Employees—Recruiting. 2. Employee selection. 3. Corporate culture. 4. Branding (Marketing) 5. Personnel management. I. Title.

HF5549.5.R44P454 2009

658.3’01—dc22

2009017678

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

11-0432

Contents

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Chapter 1 The Foundation for Integrating Organizational Culture and the Employment Brand

Chapter 2 So What Is Organizational Culture?

Chapter 3 Employment Branding and the Employee Value Proposition

Chapter 4 Values Create Cultures

Chapter 5 Attract, Retain, Repel to Increase the ROI of Recruitment and Retention

Chapter 6 The Mad Hatter: Human Resources as a Marketer

Chapter 7 The Great Divide: Generational Differences and How to Create an Employment Brand that Bridges the Gap

Chapter 8 Sustainability and Branding: Going Green

Chapter 9 Combining Culture and Brand in a Merger or Acquisition

Chapter 10 The Employment Branding Tool Kit: How to Build a Brand

Afterword

Appendix A Employment Branding Study Results (2006 and 2008)

Appendix B Qualitative Research: Interviews with Industry Experts

Additional SHRM-Published Books

Endnotes

Index

About the Author

Acknowledgments

They say it takes a village to raise a child to which, I humbly add, it takes a tribe to write a good business book. It is never one person’s voice or research that makes a great body of work. Conversations, stories, data, studies and articles give authors the fodder to build on and create new thoughts. I would like to thank my tribe.

There are some incredible conference directors and program coordinators in our midst. They are the ones that seek out new ideas, schools of thought, and great speakers. They know that while the setting and often times the food are a memorable experience, the speakers and educators are what attendees remember and come back to see and hear year after year. Anna Brekka and Laura Tremblay from Kennedy Information, R.D. Whitney from Onrec, Susan Frear from the Dallas Human Resource Management Association, Scott Sundy from ADVANCE Newsmagazines, Todd Raphael from ERE, Ron Goode from the American Staffing Association, Barry Asin from Staffing Industry Analysts, Debbie McGrath from HR.com and Braden Albert from HR Star are all visionaries and leaders in this category.

With so many professional associations that send out a call for presenters, it is the volunteer selection committees who process hundreds of speaker requests. They are the stewards of securing top speaking talent and fresh content. To all of these associations and committees that have chosen me to speak over the years, I have been honored and offer a heartfelt thanks.

Thank you to the researchers, writers, bloggers and tweeters who have provided incredible (and reliable) research, data, and studies. I appreciate your commitment to the profession and sharing this information.

My friends and colleagues who have taken the time to review the content of this book, suggest, critique, and laugh out loud, I give you my sincere thanks and gratitude. There are many industry professionals who I bounced this information. They would have loved to contribute their feedback and endorsements — but like culture suggests, sometimes organizations are bound by the knots of legal departments and constraints of PR. That is not a bad thing, as you will read in this book, sometimes it just is what it is.

I would like to thank Maureen Henson, SPHR, president of R&M Associates, and Dr. Michael R. Kannisto, vice president, Staffing/University Relations/ Employment Branding, BASF Corporation, for reviewing earlier versions of the manuscript.

And lastly, my thanks to SHRM and the great staff for working with me through this process.

Dedication

To Reagan Forlenzo, Om Mani Phat Me Hum. This book would have never been written without your dedication and support.

To Andrew Fortham and Madelyn Fortham, you can be anything you want to be, you just have to try.

To those on the path: Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.

Lao Tzu.

And finally, to Ralph the Hamster — thanks for keeping the wheel going, even after hours.

CHAPTER 1

The Foundation for Integrating Organizational Culture and the Employment Brand

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

That’s the opening line to Stephen King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower series,¹ a seven-book series composed of nearly 4,000 pages, which took King more than two decades to complete. Why is the master of horror’s work so fascinating that it should be used in the opening of a Human Resources book? It’s all about the journey.

The main character, Roland, starts his epic adventure, which takes him through an experience of many trials and tribulations — love, landscape, loss, wonderment, adventure, danger, and, ultimately, the understanding of how difficult and triumphant values and the human spirit can be. The most fascinating piece of this epic tale is the culmination of Roland’s quest, his journey, and his life’s work. He reaches his final destination and finds the Dark Tower. He ascends the long staircase, identifies his final triumph, opens the door … and the story ends the way it began: The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

How many times in our professional lives do we seek the pinnacle of our career, the job of jobs, only to discover that it wasn’t what we thought it would be, that we don’t really fit, and it really isn’t the Holy Grail we’ve been searching for? That’s the premise of this book. The cultural fit factor — how we can find the right fit in our professional experience; how the strategic thinkers in Human Resources can find the people who will fit in their organizations and have the ultimate authentic and congruent work experience; and how we can create an employment brand that will convey the real culture of the organization.

I’ve been assessing organizational culture for almost 15 years. In that time, I have seen a significant number of organizations with healthy cultures, some that are moderately healthy, and some that are unhealthy, yet successful. I noticed a trend emerging: Organizations with healthy cultures really know who they are. Their employees have a sense of belonging, identity, and esprit de corps. It’s much like how the book Built to Last so prophetically pointed out that there is a cult-like culture within these organizations.²

So, naturally, I was intrigued by these cultures. Was this a Stepford Wife situation in which the corporation stocks itself with pliant androids, perfect beyond belief? Had Human Resources moved down into the basement, far behind the boilers, offering up the same employee in a different skin, over and over again? Or have these organizations really banded together, honoring diversity, creating a sense of community and elitism above their competitors in today’s war for talent?

It became time to infuse a new element into my approach for assessing organizational culture. By weaving in questions about employment branding, I could get a better sense of whether the organizations with healthy cultures also had created a significant employment brand.

I set out to learn more about branding, from various perspectives: recruitment advertising, marketing, consumer packaging, and companies that have well-known brands. I needed to learn more about branding so that I could incorporate branding concepts, philosophies, and methodologies into the cultural diagnostic process I had already developed.

Organizational Diagnosis Process: The performance objective represents the process’ ability to guide organizational adaptability, stability, and innovation.

Structure. Division of Labor, Departmentalization, and Organizational Type

Strategy. Business Definition, Success Factors, Competitive Analysis, Business Plan, Succession Planning

Tasks. Skill Requirements and Competence

Decision Support Systems. Planning, Control, and Budgeting Information

Human Resource Systems. Demographics, Skills, Motives, Expectations, Recruitment-Selection, and Training and Development

Reward Systems. Compensation, Promotions, and Opportunities for Advancement as the Primary Source for Understanding Organizational Performance Outputs.

I examined cultural assessment findings in a new way — from an employment-branding perspective. As I reviewed client report data, I thought that if I was an employee of this company, would these results attract me to work at this company; get even the passive candidates to find interest in the company; retain me as a current employee; encourage me to stay employed by this company; or repel me altogether?

So, for the last few years, I’ve been talking about the Attract, Retain, and Repel concept. Sure, everyone understands the concept of attract and retain … but repel? Isn’t repel a dirty word?

Now, I’ve heard many HR professionals say, "We want to invite everyone to apply! We don’t want to exclude anyone! and We have to let everyone apply; we are a union shop. Our doors are always open, and anyone who thinks we are not in compliance with EEOC can check our records." These may be true statements, but do you really want everyone to apply? These are the folks who, in Good to Great, say, We have to have everyone on the same bus.³ But you don’t want some candidates to even know you have a bus! Think about it. There are employees in every company who really just don’t fit. You know who I’m talking about. The ones who you wish you could gather around the water cooler and then bring in Jeff Probst from Survivor to say, George, the tribe has spoken. It’s time for you to go. And, poof, out goes the torch and they exit the organization.

And it’s never the same type of person for every company because every organization has a different culture. The employee who sticks out like a sore thumb in Company A fits seamlessly in Company B. So the real goal here is to repel the employees who just don’t fit from even applying at Company A in the first place. It would be much more economical if they just submitted their resume right over to Company B. That’s the beauty of a clear and definitive employment brand in the context of repel.

Replacement Costs

We all know what it can mean when you’re not clear on your employment brand or candidate expectations — everybody comes in to apply for a job. Your recruiter’s time and energy turns from a strategic placement specialist into a resume sorter. Retention is always important because of the investment you make in people. While people investments are different from one industry to the next — and greater from employer to employer — everyone can agree that the costs are great. You’ve heard the statistics of a bad hire, right? Statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor reveal that the average cost to replace a worker in the private industry is $13,996.⁴ In 2007, they show an estimated cost of a single vacancy for some jobs was calculated to cost anywhere from $7,000 to $12,000 per day. In 2006, Salary.com reported replacement cost ranging from nearly 29 percent of an employee’s annual wages. How’s that for the potential cost of high turnover?

It is estimated that one out of every four employees has been with their company less than one year. Less than one year? It takes 90 days to find your way around and gain entry into the intact social circles. Factor in another 90 days to figure out the 4 P’s (process, procedures, protocol, and politics), and you have about four months of steady and reliable productivity from one in every four workers in your company. And that’s frightening, especially if you’re a recruiter.

Why do we continue to put the new hires through this meat-grinder process and weigh down our already overworked employees with the responsibility of being mentors, preceptors, buddies, or tour guides only to repeat the cycle of onboarding employees who really don’t fit into the culture in the first place!

The bottom line with Attract, Retain, and Repel is that when you understand and embrace who you are and who you are not, as an organization, you will attract and retain the right employees and repel the ones who just won’t fit. By incorporating this concept and repelling employees who don’t fit into your culture, you reduce recruitment expenses significantly.⁵

CHAPTER 2

So What Is Organizational Culture?

Organizational culture has its theoretical origins in sociology and anthropology. These sciences are critical in helping us to understand societal groups. They also help us understand why people act the way they do, because culture has a significant effect on human behavior.

Culture is defined as a set of beliefs, values, customs, and behaviors that members of a society use to relate to their world and each other. It is also defined as the norms that we live by — the commonly held meanings and actions for a specific human gathering. In many respects, our values and beliefs are determinants of our behavior.

Unspoken Rules

As a member of a culture, you learn that when you behave outside of what is considered acceptable or legal, there is a consequence that often involves a sanction or punishment. Although the threat of an unpleasant outcome serves as a deterrent to inappropriate behaviors for many, people in every society break the rules to some extent. Tolerance of actions that fall outside of the cultural expectations seems to vary with the number of people who violate those expectations. For example, when you’re driving in a clearly posted 45-mph speed zone at 45 mph, but everyone is passing you, suddenly you notice that your speedometer is showing 51 mph and it seems reasonable. In fact, once you start going 51 mph and pass someone going the speed limit, you may even think there’s something wrong with the other driver’s behavior! The outcome in this case, a speeding ticket, is not universally applied because the police can only catch and ticket a fraction of the people who are speeding. In time, the posted speed limit might actually be changed, or speeders will be ignored.

The beliefs, values, and behaviors that are a part of an organization affect the individuals in that organization, the product or service that organization provides, and the organization as a whole. There seems to be an inability to define culture, which leads to a high level of frustration for you as a leader. How are you expected to manage something that you can’t always identify or define, let alone measure? When I started assessing culture, it was as elusive to me as trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.

Often, there are subcultures within your overarching organizational culture. Stop perpetuating the same old way of doing things; rather than managing these two worlds, you must strive to eliminate the unspoken, hidden culture. The answer is not to learn how to manage the