Challenges of Managing a Diverse Workforce

Question:

Discuss About The Training Program Cross Cultural Management?

Most organizations are adopting the culture of recruiting employees from all over the world so that they develop workforce diversity. When people of different backgrounds are seen to work together, they are seen to come up with new ideas as well as with new pattern that help in bringing innovation and also raise the productivity of employees. However, management of such diverse workforce are not without the presence of challenges and therefore the management team have to take strategies which will inevitably help in maintaining unity among the different employees and they produce a collaborative work output (Moran et al. 2014). It is seen in Opal-Mart that employees of different backgrounds and culture are facing severe issues in the workplace as they are developing misunderstandings among them mainly from different intercultural communication issues. With the passing of days, the conflicts are becoming more frequent which is not only affecting the productivity of the organization but is also making the regular running of stores very difficult. Hence, it is extremely important for the organization to conduct proper training classes for the employees coming from diverse backgrounds and so that an environment of collaborative work output can be achieved which not only helps in achieving the organization’s vision but will also make the workplace healthier which will result in less mental as well as physical stress on the individuals (Thomas and Peterson 2017). The main audience of the training sessions will be the employees working in the stores who are coming from different backgrounds like Australian, Indian as well as Chinese and they have different outlooks towards personal and physical lives. The training will be planned in such way that the employees are benefitted by developing a new outlook for working in diverse workforce which will eventually help in diminishing the tensions that are present between them and develop unity among workforce where each of the employee will work in accordance with each other’s respect, value, morale and others (Eisenberg et al. 2013). This will inevitably overcome the communication barrier and thereby help in developing the productivity of the organization.

A proper cross cultural training is very important for organization which harbors individuals from different backgrounds. In the Opal Mart organization, one section of the workforce belongs to western background and the other two workforce- which are the Indians and the Chinese belongs to eastern culture. Again within the eastern culture, both the two groups have different culture, tradition as well as values which are neither similar nor are knowledge to the opposite groups. It is inevitable for such a wide variety of people to face regular classes of their beliefs, traditional, working patterns and others (Neuleip, 2017). Moreover language barrier is the most important factor here. The following two important points to be addressed by the training organization are

Importance of Cross Cultural Training Program

Australians, Chinese as well as Indians follow different patterns of verbal as well as non verbal communications. They have different working styles and their ideas about work ethics are also different. Often verbal and non vernal communication results in development of different misunderstandings which if not resolved may lead to frustrations (Deresky, 2017). This eventually impacts the employees feeling for each other as they tend to see each other in negative lights. These result in decrease of productivity and efficiency mainly as a reason of lack of knowledge or appreciation of cultural differences.

Differences in language may result in an unintentional error in the workplace which may result in loss of the organization. Often effective communication overcoming language barriers are very important so that a particular assignment may be carried out in a proper manner (Tjosvold 2017). For example, when the Australian manager gives the responsibility of completing a work to a Chinese worker y providing him a correct set of information verbally, he would expect the worker to complete the work responsibly. However it might happen due to language barrier, the worker had not been able to understand the task properly and did not follow the guidelines of English provided which resulted in negative outcomes (Samosvar 2015). Hence, the organization faces loss and tensions develop between the managers and workers. Similar scenarios may also take place in the workplace when proper delegation does not take place due to language barrier.

Cross cultural training helps implementing communication strategies through a combination of experienced trainer led discussion as well as group activities and also self assessments. Often individuals coming from different countries and establishing their employments within the host country may suffer from different issues. Their family and work life may suffer from the negative circumstances encountered by them at their workplace due to improper communication (Kinloch and Metge 2014). They may suffer from mental as well as emotional and psychology effects mainly resulting to culture shocks. These may result in overall dissatisfaction and unhappiness of the employees who feels that neither the organization, nor the staffs are paying respect to the morals, virtues and other demands of the individual. A proper communication training will help every individual belonging to different backgrounds to adapt strategies that will help them to understand others cultures, views , values and morals and at the same rime discuss, their own traditions and cultures (Katan 2014). These would ultimately help them to overcome cultural shocks and develop communication which will overcome all the barriers at workplace and develop a collaborative approach.

Key Objectives of Cross Cultural Training Program

Cross cultural training with the aim of developing communication will help the individuals of the Opal Mart to develop self confidence individually as well as teams through the empowerment along with the development of a sense of control over the different challenges that he used to face previously in the work place.. different people with their own personal vies and biasness of their own culture may face different challenges that include preconceptions, stereotypes as well as prejudices which provides obstruction of the undertaking of values of other cultures and others peoples (Mladenovic et al. 2017). His preconceived notions often reflect in their communication procedure which might harm the sentiments of different people. Cross cultural training will help in demystifying other’s cultures with the procedure of projecting themselves under objective light. With the learning of other’s culture, communication can be developed as barriers will be slowly chipped away hereby allowing more open relationships as well as dialogues (Mor, Morris and Joh 2013).

While conducting training procedures, our organization mainly provides importance to a particular philosophy which believes that the key to success of an organization mainly depends upon acceptance if the employees about the differences in a multicultural team which can be then used in a proper and collaborative way to enhance the pattern by which the team analyses situations and makes decisions (Wild, Wild and Han 2014). With a huge number of years in the training business in the communication domain of different organization, the organization has gone through various experiences and the stalwart trainers of the organization mainly focuses on four important points those training sessions which bring out positive impacts.

The first main ideal of our training program would be to introduce programs which will be relevant that is the learning programs will be designed to meet the specific performance of the workers. Those organization never encouraged following of a type program and applying it to different countries irrespective of the communication issues Matsumoto et al. 2013). Our organization develops tailor made designs of the programs so that it meets the main expectation of the training procedures.

The next ideal that is followed by the organization when they provide training classes is relating the programs to the real world experiences. By the statement, it is meant that the training is given to the employees by coaches and trainers who are themselves stalwarts in the business fields and have proper knowledge and understanding of the differences between different business practices across cultures. This organization never allows new inexperienced trainers to provide classes as that might not have equal competency in comparison to that of the experiences business people.

Ideals of the Training Program

The next ideal of the training program is being collaborative. The learning programs provides access to subject matter experts around the world who have top level cross cultural consultants all over the world which bring out positive outcomes.

The fourth idea followed by the trainers is being continuous. This means that the first learning session is just the starting point and when the topic and content of training is relating to work at hands as well as setting of specific performance goals, then only, the new knowledge is embedded in the daily work of employees as well as learning becomes continuous.

The different types of training that the programs will reflect will be

• Environmental briefing – this will mainly be discussing the geography as well as climate, schooling and housing of the different cultures of the three countries which will help the workers to develop ideas from the very base helping them to know about different factors that influence the different lifestyles of the workers which impact their preferences.
• Cultural orientation- this will mainly help in developing knowledge of the workers regarding their cultural institutions as well as value systems of the host country. Both the host country workers as well as the workers of the other countries should develop knowledge about the cultural orientations of each other as well as the values and morals shared by each other (Stahl and Tung 2015). This would help them to know each other traditions which would prevent them from conducting any unintentional activities that will harm their sentiments.
• Cultural assimilators- this will mainly help the workers to develop ideas about different cultural encounters which they might have and how they can handle the issues properly with the correct tone of communication (Erez et al. 2013). These would be mostly described by the trainers with the help of past experiences so that different workers may relate them with their own lives and understand the situations and thereby develop effective communication strategies effectively.
• Language training is very important criteria where especially the workers of the other countries should develop knowledge about the host country and will also provide them with innovative ideas which will make them learn the new language at a faster rate. The trainers will mainly help in developing strategies which will include brush up skills of the Chinese and Indians about the English used by the Australians and help them to learn tricks about how they can communicate effectively without facing difficulty.
• Sensitivity learning- this learning is also one of the most aspect that trainers of the organization thinks important to cover. Often knowing about the cultural sensitivity of other cultures would help the workers to be careful in their approach. This will help the workers to develop attitudinal flexibility which will ultimately bring out positive impacts on their communication styles. These would help them to be extra careful and hence can avoid any misunderstanding (Jackson et al. 2014).

A proper detailed time frame is provided which will help the organization to keep a track of the training procedures of the workers and thereby can understand the training efficiency after the training gets over.

Another important aspect of the training program of the training organization is that they have monitoring and evaluating bodies who undertake proper evaluation of the workers in developing their communication skills. Those who are found satisfactory are provided with a token of appreciation and those who are not getting the right communication style and skills are given for one month training sessions without taking extra finance form the organization. Therefore, Opal mart would be happy as the organization is taking all the responsibilities of communication development of the workers and assuring the best outcome.

Conclusion:

Cross cultural tensions among the workers often led to miscommunications, misunderstandings, tensions in workplace, loss of productivity and loss of reputation of the organization. A similar scenario was observed in opal Mart. Hence, a training organization, after realizing the issue of communication faced by the workers, had put forward a training plan which comprises of important contents like Language training, Environmental briefing, Cultural orientation, Cultural assimilators and Sensitivity training. Proper innovations in each of the topics will be provides so that they can develop a communication skill which would enhance collaborative work output. A proper gnat chart is provided with the time frames as well as evaluation programs which dictates the completion of the training programs. All these would help the workers in overcoming the cultural barriers n develop communication which will bring out the best productivity in te organization.

References:

Deresky, H., 2017. International management: Managing across borders and cultures. Pearson Education India.

Eisenberg, J., Lee, H.J., Brück, F., Brenner, B., Claes, M.T., Mironski, J. and Bell, R., 2013. Can business schools make students culturally competent? Effects of cross-cultural management courses on cultural intelligence. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 12(4), pp.603-621.

Erez, M., Lisak, A., Harush, R., Glikson, E., Nouri, R., & Shokef, E. (2013). Going global: Developing management students’ cultural intelligence and global identity in culturally diverse virtual teams. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 12(3), 330-355.

Jackson, J., 2014. Introducing language and intercultural communication. Routledge.

Katan, D., 2014. Translating cultures: An introduction for translators, interpreters and mediators. Routledge.

Kinloch, P. and Metge, J., 2014. Talking past each other: problems of cross cultural communication. Victoria University Press.

Matsumoto, D. and Hwang, H.C., 2013. Assessing cross-cultural competence: A review of available tests. Journal of cross-cultural psychology, 44(6), pp.849-873.

Mladenovi?, S.S., Mladenovi?, I., Milovan?evi?, M. and Deni?, N., 2017. Cross-cultural dimensions influence on business internationalization by soft computing technique. Computers in Human Behavior, 75, pp.865-869.

Mor, S., Morris, M.W. and Joh, J., 2013. Identifying and training adaptive cross-cultural management skills: The crucial role of cultural metacognition. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 12(3), pp.453-475.

Moran, R.T., Abramson, N.R. and Moran, S.V., 2014. Managing cultural differences. Routledge.

Neuliep, J.W., 2017. Intercultural communication: accounting approach. Sage Publications.

Samovar, L.A., Porter, R.E., McDaniel, E.R. and Roy, C.S., 2015. Communication between cultures. Nelson Education.

Stahl, G.K. and Tung, R.L., 2015. Towards a more balanced treatment of culture in international business studies: The need for positive cross-cultural scholarship. Journal of International Business Studies, 46(4), pp.391-414.

Thomas, D.C. and Peterson, M.F., 2017. Cross-cultural management: Essential concepts. Sage Publications.

Tjosvold, D., 2017. Cross-cultural management: foundations and future. Routledge.

Wild, J.J., Wild, K.L. and Han, J.C., 2014. International business. Pearson Education Limited.