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Organizations Lag in Cross-Cultural Communication
Deanna Hartley, 04-13-2009
More than 90 percent of organizations said they expect their cultural diversity to increase during the next three to five years, but few are prepared to meet the communication needs of an increasingly diverse workforce, according to a Career Innovation survey.
The survey — “Cross-Cultural Development Conversations” — showed the business impact of cross-cultural communication in corporate settings.
Hugh Flouch, a practice leader at Career Innovation, a research and workplace innovation company, said 73 percent of respondents said focusing on cross-cultural competence had a measurable positive impact to organizations. And 71 percent reported an improvement in their ability to attract and retain high-quality workers from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
Moreover, 60 percent said cross-cultural competence was beneficial in giving their organizations access to new and emerging markets, 51 percent said it improved productivity, and 47 percent reported that it resulted in a more harmonious workplace.
Still, only 35 percent of companies claim to have made widespread adaptations to key training and development practices that accommodate different cultures.
“The focus of the work organizations do around cross-cultural capabilities is obvious, like when you have a leader from the U.S. being posted overseas in Taiwan. In those instances, the preparation seems very careful and very thorough,” Flouch said.
In such cases, employees are required to attend orientation classes and use other resources to help familiarize themselves with the culture and practices of their destinations.
But Flouch said the state of cross-cultural communication often remains stagnant within a country or after a manager has traveled abroad.
“It may have something to do with the fact that very few organizations are actually measuring managers’ cross-cultural competence, and very often what gets measured gets done,” he said. “There are organizations that measure and incentivize leaders and managers and their ability to operate cross-culturally, but there seem to be the exceptions.”
Organizations tend to lose out on the opportunity to capitalize on a variety of business impacts — such as improved recruitment and retention and having access to new ideas and business practices — when they don’t carefully navigate intercultural workplace issues.
Further, the research showed anecdotal evidence that failure to address issues around cross-cultural communication can yield significant disadvantages to an organization. For example, the appropriate way to give feedback to employees in various cultures is vastly different.
“We were told of one instance where feedback was given in a way which may be perceived as quite skilled in the U.S. But giving that feedback to Chinese employees, the organization found they were leaving apparently for no reason. It was tracked back to the feedback style,” Flouch said. “Chinese employees [tend] to view feedback as more appropriate to the team or group and are less likely to want feedback given in such direct style.”
Organizations can take proactive steps to help employees manage cross-cultural conversations, starting with raising awareness.
“Managers are often unaware of the negative impact they can have on their employees by not figuring in cross-cultural dimensions,” Flouch explained. “Once the awareness is there, individual managers or organizations can provide themselves with the necessary development. But unless the awareness is there, neither manager nor organization can focus on the development that’s required.”
Study Shows Merit-Pay Discrepancies Based on Race, Gender
A recent study indicated that women and minorities performing the same job for the same boss do not receive the same merit-pay increases as their white and male colleagues — keeping factors such as starting salaries and performance ratings consistent, according to an article in Workforce Management.
The study — conducted by Emilio Castilla, an assistant professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a visiting professor at New York University — highlights the prevalence of wage discrimination based on factors such as race and gender. It was based on extensive research conducted on almost 9,000 employees at a sizeable service-sector organization that considers its staff to be increasingly diverse.
“The company was full of good intentions, but completely unaware of the unintended consequences of its performance system,” Castilla told Workforce Management.
The problem could be traced back to the fact that unit heads at the company in question were given some liberties to determine which employees should get larger pay increases than others.
“The unit heads were not accountable for the discretion they exercised within the small latitude of increases for each rating,” Castilla said.
To mitigate the risk of this type of pay discrimination Castilla said companies should increase the amount of pay transparency throughout the organization.
