Development of Multiculturalism in the Workplace

The best way to meet the needs of an increasingly global economy and customer base is to capitalize on the diversity of your employees and create an environment that takes into account different perspectives, ideas, and solutions.

Multiculturalism allows workers to all contribute based on their own cultural background, experience and other qualifications. When a variety of viewpoints are thrown into the problem-solving mix, new and innovative solutions can be reached.

Multiculturalism in the workplace can create a sense of cultural awareness among workers. Employees who are exposed to others' ideas and points of view will learn to think outside the box when faced with a problem. Once a worker has been exposed to beliefs of someone whose ideas seem foreign to him, he can begin to reflect on the narrowness of his world view and how it adversely affects his ability to think and solve problems.

5 Simple tips that would help you gain the maximum from your multicultural workplace:

1. Explore new cultures: raise your cultural awareness, learn about other countries, and most importantly, talk to your colleagues and peers the key to seamlessly steering your way through multicultural environments is to remain curious about our differences while at the same time acting on our commonalities.
2. Embrace new experiences: realize that it takes dozens of communities and hundreds of years for each culture to evolve and develop its own values, morals, business practices, and ethics. As our multicultural environments expand, often our nonverbal differences such as social, educational, and economic discrepancies, power dynamics, and spiritual beliefs, become the leverage for our communication.
3. Avoid generalizations: while recognizing that every culture has its own customs and traditions, first and foremost we are individuals. Whatever information you collect, it will never apply to every single member of that culture. As Stephen Hawking, a renowned British physicist and author, says: “we are all different, there is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit. What is important is that we have the ability to create. This creativity can take many forms, from physical achievement to theoretical physics.”
4. Consider cross-cultural training: it really helps to develop awareness between individuals who do not have a common cultural framework. In addition, country-specific training helps equip teams that interact with overseas customers or visit other countries with useful tools for learning business protocol, etiquette or negotiation skills specific to that country.
5. Involve professionals: we used to think of cross-cultural differences as a challenge that needed to be overcome by individuals from different cultural backgrounds or organizations forming global partnerships. Language differences are the most common issue potentially affecting communication, and we know that in building successful business relationships, linguists, namely translators and interpreters, act as a useful tool.

By embracing our differences, we develop our communication skills, make ourselves receptive to contrasting views, explore new cultures and languages, and build business and community relationships. Thriving organizations and corporations recognize the benefits of a diverse workforce and acknowledge how cross-cultural communication fosters creativity within the team. Every culture contributes its own insight into an issue, introducing new ideas and awakening inspiration.

After all, multiculturalism is not something to be avoided – it is what makes our world beautiful.

Vercida works with over one hundred clients who are committed to creating an inclusive work environment. If you are an employer and interested in working with Vercida to promote your diversity and inclusion initiatives and attract the best candidates, please call 02037405973 or email [email protected] for more information.

We are also officially recommended by Disability Confident as a step on achieving Employer status, please click here for more information.