Cross-cultural awareness or diversity training has become big business these days. As our world becomes more diverse and people of various ethnicities, backgrounds, religions, sexual orientations are forced to work together, they have to learn to get along.
Most businesses and government departments have respectful workplace policies. In Canada human rights laws apply throughout the country. There are federal and provincial human rights commissions that administer the human rights legislation. However, human rights laws alone cannot protect a person in the workplace from discrimination. Some forms of discrimination can be subtle but are felt deeply by the victims of that sort of discriminatory perpetrations. Employers need to do more to make their staff feel welcome and part of the organization. If government departments can slack off when it comes to diversity training, businesses cannot afford the expense.
Entrepreneurs depend on customers and goodwill to survive. They need their staff to produce. A happy staff is a more productive staff. If some staff members feel alienated they will spend a lot of time sulking, worrying and being absent-minded. They may be more prone to absenteeism due to illness and depression. It is therefore important for employers to ensure that they have respectful workplace policies and mandatory diversity or cross-cultural awareness training.
While these trainings may not solve all of the problems at once, they make employees aware of each other and some of the things they may take for granted. This is especially true of the dominant culture which is accustomed to unearned privileges.
Cross cultural training helps a person become of aware of their own culture. When a person is aware of their culture and why they do the things they do or think in a certain way, they may be more empathetic to the other and better communicators.
Communication as most would agree is the single most important aspect of any job. It is communication which is at the root of many conflicts that could eat up hours and days of working hours to resolve. When people understand each other they communicate better.
Cross-cultural awareness training should not only help people to understand different cultures but to appreciate difference and to understand that there is strength in difference, that there is beauty in difference eclecticism in difference, creativity in difference and money in difference too. The more diverse and culturally sensitive a business is the more diverse people will want to do business with you.
To be effective employers must be serious about diversifying their businesses or operations. They should create work teams that that include people who are different in some way or the other. Diverse teams are apt to come up with more creative ideas because each may come with his own world view and ways of solving a problem which when combined together makes for excellent decision making.
There is no getting around the idea. Without diversity a company might just as well close up shop or satisfy himself with a mom and pop corner store. To grow and be a dynamic company you must put on a global lens and see people as flowers of one garden and leaves of one tree, each unique but equally valuable to the whole.
