Training Culturally Diverse Employees: Beyond National Stereotypes

Introduction

Workplace training is vitally important for any company, whether it has mostly native-born experienced workers or a culturally diverse workforce including recent immigrants. However, when addressing training needs for culturally diverse employees, specific strategies should be applied and refined. This paper addresses those strategies and tactics. Thesis: Traditional training models used by HR departments and in business colleges that employ linear and simplistic approaches should be considered outdated and irrelevant. Up-to-date training strategies do not stereotype cultures based on national cultural generalizations. Instead, they approach cultural training based on individuals, their values, and their ability to adjust to values in the new work environment.

The workplace featuring culturally diverse employees needs not only training for employees whose cultures differ from the majority of workers but also training designed to change employees' attitudes about diversity or develop skills needed to work with a diverse workforce (Noe, 2002). Traditional training processes are not as effective with recent immigrants and with a culturally diverse workforce, according to the text Employee Training and Development. The traditional training model that takes a linear approach—featuring a rational, step-by-step process that assumes training content is stable—is not necessarily appropriate for employees new to U.S. culture (Noe, 26).

Training Models and Technology Integration

The author suggests that training design in this instance could use Rapid Instructional Design (RID) because the process of training can be separated from instructional content. When training culturally diverse workers, the process is vitally important to ensure that those employees are fully comfortable with how they are brought into the employee community.

Sensitivity to the correct process used by the employer is key because a learning system is preferable to an instructional system (Noe, 533). Especially when training recent immigrants, differences in learning style make it challenging to develop a training program that maximizes learning for all employees. Teaching new employees from diverse cultures means combining different steps in the instructional process. Those learning steps should include technologies such as MP3 players and iPods because managers can develop different versions of the same training content to address trainees' varying learning styles (Noe, 534). All of this requires that trainers and managers be technologically literate and open to change.

Resistance to change is not a concept unique to one company or individual; it is a universal problem that has historically been present in for-profit and nonprofit organizations. However, by using social media and updated technologies, managers can provide training for new employees based on learning styles rather than rigid practices and guidelines.

Mary Lou Egan and Marc Bendick write in the peer-reviewed Academy of Management Learning & Education that intergroup conflict constantly threatens the ability of globally active or domestically involved companies to operate efficiently, cooperatively, and fairly (Egan et al., 2008, p. 387). This problem should and can be fixed, the authors contend, but at the time of publication, they believed that business educators were not adequately preparing students for diverse workplaces.

The Problem of Cultural Stereotyping in Business Education

Many business educators simply teach students that cultural differences matter without going the next step to learn how to turn cultural competence into a competitive advantage (Egan, 387). Colleges and universities teach cross-cultural management, but the authors argue that students should be equipped to understand and respond to exactly what, when, how, and how much culture matters within organizational and interpersonal situations in the workplace (387).

In international business (IB) education, instructors often attempt to build a case for treating international business as its own discipline, different from finance, marketing, and strategy (Egan, 388). The problem with this approach is that it reduces culture to national cultures and focuses on differences among nations, which misses the point of culture. This strategy oversimplifies the complexities within cultures and generalizes about cultures, wasting what business students should be learning (Egan, 388).

Using national average characteristics to predict or explain an employee's behavior—for example, studying the culture of Japan and applying that to the specific behaviors of a Japanese immigrant on the job—misses the other forces besides national culture that impact specific employee behavior (Egan, 388). A research project published by the Global Leadership and Organization Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) group illustrates this problem perfectly.

The GLOBE researchers studied an American executive leading work teams in Brazil, Egypt, France, and China and noted the range of leadership responses effective in each cultural setting (Egan, 388). The article advised that when working with the French team, they had a "low humane orientation culture," meaning they were not particularly interested in being supportive of others, even in the same organization (Egan, 388). This is a cultural workplace travesty of the first order—to be prejudiced against a person based on a generalization that is wrongfully applied to individuals who will be part of a team. When challenged on this cultural stereotyping, GLOBE responded that serious students of culture or managers focused on intercultural dynamics would seek information beyond what GLOBE presented. However, Egan explains, college students in general are unlikely to take GLOBE-type information to another level to see if exceptions to the rule exist (Egan, 388).

Another generalization presented to business students is that Scandinavians tend to be uncomfortable with much bargaining (Egan, 388). Consider a student taught this generalization as fact who later, as a manager, enters a sales presentation with Ikea—a Scandinavian company—thinking that Scandinavians are culturally programmed to avoid hard bargaining. This was a wasteful learning experience because any negotiation with an Ikea buyer might involve a Greek raised in Canada, trained in the Harvard negotiating program, with 20 years of experience as a buyer in China (Egan, 389).

Another poorly described cultural trait found in an IB textbook currently used in university business classes states that the British habit of lining up on the sidewalk while waiting for a bus reflects a deep cultural desire to lead neat and controlled lives (Egan, 389). Similarly, some business schools misinform students by describing South Korean business practices as reflecting rigid organizational structure and unswerving reverence for authority, leading students to understand that Korean employees do not question strict chains of command (Egan, 389).

It is absurd to stereotype French people, the British, or Koreans so narrowly that a bias toward individuals of these nationalities is established before the manager even knows them—individuals who are unique and not necessarily representative of any cultural stereotypes or generalizations. Training of employees from culturally diverse backgrounds must take each person at face value and not fall into the trap of cultural biases and stereotypes based on studying the national culture any employee comes from.

Cultural lessons must be learned when expatriates arrive in a new country and join a workforce. An expatriate—a person who has given up national heritage—is also an immigrant, bringing cultural attitudes and habits likely quite different from the culture present in any workplace. The authors of a research article in the peer-reviewed Academy of Management Journal point out that most employees seek positions with companies offering a good fit on important characteristics such as values and goals (Van Vianen, 2004, p. 697).

However, when it comes to expatriate employees, they frequently take international assignments knowing they will be confronted with work and life conditions that do not match those in their home countries (Van Vianen, 697). Those expatriates understand they will encounter values and habits unfamiliar to them, and many expect a certain degree of misfit with their assignments (Van Vianen, 697). Studies on how expatriates fit in with companies in unfamiliar countries have concentrated on surface-level factors such as living conditions and climate but insufficiently on deep-level differences that powerfully influence the social integration of the expatriate.

Cultural Adjustment and Deep-Level Differences

This research insists that deep-level differences in values should be reviewed when expatriates fit in with workforces apart from their normal values and expectations. Some differences experienced by an expatriate are immediately obvious—cuisine, for example—but other differences, such as coworkers' work expectations and their beliefs and values, are not. An expatriate can only learn deep-level diversity truths through extended, individualized interaction and information gathering (Van Vianen, 698).

For managers of companies hiring expatriates, it is important to understand that an individual may seem well adjusted but could be experiencing culture shock, making adjustment more difficult despite a strong human drive to reduce uncertainty (Van Vianen, 698). However, not all expatriates can reduce uncertainty regarding the job, position, and workplace culture. High levels of uncertainty heighten personal discomfort and can mean the expatriate will not make necessary adjustments to the host culture (Van Vianen, 698).

The bottom line for managers and HR professionals responsible for training programs is that those programs should address both surface-level and deep-level cultural adjustments needed by expatriates. The most successful international employees—including expatriates and other immigrants—are those who can adhere to self-transcendence values, that is, willingness to adjust and transcend cultures they were previously part of (Van Vianen, 707). Bright, flexible expatriates in management positions with self-transcendence values most often have the desire to develop meaningful relationships with local subordinates and feel disappointed when their self-transcendence values are less important for host country nationals (Van Vianen, 707).

Any training program that does not address deep-level cultural differences is too superficial and intellectually weak to present to expatriates or immigrants. Cultural adjustments that must be made can be made seamlessly with the right leadership in executive and management positions.

In the Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, researchers investigated the relationship between diversity training and organizational commitment, career satisfaction, and innovation (Sohail et al., 2011, p. 257). The authors conclude that when employees are properly trained for diversity situations in the workplace, they are more committed to their organizations and more satisfied with their careers (Sohail, 257). Additionally, diversity training in a company has a positive effect on organizational innovation.

The authors acknowledge that diversity training can cause backlash among employees, which can lead to turnover and decreased satisfaction (Sohail, 259). However, when effective, workplace diversity training has a positive impact on organizational commitment (Sohail, 359). Since most employees are more committed to the organization after diversity training, they tend to be more effective and innovative as well (Sohail, 359). Innovation among committed, diversity-trained employees includes the ability to substitute old technologies for leading-edge newer ones.

Organizational Outcomes of Effective Diversity Training

The authors conclude that diversity training and management have the potential to provide significant advantages for companies that pride themselves on success in global and diverse environments. Diversity training brings more than commitment and satisfaction; it theoretically involves innovation in the form of product, marketing, and organizational innovation (Sohail, 261).

An article in the peer-reviewed Social Science Quarterly posits that when immigrants do not receive good training, they are disadvantaged in terms of earnings. However, minority immigrants who have received advanced education and work-related training can in some cases do better than other groups in terms of wage growth (Yoshida et al., 2005, p. 1218). There is a sense of unfairness when immigrants from Asian countries, who generally have more education than native-born whites in America, are paid less simply because they are immigrants despite their higher education levels (Yoshida, 1219).

The article uses surveys and studies to discuss how access to training for visible minority immigrants, native-born whites, and immigrant whites affects earnings of those groups (Yoshida, 1221). The authors' findings show that: (a) regardless of ethnicity, immigrants receive less training than the native-born; (b) immigrants with educational backgrounds have better business backgrounds than either equivalent white category; (c) still, visible minority immigrants earn less than their white counterparts; (d) once employed and trained, visible minority immigrants' pay rises faster than native-born whites; and (e) the payoff to training for visible minority immigrants is as large or larger than for native-born whites (Yoshida, 1236).

In conclusion, research shows that historically companies have generally done the same thing over and over when it comes to training employees, whether culturally diverse or immigrant. Notwithstanding new models and diverse workplaces, some archaic training methods remain in use. This paper presents arguments for adopting better strategies for training—both to help present employees adjust to diversity and to train new employees from culturally diverse backgrounds. It offers reasons why alert, open-minded companies are adopting better systems for training and evaluating training success.

Conclusion

New and innovative training strategies never stereotype cultures based on national cultural generalizations. Instead, they approach cultural training based on each specific individual working in the company, considering the values of those persons and their abilities when it comes to adjusting to values in the new work environment.