{"id":516,"date":"2016-03-09T08:02:23","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T08:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/workplaceculturematters.com.au\/?p=516"},"modified":"2016-03-16T22:17:57","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T22:17:57","slug":"assessing-the-cultural-fit-smart-practice-or-unlawful-discrimination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/?p=516","title":{"rendered":"Assessing the ‘Cultural Fit’ – smart practice, or unlawful discrimination?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For many years within the human resources world \u00a0‘cultural fit’ has been a popular concept. \u00a0A way to describe the mysterious and \u00a0elusive je ne sais quoi<\/em>\u00a0that separates the employees who have a bright future in a company from the employees who don’t. \u00a0 Often the term ‘poor cultural fit’ will be used to justify an employee being dismissed, not hired in the first place, or told that they are missing out on a promotion or advancement, often when there is no direct performance related justification for this decision. \u00a0In the modern era of anti-discrimination, it seems to have become the new politically correct way of telling employees\u00a0“You’re doing an OK job, we just\u00a0don’t like you very much”.<\/p>\n

But is this practice lawful? I’m not convinced.<\/p>\n

To answer this question we need to find out what exactly is the concept of organizational ‘culture’. \u00a0And what are the component parts that make someone a ‘cultural fit’? \u00a0This Harvard Business Review article<\/a>\u00a0attempts to define this idea in a manner which is consistent with modern standards. \u00a0While it admits that there are times where this phrase has been used in a discriminatory manner, \u00a0it is explained as due to\u00a0misuse or misunderstanding of the concept. \u00a0Erika Anderson writing for Forbes<\/a> describes the problem as\u00a0employers who incorrectly understand\u00a0‘cultural fit’ to mean\u00a0“being more like me”. \u00a0Applying the concept in this way leads to a bland, homogenous workplace culture, a lack of diversity amongst the team, and inevitably discrimination. \u00a0Both authors specifically state that smart\u00a0recruitment with regard to a ‘cultural fit’, applied properly, doesn’t always result in the hiring of similar\u00a0people. \u00a0But neither seem prepared to actually say what they think ‘cultural fit’ actually is. \u00a0The Forbes article\u00a0offers this definition of ‘Corporate Culture’:<\/p>\n

Patterns of accepted behaviour, and the beliefs and values that promote and reinforce them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"culture-fit\"<\/a>There’s nothing inherently\u00a0offensive in that concept. But it still doesn’t tell us why it is specifically ‘cultural’ indicia\u00a0as opposed to being related to ordinary workplace performance inicia. \u00a0Surely ‘patterns of behaviour, beliefs and values’ will typically manifest themselves as\u00a0other measurable performance related criteria. Do we need to rely on ‘cultural fit’. \u00a0On the other hand, if we are genuinely talking about features of an employee that cannot be \u00a0measured by their performance in any way then there are some very dangerous aspects to making a ‘cultural’ assessment. \u00a0If it used purely motivationally, to make the team feel good about belonging, then that is fine, \u00a0but\u00a0using ‘cultural fit’ to justify \u00a0concrete adverse decisions against individuals will inevitably lead to an unlawful form of discrimination.<\/p>\n

Australia’s most robust \u00a0protections against discrimination at work are found within the General Protections provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009<\/em> (Cth). \u00a0Once unlawful adverse action is alleged, the onus falls on the employer to prove that the action was not taken for an unlawful reason. \u00a0The unlawful reason for adverse action does not have to\u00a0be the only reason, nor even the primary reason for the action. \u00a0It just needs to be one of the reasons<\/em>\u00a0that the action was taken. \u00a0Section 351 describes the unlawful reasons as including the employee’s:<\/p>\n

race, colour, sex, sexual preference, age, physical or mental disability, marital status, family or carer’s responsibilities, pregnancy, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Without wanting to state the obvious, these aspects of a person seem on the face of it basically ‘cultural’ in nature. \u00a0But that raises yet another question. \u00a0What is ‘culture’? \u00a0What do we actually mean when we describe\u00a0‘culture’. \u00a0It is itself an all encompassing and elusive term. \u00a0 The Cambridge Online Dictionary<\/a> defines ‘culture’ as being:<\/p>\n

the way of \u200blife, \u200bespecially the \u200bgeneral \u200bcustoms and \u200bbeliefs, of a \u200bparticular \u200bgroup of \u200bpeople at a \u200bparticular \u200btime<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It seems hard to reconcile these without admitting\u00a0that what defines a person’s ability to be a ‘cultural fit’ may often include many of the features prohibited by s 351. \u00a0 So in order for an employer to take a lawful decision which is adverse to an employee on the basis of ‘cultural fit’, they would need to be able to prove that they made a decision based on the employee’s appropriateness to the company ‘way of life, general customs and beliefs’ while at the same time specifically excluding<\/em> any consideration of\u00a0\u00a0the employee’s ‘race, colour, sex, sexual preference, age, physical or mental disability, marital status, family or carer’s responsibilities, pregnancy, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin’. \u00a0\"word<\/a>For a decision maker to even believe\u00a0that this is possible\u00a0would involve monumental effort in denial. To prove it in court would be almost impossible. \u00a0In particular, the characteristics of ‘religion’, \u00a0‘political opinion’ and ‘social origin’ are likely to be given a wide operation in most courts<\/a>, and are almost impossible to isolate from other aspects of an employee’s personality. \u00a0Often they are inherent aspects of a person’s self identity. \u00a0It is hard enough to isolate\u00a0these when regarding\u00a0our own personalities, let alone when assessing the ‘cultural fit’ of someone we\u00a0hardly know.<\/p>\n

I believe we should take the phrase ‘cultural fit’ out of our business vocabulary. \u00a0 Employment decisions should be based on\u00a0behaviours we observe, not attitudes that we presume. Focus on what the employees have done in the past, and on what they can or will do in the future? \u00a0 \u00a0Cultivate positive business behaviours, and\u00a0let the ‘culture’ look after itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many years within the human resources world \u00a0‘cultural fit’ has been a popular concept. \u00a0A way to describe the mysterious and \u00a0elusive je ne sais quoi\u00a0that separates the employees who have a bright future in a company from the employees who don’t. \u00a0 Often the term ‘poor cultural fit’ will be used to justify […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[236],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":553,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}