Managing a global workforce

It is increasingly important for managers operating in a global economy to develop intercultural competence and an awareness of workplace cultures in countries other than their own developing methods of measuring and developing global workplace awareness and intercultural competence, the characteristics of culturally competent individuals, and strategies for managing global work teams, intercultural workplace communications, technology and legal issues.

Organisations move beyond their borders and reach into other territories, not all employees are immediately "global people." In today's organisations, a global mind-set is crucial, no matter where an employee is located, in the past leaders, managers and employees needed to understand a culture only if they were going to another country to live today, employees work virtually across borders via technology, they work with a variety of ethnicities at home, and they interact with a globally dispersed customer base and a global mind-set and skills are necessary for all employees. 

An effective and systematic approach to building intercultural competence is one important element in growing the organisation and in achieving its key business objectives through full inclusion, to ensure team collaboration and organizational effectiveness globally, leaders and HR professionals must provide avenues for developing workplace cultural awareness, factors that make it important for leaders, managers and employees to enhance their awareness of global workplace cultures. 

The process of interpreting the world and the things and people in it begins with culture. "Culture" has been variously defined in three ways:

"The prism through which individuals view life and how they react to situations day to day."

"A more or less enduring pattern of basic assumptions and mental models that a given group has invented, discovered or developed in learning to cope with its internal and external influences."

"Integrated patterns of human behaviour that include the language, thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups."

Cultural dimensions around which people see the world differently due to history, religion, topography and climate and blend together to form values to solve life's problems, culture is not fixed and it changes over time as group members teach fellow group members to adapt as needed.

Cultural difference stems from any aspect of diversity, not just national origin. Geert Hofstede's research and the GLOBE study, for example, have shown that people from a particular country tend to share cultural norms that are distinct from other countries. Groups and individuals within a country have their own variations from the cultural norms. These other differences make intercultural competence relevant even for small organizations located entirely within one country. 

Helping people be effective leaders in a globalising economy is both complex and important, the majority of managers working across cultures have little understanding of how culture affects their work, varying cultures across the world work at and accomplish key business building blocks such as communication, trust, persuasion and decision-making. Understanding that culture A may value direct and clear communication, whereas culture B may find that same communication style insulting, assists managers—including HR managers—in avoiding potential culture clashes. 

Greater cultural similarity between people tends to create relatedness, commonality and ease of understanding, this typically facilitates easier communication, greater cultural differences between people tend to highlight variances such as language, terminology, respect for authority, group identity, directness of communication and reaction to ambiguity and these differences frequently cause communication problems, such as difficulty understanding someone or conveying a meaning to someone, or unanticipated negative reactions to a comment.

Organisations benefit greatly from the cultural differences between people, namely, the potential for greater innovation and creativity in the team's or organisation's outputs, this potential stems from the wider range of perspectives and approaches to an issue that can lead to more creative problem-solving and more effective solutions to business issues.

Some of the elements found to have the strongest impact on cross-cultural or multicultural business include:

• Communicating: Explicit versus implicit.

• Evaluating: Direct negative feedback versus indirect negative feedback.

• Leading: Egalitarian versus hierarchical.

• Deciding: Consensual versus top-down.

• Disagreeing: Confrontation versus avoidance. 

• Persuading: Holistic versus specific.

• Scheduling: Organised time versus flexible time.

• Trusting: Task versus relationship.

Cultures and countries can be placed on scales in each of the above areas according to how their actions are perceived by others, by considering these scales, managers of cross-border teams are equipped with the understanding to decipher whether behaviour in the workplace is cultural or personal, thus allowing them to manage their teams in a more appropriate, sympathetic and, ultimately, effective manner. 

Globalisation has resulted in the need for all organisations to develop intercultural competence and awareness of workplace cultures globally. In 2017 UN research, Engaging and Integrating a Global Workforce, business leaders identified the lack of interest to assimilate into organizational values as the area in need of greatest change for future HR strategies. Organisational leaders recognise the need for a cohesive approach that honours the strength of diversity, gives employees the tools to work together and forges a strong organisational culture and according to the Executive Summary of this research, the following global trends will affect the future of HR management.

Increasing global trade and the expansion of transnational companies have resulted in cross-cultural workforces, trade liberalisation and technological advancements encouraged companies to expand internationally and trade their products and services globally some of the world's largest companies have stretched across borders to the point where they have greater operations and more employees in other parts of the world than in their countries of origin and technology opened access to a global talent pool, and this international expansion by companies will continue, as will the internationalisation of the world's workforces.

Key Global Diversity Workforce Trends

Global interdependencies increase exposure to risks. Binding companies through infrastructure and trade links brings great opportunities, but it also increases operational risks and unexpected events affect organisations' operations in developing and developed countries.

The global workforce is ageing and becoming both gender and ethnically diverse. Older workers continue to grow in number globally, whereas the share of youthful workers is declining in developed countries, resulting in shortages in those countries and more workers are also migrating or are being hired across borders, organisations need to adapt to the needs of older workers, women and multi-ethnic workforces.

Skilled workers from emerging countries will improve productivity while seeking higher wages across borders. Workers are becoming better educated and more skilled globally, resulting in higher productivity, and individuals are migrating abroad in search of better opportunities and wages.

Remote and temporary workers increase flexibility to meet labour needs but increase demands on management. Remote and temporary workers address short-term labour demands and provide a hedge against risk without increasing ongoing costs. However, management needs to understand how to transfer knowledge from temporary to permanent employees and how to develop a corporate culture that keeps people engaged and maintains productivity.

Organisations struggle to balance societal culture and their corporate culture. Culture influences productivity. Two types of culture exist: a) societal culture develops very slowly and becomes a part of a person's self-identity, and b) corporate culture comprises the values, beliefs and practices a company chooses to adopt. Organisations need to understand how to manage cultural distance—the gaps between cultures—and the points of friction and they also need to understand how and when to impose their corporate culture.

Cultural differences affect management styles and employee development. Many merger and acquisition (M&A) failures are attributed to culture employees from different backgrounds are motivated by different incentives and react differently to various management and communication styles.

Cultural diversity contributes to success. Local labour brings in-depth cultural understanding that organisations can use to their advantage and to avoid missteps. Multicultural workforces also contribute to creativity and innovation thanks to diverse perspectives and experiences.

Corporate social responsibility helps manage risk while boosting the bottom line. Socially responsible organisations adopt rights-aware, anti-corruption policies that improve recruitment and retention, reduce risk, and solidify the corporate brand. By ignoring corporate social responsibility (CSR) they risk incurring legal penalties, even if violations occur remotely in the global supply chain.

Organisations must adapt and develop so that key decision-makers, managers and leaders start making truly inclusive decisions in all aspects of people management. Intercultural competence is a chief enabler of this professional and organisational development need to exist to apply these concepts in practical ways at the individual, team and organisation levels.

Diversity and Inclusions Role

HR professionals in organisations ranging from FTSE 100 multinational corporations to 100-employee firms that import raw materials from abroad need information on how to practice human resources in a global economy. Even HR professionals working in organisations with a primarily local or domestic focus recognise that global issues have an increasing influence on markets, supply chains and business practices, and experience similar culture challenges when incorporating a diverse workforce. Diversity and Inclusion leaders can help organisations succeed and thrive by deriving maximum value from an ever-increasing range and depth of cultural difference. These differences influence the skills and competencies needed by leaders, managers and employees; the direction of HR policies and systems; and the development of employees and leaders. A cross-cultural perspective that emphasises differences and similarities of values and behaviours among countries often guides Diversity and Inclusion professionals. However, because multicultural teams operate in a global context, with people from different nationalities working together to accomplish a global mission, comparisons between two national cultures can sometimes be meaningless.

Developing Global Workplace Cultures

Intercultural sensitivity is about appreciating the deeper impact of cultural difference on how we interact with other people and the effect this has on one's own perceptions of other people. Intercultural competence is a measure of one's effectiveness in such interactions with other people. These concepts apply equally to individuals, teams and entire organisations, to gain the necessary awareness and competence, a combination of formal training and on-the-job exposure is needed.

A person's experience of cultural difference both informs and constrains how the individual interacts with other people, moving beyond these person-specific constraints requires the development of intercultural competence.

Organisational practices and leader behaviours can create significant impediments to the development of intercultural competence. Such barriers include:

• Insufficient efforts to recruit and retain diverse talent.

• The presence of biased employment practices.

• A "we" versus "they" mentality.

• Stereotypical assumptions about competency.

• A top-down leadership style.

Organisations should ensure that they have a foundation of fair and equitable employment practices, an open work environment to which employees can bring their "whole selves," and inclusive decision-making that seeks out and incorporates the ideas diverse talent suggest.

Stages of Cultural Sensitivity

To learn how culturally evolved an organization's employees are, the employer must first understand the different stages of cultural sensitivity, this model defines a developmental continuum of six worldviews stating how a person tends to think and feel or experience cultural difference each stage uniquely defines a manner of experiencing cultural difference based on one's current level of awareness.

The six stages of the cultural sensitivity:

Denial

This most ethnocentric stage is characterised by an assumption that there are no differences between people, it will appear as some combination of disinterest and avoidance of cultural difference.

Defence/reversal

At the defence stage, there is recognition of cultural difference and a strong attachment to one's own identity, accompanied by a tendency to consider cultural difference with suspicion and a threat to one's own self-esteem and identity. Reversal, the opposite of defence, is putting down one's own culture as inferior to some other culture, it may occur when a person experiences deep immersion in another culture.

Minimization

The least ethnocentric stage, minimization, is also a significant transition toward the ethno relative stages, at this stage, a person is aware of cultural difference, although his or her focus is on peoples' common humanity. Cultural difference is considered superficial, and its importance and effect on interpersonal relations are minimized. Minimization is characterised by a tolerance of others, sometimes stated informally as "live and let live." The focus on common humanity essentially denies the importance and relevance of cultural difference.

Acceptance

The first ethno relative stage, acceptance, is characterised by an understanding of one's own and others' cultural identities at a deep level, there is a valuing of all cultures as equally full and valid, combined with an appreciation of the real value available from different cultural perspectives.

Adaptation

Adaptation is characterised by the skill of temporarily shifting one's thoughts or behaviour to actively experience a situation from another cultural perspective. Cognitive shifting applies deep understanding of another culture and cultural perspective to see a situation from that perspective. Behavioural shifting applies the same deep understanding to intuitively adapt one's behaviour (e.g., body language, demeanour, use of language, and personal space and rituals) to be more effective in a different cultural situation.

Integration

The most developed ethno relative stage, integration is the point at which a person's worldview and sense of identity are marked by pluralism. A person will have deep understanding of more than one culture and have integrated these cultures into his or her identity. In a sense, the person will be at the margins of several cultures and continually (re)constructing his or her own cultural identity.

Each person is at a particular place developmentally on this continuum based on many factors, including the individual's self-awareness, receptivity to difference and life experiences. Regardless of where one is on the continuum, he or she may undertake stage-appropriate work to further develop intercultural competence.

Measuring Intercultural Competence

To measure intercultural sensitivity and competence, organizations can use the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), the tool is a 50-item statistically reliable, cross-culturally valid measure of an individual's or group's intercultural sensitivity and competence.

IDI reports present two measures of intercultural sensitivity and competence—self-perceived and actual stage of development. Typically, individuals overestimate their intercultural competence and perceive that they are further developed than is the case.

Cultural Competency Training

Leaders and employees, from expatriates to "domestic internationals," need to be informed about the impact of cultural differences in the workplace and marketplace. However, cultural competency requires much more than just practicing how to exchange business cards with both hands, knowing what kinds of gifts to give and which nonverbal gestures to avoid. Learning a different language, spending time in a cultural setting different from one's own, hosting a foreign expat, attending a holiday celebration or visiting an ethnic restaurant where cultural values are at play, and sincerely asking questions about habits, attitudes and beliefs, can all contribute to increasing one's cultural intelligence.

Global HR departments should offer training programs that include:

• Both theoretical and practical elements.

• Role-play.

• Training simulations with 360-degree feedback from team members, peers, trainers and experienced global managers.

• Global leadership career development, consisting of mentoring programs, virtual multicultural teams, opportunities to communicate with people from other countries and visits to global worksites.

• A cross-cultural aspect to educate employees and managers about the cultural differences among team members that influence their behavior.

• Education for team leaders and team members about work values that are shared by all employees working in a global work context, regardless of their home country's cultural values.

Training for at-home employees

Reduced travel budgets and the proliferation of virtual communication methods, such as videoconferencing, web-based telephony and e-mail, have meant that more employees are interacting with co-workers and customers from other countries and cultures. Today, employees are regularly collaborating across borders through communications technologies, often without any prior exposure or visual clues to help them understand cultural differences.

The recommended approach is to provide a general overview of cultural awareness to the entire workforce population, and then to follow up with training to meet the specific needs of each employee group, each group's requirements will then determine the content, duration and delivery method.

Although rapid changes in technology are affecting global communication, employees must be aware of linguistic, cultural, religious and social differences to build strong communication channels with colleagues and business contacts.

Formal training is particularly useful as an overview of cultural awareness, but informal, frequent education can be more useful. Individual and organisational opportunities can include the following activities:

• Travel. Employees can work and travel abroad in cultures that are important to the organization in locations of operation, labour and customer markets.

• Reading globally. Employees can keep up with world news by reading publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune and The Economist or online daily newspapers from other countries.

• International projects. An excellent way for an employee to gain global cultural awareness and competence is to seek involvement in global initiatives. This requires the employee to be flexible about working hours, given that global roles do not fit neatly into a regular U.S. workday.

• Self-study of a language. Learning another language allows an employee to indicate interest in and prepare for a role in a specific country. 

• Long-term expatriate assignments. Organisations can offer assignments of at least one year, especially in emerging markets. Preparedness for global assignments includes expectations-setting, pre-deployment assessment and selection, thorough and holistic pre-departure planning, cultural orientation, on-assignment training, support, coaching and mentoring, regular reviews, and repatriation preparedness.

• Cultivating multicultural colleagues. Employees can network with others who have international backgrounds and responsibilities.

• Mentorship. Employees can be mentored by someone outside their own geography, or managers can assume reporting responsibility for a team outside their own geography.

• "Volunteerism" experiences. Volunteer programs and diversity initiatives are generally treated as distinct programs. However, employers are increasingly discovering the natural link between the two and leveraging it to support both initiatives.

Training for global managers

Adapting to a global work culture and managing a global workforce may require different characteristics than the ones needed for an expatriate who is going to be located in one particular culture. Experts name attributes that are characteristic of culturally competent people, including:

• Openness to cultural diversity.

• Flexibility and adaptability.

• Emotional resilience.

• Curiosity.

• Tolerance and respect for differences.

• Patience.

• A non-judgmental attitude.

• Global identity.

• Cultural intelligence.

• Global leadership behaviours.

• Multicultural experiences, such as being multilingual and having lived in more than one country.

Qualities most needed for leaders to work effectively in a global business environment are:

• Multicultural sensitivity and awareness 
• The ability to communicate effectively 
• Strategic thinking 
• The ability to influence others 
• Respect for differences 

Additionally, the most popular ways organisations develop global competence are through passive methods, such as offering international travel opportunities and encouraging networking outside of the organisation.

The training for managers of foreign professionals should include enhancing relationship-building behaviours:

• Learning cultural differences. For example, according to cultural experts, people from outside the United States differ in their perceptions of time, in general, adhere to schedules, whereas those from many other cultures do not.

• Playing the name game. Managers should learn to correctly pronounce their employees' names and consider whether their name is difficult for others to pronounce.

• Showing warmth. Assigning an immigrant employee a cultural mentor will help him or her cultivate friendships and provide the employee a resource for questions on U.K. workplace cultural norms.

• Sharing food. Eating together deepens any relationship, especially with those from socially focused cultures.

• Putting oneself in the other person's shoes. Few U.K. citizens move to other countries with the intention of staying permanently, so they lack the experience of the grief that accompanies such uprooting. Organisations can conduct role-playing exercises that illustrate how work is conducted differently in regions outside the United Kingdom.

Building Workforce Global Communications Skills

Interacting with people from other cultures, communications is the biggest challenge, for all team members to work through these differences, they need to understand general global communications guidelines and be aware that people communicate differently around the world, they also need to deal appropriately with language issues, know how to work on virtual global teams and use communications technology effectively, but not exclusively, when working on global teams.

Despite evidence that cultural awareness and preparation can improve the success of cross-border ventures, many international organizations still fall short in developing their employees' global competencies. Nearly half (47 percent) of 572 executives in more than 40 countries said their companies do not offer enough training to hone their employees' language and communication skills to "address the root causes of misunderstandings, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2012 Competing Across Borders: How Cultural and Communications Barriers Affect Business survey.

Respondents cited differences in cultural traditions (51 percent) and different workplace norms (49 percent) as the greatest threats to the smooth functioning of cross-border relationships. An overwhelming majority believed that an improvement in cross-border communications with customers and colleagues would have a beneficial impact on financial indicators, such as profit (88 percent), revenue (89 percent) and market share (86 percent).

General communications guidelines

Following some common-sense guidelines can increase the effectiveness of communications among members of multicultural work teams:

• Be concise. Office communication may be translated into several different languages. Keep the message to the point to preserve its meaning, no matter what language is used.

• Avoid jargon, slang and localised expressions. Outside the UK, many employees would be baffled by sports analogies, employees should use clear, simple language and expressions that "travel well."

• Listen better. Accents—and the ability to speak English for U.K.-based teams—have become major challenges for multicultural teams, both onsite and virtual. Language issues add time to team processes because patience is required to understand and communicate effectively. Organisations should provide written communication before and after meetings to enhance comprehension, and employees must listen carefully, be respectful and ask questions to ensure understanding. Some employers offer voluntary English-language training that focuses on reducing accents. Typically, such workshops are well received and appreciated, and they boast a high degree of success.

• Be respectful of cultural and religious differences. Corporate communications should be edited so that they do not reflect a particular religious bias. Humour should be used judiciously; what one culture finds amusing, another might find offensive. Also, employers must remain cognisant of holidays celebrated in other cultures when scheduling meetings.

Understanding communications styles

The spoken word is generally the most important part of communication. People in London tend to be very direct communicators, direct communicators prefer to say what is on their mind, and they deal with conflict by addressing it promptly.

In contrast, people from some parts of the United Kingdom, such as the South, and those from many countries—for example, Asian and Middle Eastern countries—tend to prefer indirect communication. Individuals with this preference may speak around an issue and carefully choose words to avoid offense, they rely on nonverbal cues to communicate their messages and they may deal with conflict indirectly, through a third party or by avoiding the issue altogether.

Informal or formal communication styles prove to be another difference that comes out in multicultural teams. Most people in the UK communicate informally and prefer to speak as equals and avoid titles. Formal communicators are perceived to be very polite as they observe the courtesies that informal communicators disregard. They wait their turn to speak. Thus, they are often perceived as not having much to say in the UK environment, which may not be true. Formal communicators are often from hierarchical cultures, such as Asian and Latin countries, and will defer to people with higher titles.

Understanding these styles and how they affect team dynamics and the perceptions of individual members represents the first step to creating effective teams. Team leaders need to be trained to recognise such dynamics and develop an environment that brings out the best performance of all individuals. 

Return on Investment

Measuring the return on cross-cultural training is difficult because there are many soft benefits that are hard to capture. Any diversity and inclusion initiative should define goals and then follow up on whether those goals were met through the training.

Calculate return on investment (ROI) for a number of reasons:

• Justify the training budget (maintain or increase training dollars).

• Quantify effectiveness of training.

• Provide evidence to management and other stakeholders.

• Build trust and respect for HR and the function.

• Earn the attention of senior management.

• Identify areas for improvement.

• Respond to management directive.

Legal Issues

Cultural differences, language barriers, religious practices and sexual orientation all factor into the modern workplace. Take this concept global, and even more complicated issues emerge, many of which have legal implications. Transplanting an organisation's diversity programs in another country requires researching the issues, which may be vastly different from the ones encountered in the home country. Multinationals pursuing a global approach to eliminating harassment from their worldwide workforces need to account for the international context by factoring in seven issues: alignment, protected status, affirmative mandates, policy drafting, launch logistics, communications and training, and investigations, beyond anti-harassment initiatives, organisations face cultural clashes brought on by varying laws in the countries where they operate. Diversity and Inclusion mangers must be able to make sense of these conflicting policies for its multinational employees while still following the legal requirements of their host countries.