Lessons from Person-Environment Fit Research

Person-Environment Fit?
Person–Environment Fit (PE fit) is defined as the
degree to which individual and environmental
characteristics match.

Person characteristics may include an individual’s

biological or psychological needs, values, goals,
abilities, or personality.

Environmental characteristics could include intrinsic

and extrinsic rewards, demands of a job or role,
cultural values, or characteristics of other
individuals and collectives in the person's social
environment.
 Due to its important implications in the
workplace, person–environment fit has
maintained a prominent position in Industrial
and Organizational psychology and related
fields.
4 Types of
Fit
Person-Job Fit (PJ Fit)
fit between an individual’s cultural values and those that are required to
do the actual job

Person-Organization Fit (PO Fit)

fit between an individual’s cultural values and those of the entire
organization

Person-Group Fit (PG Fit)

fit between an individual’s cultural values and those of their specific work
group

Person-Supervisor Fit (PS Fit)

fit between an individual’s cultural values and those of their manager
* Statistics used were gathered from Dr. Amy Kristof-Brown’s meta-analysis,
Consequences of Individuals’ Fit at Work. The full study can be found here:
http://nreilly.asp.radford.edu/ kristof-brown%20et%20al.pdf
Lesson 1: Person-Job Fit
Person–Job Fit is strongly correlated with: job
satisfaction (.56), with organizational
commitment (.47), and with intent to quit (-.46)

Lesson: If you want someone to be satisfied

with their job, committed to the organization
and not leave, then they need to be a good
cultural fit with the job requirements
Lesson 2: Person-
Organization Fit
Person-Organization Fit is strongly correlated
with job satisfaction (.44) and organizational
commitment (.51), and more moderately with
intent to quit (−.35)

Lesson: It’s important for an employee to be a

good cultural fit with the company in order to
be satisfied with the job and committed to the
organization
Lesson3-Person group fit
 Person-Group Fit is correlated with: job
satisfaction (.31), organizational commitment
(.
19) and intent to quit (-.22)

Lesson: When a person (co-worker or job

candidate) is aligned with their team in terms of the
way that they're hardwired to communicate, make
decisions and share common preferences for
rewards their chances of thriving increases
exponentially
 Lesson4
Person-Supervisor Fit
Person-Supervisor Fit had a stronger
relationship with job satisfaction (.44) than
organizational commitment (.09)

Lesson: To keep someone happy at their job,

they need to be a good cultural fit with their
boss
 What can we learn from these
lessons?
• Culture fit happens at the level of individual to
manager, team, company and job.
• People with higher "fit scores" onboard faster,
perform at higher levels, are more engaged and
stay with the company longer.
• From a hiring standpoint, "fit" plays a crucial role
in predicting employee success.