The essay looks at how managers manage across cultures since a majority of the present workforces are multicultural. The main problem that arises in a culturally diverse workforce is the misinterpretation of cultures hence leading to conflicts. Conflicts can negatively impact the performance and efficiency of an organisation. Therefore, organisations need to adapt to the current heterogeneous environment. Organisations can do so through cross-cultural training and finding common things in our culture and celebrating them. Finally, the essay provides an action plan for managing a culturally diverse workforce.
Table of contents
Identification of key issues/problems:
Globalisation has resulted in a rapid increase in multinational corporations which has led to numerous businesses having a more culturally diverse workforce. Thus, cultural awareness has become more than just a management phrase since cultural diversity impacts the performance of an organisation and numerous conflicts can arise because of misunderstandings among the culturally diverse workforce (Steers, Nardon and Sanchez-Runde, 2013). Cultural awareness is the capability of organisations to be aware of the diverse cultural values, perceptions and beliefs that exist in an organisation. However, becoming aware of cultural dynamics is a difficult issue because culture is not conscious to people. Most people have learned to do their things unconsciously, and sometimes people have to step outside their cultural boundaries to realise the impact of their culture on their behaviour (Steers, Nardon and Sanchez-Runde, 2013). Therefore, misinterpretations happen because people lack awareness about their behavioural rules and project them on others. Where there is lack of better knowledge about culture, people tend to assume instead of trying to find out what a particular behaviour means to a person. For instance, some Asians find it rude and disrespectful if they are looked straight into the face.
Analyse the identified issues/problems:
In the past few years, there has been an increase in awareness of organisational culture among managers. Managers want to understand how a cross-cultural workforce is impacting the resent working environment and the competence of an organisation in general (Lokkesmoe, Kuchinke and Ardichvili, 2016). In the past, managers used to assume that employees with a similar global company behave in the same manner even if they have different national backgrounds. National culture is perceived to be of more considerable significance since organisational culture is impacted by national culture hence ultimately changing the management practices. However, in a multinational corporation, employees have different cultural values meaning that they have different attitudes, behaviours and values. Culture is essential since it influences how people think and act (Lokkesmoe, Kuchinke and Ardichvili, 2016). Therefore, because of globalisation, companies need to be open and adapt to a heterogeneous cultural environment.
Sometimes, a culturally diverse workforce can result in low performance and organisational inefficiency if the culture is improperly managed (Lauring, Bjerregaard and Klitmøller, 2018). Numerous conflicts can arise because of misunderstandings among a culturally diverse workforce meaning that organisations have to develop an effective way of handling the diversity so that they can leverage it for competitive advantage. As workforces become progressively multicultural, the need to understand diversity has become extremely significant. Without effective management of diversity, it is difficult for a company to enhance its profitability and benefit from the advantages of operating efficiently because there are no internal misunderstandings (Lauring, Bjerregaard and Klitmøller, 2018). The increasing significance of cultural diversity and the uniqueness it brings when it comes to the enhancement of the competitive advantage of a company is the reason why the effective management of a multicultural workforce within an organisation is of increasing concern.
Develop justified recommendations:
One of the recommendations is for managers to implement cross-cultural training to reduce the gap between employees with various cultural backgrounds (Rottig and Reus, 2018). Cross-cultural training is the most efficient way to provide employees with knowledge regarding cultural differences. It enables the personnel to gain a better understanding of other people’s values and beliefs, and this means that their discriminations and biases within a culturally diverse workforce would reduce. Also, cross-cultural training helps in the adoption of similar corporate culture and ultimately promotes efficiency (Rottig and Reus, 2018). The second recommendation is to identify the similarities that exist in our cultures and use these similarities to communicate the need to work together as an organisation that intends to attain the same objectives. No matter how diverse our cultural backgrounds are, we have some things in common. It is why people from different cultures are able to work together as a team. The last recommendation is for managers to encourage people to build on their uniqueness. Everyone has his or her strengths at the workplace, and by understating our uniqueness; we can use our strengths to create a team that will be able to attain organisational objectives.
Develop an appropriate action plan:
Workplace Diversity Action Plan
The objective of the plan is to enable managers at all levels to encourage and promote workplace diversity guidelines (Rees and Smith, 2017). Another purpose is for workplace diversity principles to be integrated into the performance management process. The last objective is to make sure managers and employees have skills and knowledge to deal with a multicultural workforce. The success measures will be the employee attitude surveys and other feedback methods that show how leaders are promoting workplace diversity in various areas such as recruitment and promotion.