In today's globalized world, managing cultural diversity in the workplace is becoming increasingly important for businesses and organizations.

This is true not only for large multinationals with global offices but also for domestic businesses and organizations with employees worldwide.

'Culturally aware' professionals have a distinct advantage over their peers.

International businesses increasingly cite Cultural Competence as a core requirement during the recruitment process.

Cross-cultural, intercultural and multicultural don’t mean the same thing.

Although these terms are often used interchangeably, they do, in fact, have very different meanings.

‘Intercultural Competence’ is a term often used within the diversity, inclusion and cultural training fields.

What does it actually mean? Is there is an agreed definition?

 Working across cultures is rapidly becoming the norm for most people across the world.

As a result, intercultural conflict is also becoming more common. 

A common misconception people have of cultural awareness is that it’s about “the other”; that its main focus is learning about other people and how they do and don’t do things.

Although this is certainly part of it, cultural awareness also relies heavily on self-awareness.

If you work in Learning and Development, then it’s likely you know about the 70-20-10 Model.

If not, then it can be simply summarised as the work of three academics in the 80s who used extensive research to establish optimal learning conditions.

As a cross cultural training consultancy, we have a great insight into the countries which rate highly as expat destinations.

It seems that India is certainly viewed highly as a popular ‘go to’ country at the moment....especially with Americans.

In 2001, the UN General Assembly declared May 21st to the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development due to UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in the same year.

This day is dedicated to enhance our understanding of values of cultural divergence and raise awareness for cultural differences for a better collaboration around the world.

We no longer sell DVDs.

Please refer to our online courses instead.

Conflicts are never beneficial for a working environment – cultural conflicts are one of many challenges that need to be avoided at all costs.

A recent study, however, revealed that avoiding cultural clashes in the workplace does not only result in a more peaceful environment, but can aid the creative process within companies as well.

This is a great story in the way in which even the smalled business outlet can boost their reputation and demand by taking the time to understand the cultural needs of their customers.

Let's look at how a sole milkman has become a success story for cross cultural customer service

Leading research and workplace innovation company, Career Innovation (Ci) has today published the results of its latest study, Cross-Cultural Development Conversations.

Carried out across 45 leading companies worldwide, the new study has found that although organisations are aware of the need to skill up their leaders to manage the cross-cultural workforce, few have acted to make this a reality.

At a time when the pace and scale of globalisation has never been higher, competition for the best talent remains intense. The effectiveness of development conversations in organisations is known to play a significant role in engaging and retaining key talent.

Factoring in the complexity of a diverse and dispersed workforce makes it even tougher to ensure that these conversations are at their most effective.

According to the 45 organisations interviewed (Sept-Nov 08), the business importance of working effectively across cultures is high and rising. Most are already operating complex organizations across multiple regions and almost all (91%) indicated they expect cultural diversity in their organisations to increase over the next 3-5 years, with nearly 50% expecting a “significant increase”.

The study revealed three top factors that impact cross-cultural development conversations:

1) The directness of communication style
2) Language differences – especially when people are not communicating in their first language
3) The need to establish high levels of trust across cultures, in order for development conversations to be effective

Differences between Asian and Western cultures were consistently reported as a particular challenge by respondents with 50% of organisations reporting this as an issue.

Companies identified many key employee development processes that are impacted by these cultural hurdles. For example, 60% of organisations said that coaching relationships can be much tougher to establish in some cultures than in others. Giving feedback can also present challenges, with one company finding that its Chinese employees quit after receiving challenging feedback.

“This issue has a big impact on global organisations”, says Ci’s founder Jonathan Winter. “Although they are increasingly aware of the need to encourage meaningful dialogue with employees about their careers and development, only a few have really taken on board the additional complexities overlaid by the cross-cultural dimension. Left unresolved the cross-cultural conversation gap hits the bottom line in a way companies can ill afford in today’s tough times.”

Organisations who are placing the strongest focus on building their employees’ cross-cultural competence report significant benefits including improved attraction and retention rates.

Following on from this study and Ci’s previous Conversation Gap research, Ci will be developing its existing career tools and approaches to encourage more leaders to develop cross-cultural thinking as part of their everyday style. Winter offers an example of how this will be incorporated, “Our Engaging Conversations multi-rater tool is already helping mangers around the world improve their staff dialogue skills and habits. We’re going to take that to the next stage and incorporate the cross-cultural dimension”.

At this moment in time, the increase in cross border human traffic has meant that companies are no longer dealing with a homogenous native community from which they recruit their staff.

Companies are now facing cross cultural challenges in how they recruit, manage and develop a multi-cultural staff. One area of note where HR and management are finding difficulties is in the interview room.