Culture in the Workplace

What's your workplace culture? How would you define cultural fit with your organization? Do you even know?

Most of us don't. "Cultural fit" is one of those things that we're assured is very important in finding the right job, but when you get right down to the nitty-gritty, what does that even mean?

I've always found the concept of a workplace culture to be a little bit nebulous, and I come from a background in Anthropology, where "culture" applies to just about everything. The problem isn't the validity of the concept of workplace culture, but rather on the definition and identification of it.

Within the context of hiring/job hunting, we all try to assess cultural fit on both sides. But how do you go about doing that? It's especially difficult as the person doing the hiring, because while you might have a solid idea of what your workplace culture is, how do you assess fit reliably based on an interview and a resume? Since chances are your interviewee is trying his or her very best to convince you that he or she would be a perfect fit, regardless of the truth, because sometimes, you just gotta find a job even if the fit isn't ideal. As the jobseeker, though, it is difficult to read between the lines and figure out what the culture is really like- and frankly, if you've been unemployed for six months, you're not gonna care all that much what the culture is like. You just want a job.

Every organization out there seems to have values and a mission statement these days, so that's one way for the jobseeker to try and see something about the culture. The problem is, it's always difficult to tell from the outside how closely the organization adheres to their values and what that means. If you have a connection with someone within the organization, ask him or her about the culture and see where that gets you.

Personally, I feel as if we often overstate the importance of culture. Don't get me wrong, workplace culture and fit is very important for the overall level of engagement, I just feel as if cultural fit is one of the favourite buzzwords of the moment. At least in my limited experience, you will never find a perfect fit and there will always be things you don't like about your current workplace environment. I would rather have a job that is interesting and engaging and doing things I want to do in a culture that isn't a perfect fit for me than one in the perfect company that is boring and unsatisfying. Of course, it all depends what it is about the culture that isn't a good fit for you, but we are speaking in generalizations here. Or maybe I just say that because I haven't worked for an organization that had a truly terrible cultural fit for me.

Thoughts?