{"id":1831,"date":"2020-03-29T13:37:54","date_gmt":"2020-03-29T20:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/?p=1831"},"modified":"2020-03-29T13:37:54","modified_gmt":"2020-03-29T20:37:54","slug":"intercultural-competency-important-for-employers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/2020\/03\/29\/intercultural-competency-important-for-employers\/","title":{"rendered":"Intercultural Competency Important for Employers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Guest Blog by Nicole Weipu Liu<\/h2>\n

One of the advantages of a proactive policy of hiring people of different cultures<\/a> is that it strengthens the employer\u2019s place in the market.\u00a0 Employees from different cultural backgrounds bring with them an understanding of their new host culture and their original culture.\u00a0 They already have experience in dealing with the inevitable frictions between the cultures and are in a perfect position to interpret the advantages of dealing with their employer.<\/p>\n

These intercultural employees are able to guide other host culture employees in the proper direction when dealing with potential clients.\u00a0 In the Narver (2018) video it is made clear that it is very easy to have an unconscious world view that is ethnocentric<\/a>. Having employees from different backgrounds helps overcome that and positions the company to succeed in the international market place.<\/p>\n

The Varner and Beamer (2011) book provides specific advice on raising skills on areas like business socializing in different cultures and handling controversies and various moral and ethical issues in various cultural settings.\u00a0 Working side by side with employees from different cultures raises everyone\u2019s skill level as they observe each other maneuver different challenges.<\/p>\n

My own experience in working with a range of cultures was in China.\u00a0 After I earned my first university degree in Chinese Culture, I was hired by Hainan Airlines<\/a> to help the company cope with integrating its workforce from many Chinese sub-cultures.\u00a0 Hainan is China\u2019s fourth largest airline with over 500 routes servicing many different ethnic regions in China. The airline is based in the city of Haikou<\/a> which is populated by Mandarin speaking Han Chinese similar to the Chinese in Beijing.\u00a0 The airline services other far away cities such a Urumqi<\/a> which has a large Uyghur<\/a> Muslim population and Shenzhen<\/a> which is a center of Cantonese culture near Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

I was part of a team whose mission was to build an efficient and happy workforce which could work together.\u00a0 Our larger goal was to give the population of the various regions of China the feeling that Hainan Airlines was their airline and understood their needs.\u00a0 We developed strategies of cross training so that employees had to do each other\u2019s jobs as part of a learning exercise.\u00a0 We would deliberately mix the cultures from a\"\"<\/a>ll over China for this training.\u00a0 The object was not to foster a sameness but to build understanding of the different cultures in the group.<\/p>\n

We also looked at the market for clients and created marketing messages suited to the cultures we were dealing with.\u00a0 For example, a marketing message for people from Urumqi might show a Muslim family traveling, and an advertisement for Beijing might depict young professionals.\u00a0 The skill was in getting the message just right and this required input from intercultural employees<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Developing skills of intercultural competent communication is vitally important for both the employees of national companies and international companies in this era of globalization.\u00a0 It simply makes sense to take advantage of the breadth of experience available from an intercultural workforce.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Additional Resources:<\/b><\/p>\n

Duggan,T. (2018).\u00a0 Strategies for Dealing with Intercultural Communication.\u00a0 Retrieved from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/smallbusiness.chron.com\/strategies-dealing-intercultural-communication-11875.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Faris, S. (2018). Why is Intercultural Communication Important in the Workplace? Retrieved from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/bizfluent.com\/info-8419030-intercultural-communication-important-workplace.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Miron, A. (2013). The Importance of Intercultural Skills.\u00a0 Retrieved from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/eskill.com\/blog\/importance-intercultural-skills\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Narver, D. (2018).\u00a0 Research on Cross Cultural Team Performance and International Resources.<\/p>\n

Varner, I., & Beamer, L. (2011) Intercultural Communication in the Global Workplace.\u00a0 Cultural Rules for<\/i><\/p>\n

Establishing Relationships,<\/i>\u00a0 pp 251-288.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Blog by Nicole Weipu Liu One of the advantages of a proactive policy of hiring people of different cultures is that it strengthens the employer\u2019s place in the market.\u00a0 Employees from different cultural backgrounds bring with them an understanding of their new host culture and their original culture.\u00a0 They already have experience in dealing … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":1833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1831"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1838,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1831\/revisions\/1838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/cmns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}