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Studies have demonstrated that office culture and the relationships developed between staff play a major role in job satisfaction and employee stability. In an interview with Forbes, author of Hiring for Attitude, Mark Murphy, talked about his research that looked at 20,000 new hires and found that a majority of the 46% of failed hires were let go because of poor attitude and mismatched culture. Not lack of skill.

When you experience staff instability and high employee turnover, your bottom line is most certainly going to feel the impact. The investment that you dedicate to train and develop every new associate and staff member is significant. Studies from the Society for Human Resource Management estimates that cost to be in the range of six to nine months’ salary on average. For an associate earning $150,000 a year, that ranges from $75,000 to nearly $113,000 in recruiting and training expenses.

Considering these findings, it’s obvious that office culture and maintaining a healthy office environment should play a major role in your operations, and should be something discussed during the interview. Increasingly, our recruiters speak with candidates who want an office that motivates them in a position by supporting their passions, professional goals and personal satisfaction. A practice that can support these motivations has the best chance of achieving longevity in employee hires and long-term commitment.

As recruiters, we encourage candidates to deploy strategies to investigate culture-fit with a potential employer, and encourage practice owners to do the same. Before your next interview with a potential new associate, consider the following:

Be Prepared to Answer Tough Questions

Why is the position available? What happened to the previous employee? Where did he or she go? How long were they in the position before they left? What was their monthly production goal, and were they meeting it? What is the practice’s treatment philosophy? These types of pointed questions from a candidate could reveal a lot about the culture of your practice and whether or not this potential new employee could run into some of the same hurdles as your previous associate.

Know Your Practice’s Reputation

If candidates have the luxury of investigating a company within the same region you serve, they’ll have plenty of professional contacts in the region that can help shed light on your business. It’s a good idea to jump on LinkedIn or other social media sites and do a quick search of your company and its employees to see what the broader public may be saying about you online. You’ll want to be prepared to address any concerns that a candidate may want to discuss. Pay attention to your practice’s Google results. In our digital world, there is plenty of data, reviews and general feedback on just about any topic you type in the search bar. Your business is no different. It’s likely that a quick Google search will dredge up all kinds of information, ratings and reviews. Whether it’s praise or criticisms that you find, you’ll want to be prepared to address each.

Speak with a Recruiter

Finally, we suggest hiring managers speak with a recruiter. Recruiters not only speak with practice owners every day, but also speak with job seekers who are leaving practices in search of their next professional achievement. Recruiters can steer employees in the direction of companies that are not only best for their professional goals, but also represent a culture-fit, leading to a long and happy working relationship for years to come.