Guess who doesn't fit in at work

ACROSS cultures and industries, managers strongly prize "cultural fit" - the idea that the best employees are like-minded. One recent survey found that more than 80 per cent of employers worldwide named cultural fit as a top hiring priority.

When done carefully, selecting new workers this way can make organisations more productive and profitable. But cultural fit has morphed into a far more nebulous and potentially dangerous concept. It has shifted from systematic analysis of who will thrive in a given workplace to snap judgments by managers about who they'd rather hang out with. In the process, fit has become a catchall used to justify hiring people who are similar to decision makers and rejecting people who are not.

The concept of fit first gained traction in the 1980s. The original idea was that if companies hired individuals whose personalities and values - and not just their skills - meshed with an organisation's strategy, workers would feel more attached to their jobs, work harder and stay longer.