Knowing Your Corporate Culture

And Hiring Employees Who Fit Saves Companies Thousands of Dollars, Miles Advises

"Understand your management style and your corporate culture," David Miles, Chairman of The Miles LeHane Group, advised Virtual Board Room members at a recent meeting. "Hire individuals who fit within the description of your culture, and I guarantee you that your employee turnover rate will be reduced by 70%, even in this highly mobile job environment."

"For success in retaining good people, it is important for business owners to look at their companies from a 'people perspective', with clear understanding of their own personality, management style, and what they want to achieve," Miles emphasized. "It is the business owner and his or her personality and managerial style that creates the corporate culture."

"Corporate culture includes your company's reputation, environment as perceived from the outside and the 'feeling' of the environment inside," Miles said. "What you value in people and how their profiles fit into your culture determines your success in retaining good employees." Miles described a number of tools that can be used to assess management styles and to profile possible new employees including:

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: Reports on a person's core personality -- their preference to take in information by listening or by reading instructions; to focus on the present and on concrete information gained from our senses or on the future, viewing patterns and possibilities intuitively; tendency to base decisions on logic and objective analysis or on subjective evaluations; preferences for a planned or flexible approach to life.

Edwards Personal Preference Schedule & The 16 P. F. Profile: Summarizes by scale broad behavior patterns, such as level of independence, preference for structured situations, potential to learn from on-the-job experience, creativity, desire for a dominant leadership role; and others. They also measure anxiety levels, ability to adjust, tolerance for mundane work, effectiveness of behavior controls, how accident or error prone the person is, and more.

DISC^® Dimensions of Behavior: Provides a model of a person's behavior in terms of four tendencies: D-Dominance: how one shapes their environment to overcome opposition in accomplishing results; I-Influence: level one shapes environment by influence or persuasion; S-Steadiness: level of cooperating with others; C-Conscientiousness: tendency to work within existing circumstances to ensure quality and accuracy. 

Miles discussed a number of other tests which can be used to determine an individual's unique characteristics and how well the person could fit comfortably into an organization's corporate culture. He recommended strongly that by investing in such assessments, businesses could save thousands of dollars they would otherwise spend in the continuous process of hiring and training employees who may me qualified for the position but who do not fit into the corporate culture in the first place.

"Smaller businesses tend not to invest in professional H. R. services when hiring," Miles said, "but it is and economic imperative for them to do so. The negative impact of a wrong hire in a small company can destroy a business or its reputation!"

Contact David Miles at The Miles LeHane Group, Inc., offering human resources and career management services, at 703-777-3370.