Ep 17: What is culture fit?

Meet Aoife O'Brien

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Aoife O'Brien is a company culture expert, public speaker and award-winning podcast host of the Happier at Work podcast®. 

As the Founder of Happier at Work, she consults a wide variety of organizations on how to increase retention and productivity of teams while creating a positive and engaging work experience. With a background in data analytics from the CPG industry, Aoife takes a pragmatic approach to culture strategy with a personal touch.

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‍Episode Highlights

3 Considerations when determining company ‘fit’

1. Values

Aoife O’Brien: “Understanding what your values are and how closely that is aligned with the organization’s values.”

2. Needs

Aoife O’Brien: “We have three core psychological needs that we all have: 

Autonomy- a sense of choice and control over what you do and how you do it. 

Relatedness- how you get along with other people, but also how you relate to the impacts that you're having on the organization’s objectives and results. 

Competence- a feeling of capability over what you're doing.”

     3. Strengths 

Aoife O’Brien: “We should try to understand what our strengths are at work, what we're naturally good at and build on those rather than trying to mitigate our weaknesses. It is really important to do that at work and to feel like you're thriving and being challenged and that you're doing stuff that's important. And that's using the abilities that you have.”

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Alignment from the company perspective

Matt Vance: Sometimes there are seasons in our career where there's an alignment for a time and we outgrow it in a certain way because we're growing and changing, or the company is growing and changing. 

Remember, it's your life. You're in the driver seat. Think about what makes sense for you. There are certain things that are a must-have and some that are nice-to-have elements. You can be a little bit more loose on the nice-to-have elements. You don't have everything today, but can work toward that later on in your career. 

Ultimately, it will be a net negative for the company to have an employee misaligned with a company. It's okay to be challenged sometimes and move on to that next position, whether it's in the same company or a different organization. It has to be a mutual thing.

Aoife O’Brien: “It’s crucial to get the entire staff involved in the creation of what the values are and in agreement of what the behaviors look like. First, define them, then second, make sure they are the lived experience of the people there.

When you're hiring people, it's important to know what those values are and hire for culture fit, values and strengths. You don't have to hire for skills. You don't have to hire for a number of years of experience. Find out if the person is a good fit, culturally, by understanding the things that are important to them and how they relate to the things that are important to the organization. Understand what their natural strengths and abilities are and how they will fit in with the rest of the team.”

Crista Vance:  “It's the interview process where that has the biggest impact.”

Aoife O’Brien: Yes, if you bring the wrong person into the organization, there is much time and energy invested into that process. It's so important to get that right from the get-go. If you bring someone into an organization, if they're not doing what's expected, it's felt in the entire organization.”

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