How to engage a multicultural workforce...?

[Ashim]

Managing an organisation that employs a workforce from diverse nationalities can often be daunting. Major cultural differences and differences in perception can quickly ignite and create clashes that upsets a harmonious work environment. There is low tolerance for minority groups and managers, however fair they may be in their dealings are considered biased.

Any engaging ideas to bring people back into one single cohesive unit?

[Rob Fox]

Hi Ashim,

The key here is to offer people choice in the interventions they elect to make that are designed to inspire employee engagement. Further, if you engage people in designing the intervetions as a first step in the engagement process then you will not only work to ensure cultural appropriateness but gain support for the interventions from the start.

Offering the opportunity to both design and select interventions raises ownership and reduces resistence; consequently inspiring higher engagement more appropraitely and and more rapidly.

See www.engagingideas.co.uk for more.

Best,

Rob

[Ashim]

Hi Rob,

Thank you for your input. You have a major point if you are trying to say that cultural amalgamation should be a function of the organisation which is directed by the employees themselves. I think this is possible if the organisation culture allows for such initiatives. I wonder if organisations plan for such eventualities where employees without much culture sensivities could possibly clash due to various job stresses.

Regards

Ashim

[Derek Irvine]

Very important question, Ashim. One thing that is universally needed by all employees, but can be a major are for misunderstanding due to cultural differences, is recognition and appreciation of effort given.

This article on the topic just came out: Charting a Course: Navigate Your Way to Global Employee Engagement.

As my CEO says in it:

“Traveling down the road to global program development can be a bumpy, complicated and huge undertaking. That's why many global program experts believe that, first and foremost, the beginning step requires an overall vision: to create a global recognition culture, not just another recognition program or platform.

“Creating such a culture begins with what one recognition expert calls a key best practice: ‘Remembering that people are people, no matter where they are all over the world,’ said Eric Mosley, CEO of Globoforce, a provider of global strategic recognition solutions. ‘Successful global programs start from the premise that a company wants to treat its employees equally and to have one single goal for penetration of recognition around the world,’ he explained. ‘That culture of recognition builds on the traction of an equal number of thank you's and rewards happening in each country—multiplying them—and links them to things that are meaningful to constituents around the world.’

“But that's just the starting point. From here, you need to cater your program to each individual cultural nuance. ‘If you start at this point, the global program issues to be resolved predominantly revolve around understanding the culture of all these different employees, where they live, what's important to them, what would motivate them, and how you interact with them,’ Mosley explained.”

Many other industry experts are cited in the article as well and may give you the insight you need for your situation.

[Hugh Flouch]

Ashim, there's a report here about cross-cultural conversations as a key tool for engagement. The study was carried out in 45 leading global companies. The report has also been picked up here by Diversity Executive. It builds on another study which showed how 40% of employees feel they have a conversation gap with their manager which makes them less engaged and three times more likely to leave the company.

Hope this helps.