Cultural assessment

An organization’s culture is the overall character of the business and defines the way the organization functions and the attitudes that prevail in it. Workplace culture includes shared values, beliefs, behaviors, goals, attitudes, and work practices established by leaders within the organization. The elements of a company’s culture are communicated and reinforced through actions and behaviors above all, ultimately shaping employee perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors that lead to desired and undesired outcomes. Companies with strong organizational cultures tend to balance between the extremes and take the most from various managerial approaches to create win-win situations for themselves and their employees.

Our key types of organizational culture include 7 dimensions:

- Organizational effectiveness: means-oriented, focused on how to achieve the goals and open to novice ways and improvement vs goals-oriented, looking to get the job done quick often in a conventional way

- Customer orientation: internally driven, focused on best reproducible result vs externally driven, work is adapted to the needs of individual customers

- Level of control in the workplace: easy-going, giving employees more flexibility at work vs process-focused, with some rules and procedures in place

- Focus: local, most decisions coming from local authority vs professional, more open to input from employees in the decision-making process

- Approachability at work: open to people from various backgrounds and their initiative while encouraging diversity in the organization vs closed, stick to conservative criteria and established ideas

- Management philosophy: employee-oriented company, personal life over work vs work-oriented, work over personal life

- Collectivism, teamwork over individuals vs individualism, individual contribution over the group

Gyfted’s company culture assessment assesses the following values and traits:

- Organizational effectiveness describes a focus on means-oriented ("how") or goals-oriented ("what") methods of operating.

- Customer orientation describes the drive towards internal vs external customer orientation.

- Control level describes the level of control ie. easy-going vs process-focused organization.

- Focus describes a leader- vs team-oriented decision-making and communication style at your company.

- Approachability describes a relatively more open or closed culture style.

- Management philosophy describes the drive towards a people-oriented or targets-oriented culture.

- Collectivism describes the drive towards team-oriented or competition-oriented work approaches.

Glassdoor’s Mission & Culture Survey 2019 found that over 77% of adults across four countries (the United States, UK, France, and Germany) would consider a company’s culture before applying for a job there. Moreover, over half of respondents said that company culture is more important than salary when it comes to job satisfaction.

Knowing your company culture preferences is great for understanding your cultural fit and for your long-term career development. Employees are more likely to enjoy work when their needs and values are consistent with their employers and tend to develop better relationships with coworkers while being more proactive and productive. Bad cultural fits tend to disengage people from work.

Hofstede's Insights or 6 Cultural Dimensions Theory, developed by Geert Hofstede, is a framework aimed at understanding the differences in culture across countries. What’s important is that it was developed primarily based on differences in values and beliefs regarding work goals. Hofstede's 6 cultural dimensions include power distance (strength of social hierarchy), uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity (task-orientation versus person-orientation), and short vs. long-term orientation.

Gyfted’s psychometric company culture assessment is inspired by Hofstede's culture dimensions and measures what one values most in company culture.

Culture fit involves determining the likelihood that a candidate will be able to fit in with the core values and collective behaviors that exist in your team or organization. Companies usually look for candidates whose beliefs and behavior systems are compatible with the company's specific culture. Cultural fit and functional fit are two main criteria that recruiters, hiring managers, leaders and talent acquisition professionals tend to consider when evaluating candidates for employment during the recruitment process.