When you recruit new employees, you want to ensure that they are competent of doing the duties for which they were employed. However, it isn't the be-all and end-all of a successful employee; you also want to verify they are a good match for the firm.
Person-organization fit, or P-O fit, is simply compatibility between an individual and an organisation - it is about the congruence of a candidate's personal views and values with your organization's mission, goals, and ethics, which should be represented in your company's culture.
Person-job fit, on the other hand, refers to a candidate's ability to meet the job description's requirements. And either someone possesses the qualifications, specialised hard talents, soft skills, cognitive capacity, and required experience to do the function for which they are being evaluated, or they don't. Person-job fit may be readily quantified and tested - for example, early in the recruiting process, first phone screenings and pre-selection tests can be used to evaluate a candidate's prospective person-job fit.
Person-organization fit, on the other hand, is more difficult to assess. It cannot be easily validated by formal testing, and depending on gut instinct and prejudice is out of the question.
What are the advantages of recruiting personnel who have a strong P-O fit?
While there are likely to be many strong person-job match candidates for your post, especially if you're hiring for lower-level positions, being able to do a job is no assurance of a person's chance of remaining in the role and being happy and productive while there. As a result, having a strong P-O fit is likely to result in higher retention results.
And, while employee retention is an important benefit of selecting people with high P-O fit, it isn't the only one:
Retention - Just because an employee enjoys their job does not imply they will stay with your company if they do not feel they fit in. When an employee feels a sense of belonging to an organisation, it may lead to a strong sense of engagement, a strong link with their coworkers, identification with the organization's goal and values, and eventually an increase in their desire to stay with your firm.
Productivity - An employee with a good P-O fit will likely have high job satisfaction because they are committed to the company; they will feel like they belong, and they will strive to achieve the best results they can through their work, not because they should, but because they want to, which means their productivity will increase and their output will higher
Engagement – Employees who fit positively with an organization tend to be happier, resulting in them being more actively engaged, contributing more, collaborating with colleagues better and demonstrating more creativity in their work.
Referrals – Someone who likes where they work and feels a connection to your organization is more likely to sing your praises and refer friends and family to come and work for you too. And the benefits of referrals for recruitment are numerous – shorter onboarding time, more productive faster, engaged – essentially, when a P-O fit recommends someone to come work for you, the referral is already an organic P-O fit.
What happens if there isn't a P-O match?
Employing is a two-way street; hiring the incorrect person may have serious consequences not just for the firm, but also for the applicants.
Both parties will suffer if there is a lack of P-O fit.
Lack of motivation - A poor P-O fit can cause one employee to underperform, prompting other employees to pick up the slack, producing discontent within the team and resulting in collective low morale. Not to mention the employee's decreased production, unsatisfying or worse quality work, and eventually costing the firm in terms of lost income.
Increased stress and weariness - If someone doesn't feel like they fit in with your company, it will cause them stress trying to keep optimistic and on top of work that doesn't interest them, for an organisation they don't feel like they fit in with. This can be psychologically and physically exhausting.
Employee turnover - As previously said, it costs the firm every time someone departs, not only because it increases the price of finding and training a new recruit, but also because a job remains empty for an extended period of time.
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