Company culture is crucial for attracting and retaining talent. It's easy to think that salary, job description, perks, and flexible options are the only top priorities of job seekers. Well, statistics say otherwise. Glassdoor's survey revealed that more than 55% of job seekers prioritize a company's culture over wages regarding job satisfaction. The study also found that nearly 80% of applicants consider workplace culture before applying. 

The stats suggest the majority of job seekers prefer a workplace that blends well with who they are in terms of values, strengths, and ambitions. But as companies struggle to appeal to a culture-focused talent pool, they should find candidates who match the culture they've worked so hard to cultivate. 

That brings us to two big questions:

• How can hiring teams ensure they assess candidates that match the organization's culture? 

• What can learning and development teams utilize to help recruits fit into the new environment? 

To answer these questions and help you strengthen your company culture, 360Learning teamed up with Bryq to share their strategies for recruiting and onboarding employees. Read to discover: 

• Useful techniques to screen candidates that fit the organization's culture

• Valuable tips to fill your workplace's culture gaps

• An effective onboarding process that helps new employees embrace your culture

Let's dive in. 

Attracting and retaining talent: How to build a strong company culture

As potential talent shortages loom, a strong culture helps companies gain a competitive edge in the labor market. Organizations that can't create a culture to fit the modern workforce risk losing top talent to competitors. 

Why? 

A fat salary alone is not enough to attract and retain top talent. A positive work environment, values, beliefs, and purpose are now a big deal in the modern hiring market. As a result, strong company culture is no longer just "a nice thing to have." Instead, it's necessary to thrive actively. 

But what is positive company culture, and how do you build one that attracts and retains top talent? 

Company culture is a set of shared beliefs and values in the workplace. The beliefs of an organization represent "who we are" or "who we want to be." On the other hand, values represent "how we work," which reflects workplace behavior. 

A company must answer three questions to build a strong culture: 

• Why do we exist as a company? 

• Where do we want to go? 

• What does success look like? 

These questions establish the driving forces, the goals, and the conditions under which a company can thrive.

Creating a positive company culture

Leadership IQ's statistics say that nearly 50% of newly hired workers will fail within the first 18 months, and of those who fail, almost 90% have issues fitting into the workplace. 

Want to build a strong company culture and retain top talent for a long time? 

Define why your organization exists, what you stand for, what you want to achieve, and the company's standards. Then, share it with employees repeatedly until it sinks in.

Marketers believe that a customer must see an ad several times (at least seven times) before they buy. Similarly, don't expect employees to genuinely adopt the culture and share it with the world if what the company stands for is a once-in-a-while topic. 

Clarify and communicate the organization's core values, beliefs, and mission as often as possible to get employees talking about them. This could be through actions, written words, or spoken words. 

How to conceptualize & measure company culture

A company's culture can accelerate or undermine business success. Yet, many organizations don't know how to measure it and use it in their hiring and onboarding process. So, what's the right way to assess or measure your organization's culture? Each organization's culture may be unique. Companies should use a tailored approach that analyzes the company's core values. Then, map them into personality traits that reflect what the company stands for. 

After measuring the culture in your company, use the results to recognize the company's value in talent. The measuring approach you use should help identify individuals who fit your company's culture and can add to it (culture add). 

After hiring recruits who can contribute to the organization's culture, place them into teams where they can thrive and strengthen the company culture. Of course, internal mobility decisions are based on further criteria, such as performance data, personality, cognitive ability, and more. 

How to hire job candidates that fit and enhance your company's culture

As mentioned, job seekers are attracted to strong company culture. While this makes it easy to attract candidates who fit in and can enhance the culture, numerous statistics have shown that making the wrong hiring choices can happen frequently. 

In fact, one study involving 20,000 new hires showed that 46% failed in their job in less than two years. Surprisingly, 89% of those who failed did so because of attitudinal reasons, such as temperament issues, insufficient emotional intelligence, and lack of enough motivation in the job. 

Here's how to hire candidates that fit and enhance the organization's culture, and avoid this kind of mass employee exodus. 

Culture-fit matters, but culture-add matters even more. 

Are you hiring for a cultural fit? 

Your recruit should not only match the organization's culture, but also enhance it. Don't just hire people who perfectly fit your company culture, because this won't facilitate further growth. 

Instead, focus on a diverse workforce. Hire someone with different working skills, backgrounds, and demographics to help take your company culture to the next level. Research has shown that diversity helps organizations thrive faster than their competitors. A survey by the Boston Consulting Group revealed that a highly diverse organization gets nearly 19% more innovation revenue than less diverse companies. Culture-add is about having a heterogeneous workforce instead of a homogenous one to foster growth.

Identify potential hires who support your mission and embrace what you stand for, but simultaneously bring something unique to the organization—think of complementary. 

Tell the world who you are.

The fastest and easiest way to hire for cultural fit is to shout to the world what the company stands for. Tell job seekers who you are through all possible means. 

But first, you must define the company's core values. Is it innovation or teamwork? Or perhaps trust, fairness and honesty? Every organization may have unique values; identify them, and then do this: 

Share your core values in all your digital channels, from the company's website to social media platforms. You can also write them on a wall for anyone to see when they enter the business premise. Most importantly, the entire hiring process should communicate the company's values. 

This openness ensures potential hires know what to expect. 

Because employees are a company's voice, allowing them to share the workplace culture on their social media accounts can be hugely impactful. Similar to how potential buyers check customer reviews before buying a product online, potential candidates look for employer reviews before applying. So, let your people spread the word. 

Separate the good from the "bad."

You can't be too careful when hiring for cultural fit. 

Use all possible means to filter applications and remain with the most suitable candidates. You can use small tests to identify the best fits. 

For example, companies looking for innovative people can use an imaginary business-related problem to see how applicants solve the issue. 

The idea is to evaluate their skills, creativity, and the specific aspects they'll bring to the company if hired. Then, prioritize those that meet your organization's needs. Remember, wrong hires are expensive. Be extra careful when separating the good from the "bad."

Tips for an efficient and effective onboarding

Newcomers in a company have a lot to digest, from understanding policies to organizational culture. Companies should make the whole onboarding process effective, efficient, and, most importantly—engaging. Here are two valuable tips to make the entire process seamless. 

Every new employee needs an onboarding buddy.

Onboarding buddies are crucial for two primary reasons: 

• They provide new hires with the workplace context. Do you know the confusion of being in a new city all by yourself without a tour guide or GPS? That's how most new hires feel. A tenured, knowledgeable employee (the buddy) can hold a newcomer's hand throughout to help them understand how to contribute to the organization's success and how things work.

• They can improve a new employee's job satisfaction. For instance, experiments have  compared the job satisfaction of new employees (one week old) with and without onboarding buddies. The investigation concluded that new employees with onboarding buddies are nearly 25% more satisfied with their overall experience than those without. 

Make the onboarding process culture-centric.

Put the company's values and culture at the center of onboarding. Inform them how the company culture impacts the bottom line of the organization, which may help newcomers deepen their connection with the cause, mission, values, and beliefs.  

Takeaway

A strong company culture draws in and retains top talent in an organization. Paychecks and perks are not the only top priorities for job seekers. They also consider whether a company's values, beliefs, and mission align with theirs. 

That said, companies should look at cultural fit with a new lens. Instead of seeking employees who perfectly match their organization's culture, they should consider diversity to leverage culture-add in their workforce. 

Check out our on-demand webinar for more in-depth tips on how to strengthen your company culture through strategic hiring and onboarding.