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Dear Workforce Who Has a Good Blueprint for Creating an Onboarding Program?

Dear In the Dark:

It is great to see an organization that takes onboarding seriously. After all, you get only one chance to make a good first impression.

Onboarding is a critical—but often overlooked—aspect of talent management. As you suggest, good onboarding can drive employee retention. It also improves employee satisfaction and engagement, productivity and performance.

For best practices, you may want to refer to Getting On Board: A Model for Integrating and Engaging New Employees, produced by the Partnership for Public Service. The report outlines a strategic onboarding model, based on best practices from both the private and public sectors.

Good onboarding actually begins when the new employees accepts a job offer—even before the person reports for a first day of work—and extends to the end of the new employee’s first year. The Getting On Board model outlines five specific onboarding phases (before the new employee reports, the first day, the first week, the first three months and the first year) and lays out specific steps for each phase.

Although this report was written with the public sector in mind, it applies to all organizations. It outlines four fundamental principles that help ensure onboarding is: comprehensive and integrated, reflects the organization’s needs and, most importantly, drives positive outcomes.

1. Align to mission and vision. Onboarding should highlight to new employees how their jobs contribute to the organization’s mission.

2. Connect to culture, mission and strategic priorities. Onboarding must paint a realistic picture of culture, enabling new employees to understand the organization they’ve joined. And onboarding goals should be built around organizational priorities. If a goal is to reduce turnover, for example, the onboarding program should reflect this in a measurable way.

3. Integrate activities. While human resources is traditionally the main onboarding process owner, other key players include security, information technology, facilities, managers/supervisors—and the new employees themselves. All must be accountable for meeting shared onboarding goals.

4. Apply to all employees, regardless of location and level, and also tailor to specific types of employees. New hires entering the world of work for the first time have different needs than experienced professionals who are switching jobs.

“Best practices” organizations also focus on the role of the manager/supervisor in onboarding. All managers should:

• Welcome new employees and meet with them as early as possible.

• Cleary communicate job responsibilities.

• Explain and set cultural expectations (for example, decisions that can be made without manager approval, communication styles).

• Develop individual performance plans with performance expectations.

• Assign meaningful work as soon as possible.

• Discuss career development.

• Monitor performance and provide frequent formal and informal feedback throughout the employee’s first year.

Leading organizations also assign new employees a sponsor (or “buddy”), a peer who can help the new employee understand the organizational culture. The buddy can help the new hire:

• Understand the written and unwritten elements of the culture.

• Learn how to navigate the organization.

• Meet colleagues.

• Get answers to key questions.

While the model in Getting On Board provides an overall framework, individual onboarding programs must be adapted. Specific recommendations:

1. Know where you want to be—define onboarding goals and attributes. Strategic onboarding programs help integrate new employees into their jobs and the organizational culture. Beyond these broad goals, onboarding should map directly to specific organizational goals: reducing turnover, changing culture and improving employee engagement, for example.

2. Know where you are—baseline your current onboarding program. Before making changes, it is important to understand and document current practices and responsibilities. In other words, assess your current approach, scope and effectiveness).

3. Seek quick wins. For many organizations, small improvements pay big dividends. Activities that can be implemented quickly and inexpensively include:

• Sending out welcome emails to new employees after they accept job offers.

• Assigning a sponsor to help new employees before they start and during their first days and weeks.

• Developing new-employee checklists—both for new employees and managers/supervisors—and posting them electronically (Getting On Board includes an onboarding checklist).

• Ensuring orientation programs contain information about organizational history, mission and core values.

• Involving senior leadership in orientation and subsequent onboarding activities.

4. Tailor onboarding to type of employee. Organizations that have the onboarding basics down can move on to tailor onboarding to specific new employee groups (e.g., executives, midlevel managers, more junior employees and transfers).

As our organizations face increasingly complex challenges, employees need to be fully productive and en¬gaged as quickly as possible. Stra¬tegic onboarding provides a framework to integrate new employees to maximize their productivity, engagement and retention.

SOURCE: Bob Lavigna, director of human resources, University of Wisconsin at Madison

LEARN MORE: Assigning new employees to a “caring manager” plays a key role in onboarding.

Workforce Management Online, April 2011 — Register Now!

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce Should We Consolidate Our Health Purchasing Power

Dear Power in Numbers:

While it is not common practice, there have been numerous attempts by employers to use their consolidated purchasing power to buy health care coverage for their employees. In some cases, employers in the same industry formed a coalition, while in other cases, employers in the same geographic proximity banded together.

Purchasing coalitions hold the promise of lowering costs by bargaining with hospitals, physicians, and other providers for lower reimbursement rates. This spreads fixed administrative costs over a larger membership base, and enables better management of cash flow.

Unfortunately, coalitions face a number of obstacles:

  • Many employers join a coalition with the expectation that they will accept the results of the coalition’s negotiations with insurers (and/or providers) if it’s better than the deal that employer gets on its own. But this thinking can undermine the very ability of the coalition to negotiate, since the coalition cannot bind its membership to the terms it negotiates. Nor can it promise the insurer volume from the full coalition. Insurers learn pretty quickly whether the coalition has any “teeth.” If not, the coalition will be ineffective in offering better deals to employers.

  • Employers may be unable to modify their benefit plans to take advantage of the insurer’s offer to the coalition. It may be particularly difficult for employers whose benefits are collectively bargained.

  • Although the coalition may be successful in consolidating certain administrative functions (e.g., remitting premium), and hence obtaining a rate concession from the insurer, in many cases the coalition itself becomes responsible for these functions. The coalition would then have to charge member employers for assuming these functions, which may offset the negotiated savings.

  • There are laws that govern this whole area, like laws that prevent or restrict the ability of insurers to give employer coalitions more favorable premium rates. New York insurance law, for example, prohibits insurers from granting more favorable rates to coalitions that have any members who employ 50 or fewer employees.

  • State law not withstanding, many insurers will not underwrite coalitions due to concerns about adverse selection (i.e., the insurer ending up with the worst risks in the group) and the legalities of covering multiple employers (e.g., which one becomes liable for delinquent premiums).

  • Some employers have attempted to establish coalitions that self-fund health benefits. These arrangements are generally considered Multiple Employer Welfare Arrangements, or MEWAs, and are governed by federal law. However, as a result of the perceived failure of MEWAs, the federal government allows states to regulate their financial solvency. Many states have laws limiting the ability of MEWAs to operate.

Michigan, for example, only permits employers to self-fund health benefits if: 1) they are members of an association of five or more businesses that are in the same trade or industry, 2) the association is not formed solely to provide health benefits to its members, and 3) the association has been in existence for at least two years.

Despite these many obstacles, there are examples of successful coalitions. Many state governments allow local counties, school districts, and other public employers to join their state health benefits program. These states have been able to achieve tremendous economies of scale and use their large membership bases to negotiate favorable arrangements with insurers and third-party administrators.

SOURCE: Harvey Sobel, FSA, Principal & Consulting Actuary,Buck Consultants, Inc., Secaucus, New Jersey, Jan. 17, 2003.

LEARN MORE: ReadSelling Health to High-Risk Workers.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce How Do We Launch a Systematic and Rigorous Plan to Build a Performance Management Strategy for Our Workforce?

Dear No Systems Go:

Staff inefficiencies are obviously a big issue for many employers, especially in industries (such as yours) where customer service levels are often a huge differentiator in the marketplace.

Your have not indicated whether–or how–you determined staff to be inefficient. Perhaps you already have a factual basis for coming to this conclusion. If not, that should be your starting point. First and foremost, you will want to better understand what efficiency standards are the norm (or the ones to beat) in your industry. In other words, before you decide which actions to take, you really must understand how your company stacks up against the competition’s standards of efficiency.

Following that, and before adopting a new or realigned system or methodology, conduct an in-depth review of your current processes. While the answer to your dilemma may indeed be that your people simply need more training, other process-related issues may prevent them from being as efficient as possible. No amount of training will improve efficiency if, for instance, people are inputting data more than once, or waiting too long for approvals. Detailed process evaluations frequently identify inefficiencies and “process traps” that are easy to isolate and relatively inexpensive to repair, and which typically lead to a rapid boost in efficiencies.

After all this, you may still find that people issues are a contributing factor to inefficiency. If that’s the case, the best way to launch a performance management strategy is to start by making sure that you clearly and specifically articulate the business issues to your employees. Clearly identifying business issues allows you to assess how well you currently hire, train, develop and manage the performance of your people against those issues.

Clearly articulating the business needs helps you establish the competencies your people need to move forward. A formal performance assessment will determine whether you have people with those competencies, which skills gaps exist and whether you are better off investing time and money to develop your current team, or recruiting people who already posses those skills.

This approach is the best way to proceed, as it allows you to link your systems and assessment methods directly to your business strategy. It also allows you to prioritize your next steps and determine the most effective use of your training investment, both in terms of effort and dollars.

SOURCE: Beth Przywara, principal, Capital H Group, Detroit, April 20, 2006.

LEARN MORE: Please read How Do We Move From Paternalism to Measuring Performance? for another viewpoint on how to cultivate performance management.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce How Do I Frame Character Questions During Behavioral Interviews

Dear Character Counts:

Behavioral interviewing is based on the assumption that one’s past behavior is an excellent indicator of the actions that person will take, and the results he will generate, in the future under similar circumstances. Behavioral-based interview questions enable you as the interviewer to focus on how a candidate handled a real-life situation in the past, instead of how the person might handle a hypothetical situation in the future.

The typical behavioral interview question is based on the following framework: Problem/Situation –> Action –> Result. Ask candidate to outline a problem or situation they have faced that highlights the skill, trait or core competency you are seeking (problem/situation). Then, ask candidates to describe the action they took and the results it generated.

You can apply this technique to any question you find relevant to the role for which you are hiring by putting it in this problem/situation-action-results framework. For example, if you are looking to define integrity, you could ask the candidate to describe an actual situation or problem in their professional past that tested their integrity, what action they took, and what results they obtained.

Ordinarily we encounter two challenges when using this type of questioning. First, if the candidate is unable to come up with a similar situation or problem, it can take serious probing on your part to find it. Of course, that process in and of itself can be revealing about your candidate. Second, a candidate can potentially reframe your question to make some unrelated point about him or herself. When that happens, I simply redirect them to the original question.

If you are looking for character traits, an excellent complement to behavioral interviewing is personality and style testing. There are many excellent tools on the market to help you identify perfect candidates for your jobs.

SOURCE: David Peck, Leadership Unleashed, San Francisco, July 10, 2006

LEARN MORE: Please read a related article on gauging a person’s passion and commitment.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce How Should We Go About Re-Evaluating Our Employee Benefits

Dear Contrarian:

Research always is a good tool, but you should think carefully about the kind of research you need. We suggest that you first evaluate the firm’s financial situation and consider what can be afforded. Next, determine the impact of the benefits package on retention and recruiting by talking to human resources, including the compensation and benefits staff, to find out what they hear and know about your program from the people they are recruiting. It is crucial to include senior management to determine organizational strategy and goals.

We would suggest two additional approaches to fact-finding—conduct employee focus groups as well as a benchmark survey of companies with which you compete for talent.

The focus group charter can be clearly stated as exploratory in nature. The groups might examine employee understanding of their benefits and what employees value—why they come to work at your organization rather than going across the street—beyond the benefits you offer.

You might position this research as a way to determine whether your employees see the various people policies and programs (your total rewards programs) as linked to their professional and personal growth. The areas to discuss beyond benefits would be affiliation, career, work content and compensation. You might say that the information gathered through the focus groups will be used to define and articulate an employee value proposition for your organization.

In addition to focus groups, conducting a survey of those companies with which you compete for talent, especially when in growth mode, will help senior management decide where you need to be in light of the competition, and how to position yourselves. Benchmarking your company’s offerings against those of the competition is an important step in determining how to position benefits as part of your overall employee value proposition. Do you want to provide benefits that are richer than your competition, in line with the competition, or less rich than the competition? You may want to consider making up for any benefits shortfall in other areas (e.g., compensation, paid time off, richer affiliation, etc.)

It’s always tempting to just call your vendors and ask for a new “package,” but if you really want to align your benefits programs with your organizational goals, it is worth taking the time to do the research, and it’s worth doing the right research.

SOURCE: Nenette Kress, Segal/MGC Communications, New York; John R. Povinelli, Sibson Consulting (a division of Segal), Tempe, Arizona; and Chris Calvert, Sibson Consulting, New York, October 30, 2007.

LEARN MORE: Please read Diagnosing the Workforce to find out how and why companies are gauging the health of their employees.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce How Do We Decide Whether to Outsource Payroll or Bring It In-House

Dear Overwhelmed:

Payroll is one of the most complex processes found in the financial operations of companies these days. Not only do payroll administrators need to keep track of federal income tax and benefits regulations, they also must be aware of state wage and hour regulations in every state in which you operate. Most small to midsize firms find it much more economical to outsource this complicated and demanding function. It is only when you reach 1,000 or more employees that you find companies being able to afford the expense associated with maintaining payroll in-house. Even then, these firms usually have access to a variety of outside services that support their legal and regulatory needs related to payroll. If your company is growing rapidly, you may want to study this possibility further. Here are some of the relevant factors to consider in any analysis:

  • How quickly is your company growing? Are you looking to make a significant number of acquisitions or expand internationally over the next several years?

  • How complex are your payroll needs? Look at things like how many hourly employees you have, the different work/shift schedules, and which types of deduction codes and earnings types your company uses. Another indicator of complexity would be a lot of different bonus or other cash compensation programs.

  • How many distinct payrolls does your company run each month? How many physical checks or deposit stubs do you generate each month?

  • Are state regulations (in the 39 states) complex and demanding? Illinois, New York and California have some of the most complicated wage and hour regulations on the planet.

  • Do you have access to payroll expertise (including outside expert resources) to assist with preparing a formal cost/benefit/return on investment analysis?

  • What is the level of IT support at your company? Is your IT department capable of managing another system?

  • Do senior executives understand the complexity, and are they willing to support the conversion with needed resources?

These are some of the more critical questions you will need to consider in the decision to source payroll or bring it in-house. If your company decides to move to another vendor rather than insource, here are some of the significant considerations:

  • Is the vendor financially stable? How long has it been in business? What is its track record in meeting commitments? Check references in detail.

  • How strong are the vendor’s project management capabilities? Does the firm have expertise in all aspects of project management, including project planning, tracking, control, and management?

  • What capacity does the vendor have for bringing your company on board with them? Will you have a dedicated service team?

  • Does the vendor operate nationally? With 39 states, you might as well not even consider firms that have not had experience in all 50 states.

  • Does the vendor serve similarly sized organizations that are growing rapidly? Does it serve organizations that operate internationally (presuming this is a factor)?

  • Does the vendor have experience with companies in your industry? If so, quantify that experience?

  • Can you trust the confidentiality of the vendor? Does the vendor also serve your competitors?

  • Finally, can the vendor manage the variety of your company’s payrolls?

Many of these questions will form the basis for a formal request for proposal that you will send to a select list of vendors. Using these lists as a starting point, you also may want to check with your business colleagues/professional associations to find people who have gone through this type of change and are willing to share their experiences. This type of change should not be done in a “quick and dirty” manner. Invest the time and resources into making the right decision for your organization.

SOURCE: Bob Fulton, the Pathfinder’s Group Inc., Naperville, Illinois, September 7, 2007.

LEARN MORE: Please read how companies large and small have begun to contract our more HR administrative tasks.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce What Are the Steps to Grooming Successful Mentors

Dear Teaching the Teachers:

First off, I’d like to acknowledge that managers need to play a role in driving employee engagement and performance. I would not recommend that you replace manager-employee coaching or try to make up for bad managers with a mentoring program.

Clarify your objectives. An effective mentoring program supplements coaching from managers, and it should be positioned as a way to make the business, not just individual employees, more successful. From there you can add a more specific goal, such as helping new employees get up to speed quickly.

Define your mentor selection criteria. Mentors need to be more than willing. They need to have a coaching attitude and ability. Describe these characteristics in writing—and other traits, such as particular business knowledge or specific skills.

Equip your mentors. Provide tools and training to help mentors fulfill their role. This process goes beyond basic coaching skills to include an emphasis on:

  • Individualized partnerships. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” may serve people well most of the time, but it can actually get in the way of successful mentoring. Effective mentors understand their individual mentees’ needs and work with everyone differently. What works great for one person can derail another.

  • Career coaching. Although employees may look to their mentors for career “navigation” advice, our research indicates that few are clear on what’s important to them. Mentors need to help people get behind the core values that create job satisfaction for them. What do they like to do and why? What would enrich their work each day? Only then can mentors help employees create a plan for professional development, career progression or job enrichment.

Reinforce mentoring. To reap the benefits that mentors provide, you need to make mentoring a way of life. Senior leaders must be role models and discuss with employees the impact that mentoring has on business and personal success.

Leaders experience success as mentors through practice. The more they mentor, the more successful their mentoring becomes. A virtuous cycle will then take hold: They believe in mentoring, they’ve seen how it works, and they’re motivated to build their own competence.

And don’t forget to build in accountability, metrics and recognition systems. Without these, mentoring can fall by the wayside as a “nice to do that we don’t have time to do,” instead of remaining a core strategy for building an engaged workforce and thriving business.

SOURCE: Cathy Earley, BlessingWhite, San Francisco, November 27, 2007.

LEARN MORE: Please read Mentoring Matters to learn how and why corporations are ramping up efforts to pair seasoned managers with promising talent.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce How Do We Capitalize–and Recognize–Intellectual Capital

Dear Discouraged:

You clearly have a few issues to consider here that revolve around recognizing the individual’s problem-solving skills and willingness to contribute his expertise.

The first step is getting the right stakeholders together to discuss the issue. This group should involve some key business leaders or managers, as well as a human resources partner. Use this situation to review your organization’s overall ability to manage and effectively share employees’ knowledge and expertise. Doing so positions the conversation in a positive light and avoids pointing fingers at managers who fail to recognize an individual’s contributions.

Positioning the conversation in this light is positive versus pointing out the failure of some mangers and leaders to recognize an individual’s valued contributions.

Questions to address to develop a solution

  1. Does the organization currently have formal or informally designated subject matter experts (SMEs) whom people rely on as “go to” players for deep technical expertise?

  2. If there is no formal program or designation of SMEs, consider this: Is your organization at risk in terms of highly qualified experts leaving the business, taking with them valued knowledge that is difficult to replace?

  3. Which types of technical knowledge and expertise are most highly valued? Who has this knowledge and how often does the organization rely on it?

  4. Is it imperative that you designate SMEs/technical experts in key areas, functions and levels across the business?

  5. Does your employee competency model reference deep technical expertise—and willingness to share it—as a valued behavior? If not, can this be added so that contributions are recognized in the performance management process, for example?

  6. How do you foster improved collaboration and knowledge sharing through recognition?

  7. What are the required leadership behaviors to support a collaborative environment and recognize effort and valuable contributions?

Finally, it should be stated that recognition for individuals who play the technical-expert role (as described in the question) doesn’t necessarily saddle your organization with financial or other costs. Simple recognition tools (such as designating the individual as an SME, inviting him/her to coach others, or inviting the employee to present their ideas or solution to company leadership) go a long way to ensuring the person doesn’t walk to a competitor—and take expertise your organization relies on to make important decisions.

SOURCE: Garrett Sheridan, managing partner, Axiom Consulting Partners, Chicago, June 18, 2008.

LEARN MORE: Please read about strategies on formalizing approaches to cross-training for key employees.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce How Does 1,000-Hour Rule Apply to Non-Retirement Benefits?

Dear Bedeviled:

The best-known 1,000-hour rule is contained in Part 2 of Title 1 of the Employee Retirement Income and Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and generally only applies to employee pension benefit plans. It’s also mentioned in the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Sections 410(a) and 411(a) regarding participation and vesting in retirement plans.

The concept of 1,000 hours has received attention lately in the Section 403(b) universal availability requirement in the finalpe 403(b) regulations. Under that requirement, employees who are not expected to work at least 20 hours per week need not be offered the opportunity to make salary deferrals.

However, the IRS added that once such an employee works at least 1,000 hours in a year, he or she must become a participant in the following year. As pointed out in the preambles to both the proposed and final regulations, the exclusion for employees who are “expected to work (fewer) than 20 hours” is available only for non-ERISA 403(b) plans.

Although the 1,000-hour rule is best known in retirement circles, it also has some applicability with group welfare plans—generally only with respect to nondiscrimination testing.

Unfortunately, it is not applied on a consistent basis and does not apply to all benefits.

For example, in determining eligibility for nondiscrimination purposes under a dependent-care assistance program under IRC Section 129, employees with less than one year of service (defined with reference to the 1,000-hour requirement of IRC Section 410(a) can be excluded.

Additionally, for similar purposes, under group-term life insurance plans (IRC Section 79) and self-insured group health plans (IRC Section 105(h), employees with less than three years of service can be excluded. The regulations under IRC Section 105(h) state that although other methods can be used to measure service, the 1,000-hour requirement in IRC Section 410(a) would be reasonable.

It is interesting to note that both group-term life insurance plans and self-insured group health plans are permitted to exclude part-time and seasonal employees. IRC Section 105(h) defines a part-time employee as someone whose customary employment is less than 25 hours a week.

As a result, the 1,000-hour rule for such plans may not be an absolute figure. However, any exclusion for “part-time” employees is not an acceptable exclusion for retirement plans.

Group health plans that are insured are generally not subject to nondiscrimination rules, with regard to service requirements, under ERISA or the IRC unless offered through a cafeteria plan.

Other types of benefit programs, such as education assistance programs and adoption expense programs, are also subject to nondiscrimination rules, but those rules are not as well developed as are those for the benefit plans mentioned above.

SOURCE: John Kent Graham, regional director of compliance, Sibson Consulting, New York, February 24, 2009

LEARN MORE: The U.S. Department of Labor provides an FAQ on ERISA that aims to help employees understand the law.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce What Are Some Techniques to Hire People Whose Personal Values Best Fit Our Company

Dear Fixated:

 

You are correct: The cultural fit between employee and the organization is an extremely important consideration. We have all had a job for which we had the skills and experience but were just not a “good fit.” Such situations often result in poor employee performance and/or turnover, both of which are costly for the employer.

During a down economy, employees who are a poor fit are way less likely to jump ship–and while this may reduce turnover, it also may perpetuate lower performance that eventually shows up in the bottom line.

So what steps can you take to ensure you hire employees whose values and interests jibe with the company? First of all, it is critical for your company to clearly understand its own culture. This requires a bit of soul searching.

This effort can be complex if yours is a larger company with many divisions and geographic locations. Each group within the organization may take on its own unique culture. In your search for a cultural identity, look at the enduring and stable things that the company values as a whole—and identify meaningful differences in these values across various branches or divisions.

Organizational culture has been studied by many different groups and has been defined in many different ways. Industrial psychologists have conducted decades of research aimed at defining organizational culture, the result being a set of relatively stable “work values” that define the aspects of work that are meaningful to an organization, based on the values of the individuals who constitute it.

Some of the most useful work has been performed by Jennifer Chatman, whose Organizational Culture Profile (OCP) identifies the following major dimensions:

• Innovation

• Stability

• Orientation toward people (fair and supportive)

• Orientation toward outcomes (results-oriented, achievement-oriented)

• Easygoing vs. aggressive

• Attention to detail

• Team orientation

The OCP uses these dimensions to measure fit via the following process:

First of all, a baseline for the organization’s culture is established. This is done by having members of the organization make ratings based on their opinions regarding which of the above dimensions they feel are most and least characteristic of the organization. These ratings are then aggregated to provide a profile that defines the organization’s culture in terms of these dimensions.

Second, an individual’s “personal value profile” is created. This process involves having individuals rank their own personal values (using the dimensions listed above) in terms of their most and least preferred work environment.

Finally, the individual’s ranking of the above work values is compared with the aggregate values profile created by the organization to summarize its culture. This comparison process yields detailed information about the overlap between the values of an organization (or one of its many groups) and those of an individual. These outcomes provide a data-based estimate of the fit between an individual and the group or organization.

As you can imagine, this information can be very useful for helping organizations make all kinds of important decisions. Perhaps the most important is within the hiring process. The work values that underlie cultural fit are relatively stable and enduring within individuals, so hiring people and trying to change their values does not often prove to be an easy task.

There are a number of different “fit” inventories available from pre-employment assessment companies, and it makes sense to look into these. When doing so, make sure to ask for the technical documentation that will demonstrate the measure has been created and evaluated using the proper scientific techniques.

SOURCE: Charles A. Handler, Rocket-Hire, New Orleans, August 13, 2009

LEARN MORE: Post-hire introductory periods provide a way to ensure people’s behaviors, attitudes and attributes actually dovetail with those of a company.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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