TENNESSEE TURFGRASS: Neal Glatt, CSP, ASM

Many leaders seek to hire people who fit their company culture, meaning they choose candidates who share their values, style, or goals. Their theory is that these teams will be more cohesive and aligned to enable performance of key business outcomes. Unfortunately for these leaders, the science shows exactly the opposite is true.

According to a 2015 McKinsey report, diverse management teams are 35% more likely to outperform non-diverse teams in terms of financial performance. One of the reasons for this is that teams which disagree challenge each other to perform at their best. The desire for cohesiveness can in fact limit a team’s ability to obtain performance.

For managers who want to hire the best people, cultural fit may be undermining the entire hiring process. In fact, personality, behavioral, or cultural tests predict on-the-job performance only 20% of the time while giving hiring managers a false sense of security.

One way to know that hiring methods aren’t working to look at the employee turnover rate of an organization. What percentage of employees departed your organization for any reason in the past 12 months? If the answer is 9.2% or higher (the average for all construction companies), then your hiring criteria must be revaluated to outperform the competition.

The best leaders don’t look for a cultural fit, they target candidates who contribute cultural adds. These people have an identity, viewpoint, or experience which is new and unique to a team and brings a new perspective to an organization. Striving for diversity, as opposed to fit, is the best way to build a high-performing team with lower turnover.

A good talent assessment won’t reveal work styles because the best in each role achieve their results in very different ways. Save the personality and behavioral assessments for building self- and others-awareness of new hires and development. In the hiring process, an assessment of the entrepreneurial talent is what’s needed to succeed.

Finally, managers need to revisit how they interview and move to structured formats where each candidate is given the same questions and answers are scored against an objective guide. These questions should also only be around exhibited behavior in previous experiences or hypothetical situations to determine how someone would perform in a given role. When combined, these strategies dramatically reduce hiring bias and increase team talent and diversity.

If you need more help revamping your hiring process to succeed, check out the courses on GrowTheBench.com or contact us for one-on-one coaching.

Neal Glatt is the Managing Partner of GrowTheBench, an online training platform for the green industry. Connect with Neal at www.NealGlatt.com.

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