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Managing a culturally-diverse workforce at the best of times can be a struggle. Bringing employees with different values and expectations together sometimes feels like doing a jigsaw puzzle with all of the wrong pieces.
In trying times, cultural diversity becomes more of a challenge. Two significant occurrences, the recent economic downturn and the looming shadow of terrorism, have impacted on everybody's lives across North America and the world. It has affected the way people see themselves and others in the workplace, making the job of human resource professionals even tougher.
The word downsizing is common to Canadians, largely because it has been in our employment lexicon for a long time. It has become the universal sign of a declining economy and the fiscal responsibility that comes with it. But as the cultural demographics in Canada continue to evolve, an increasing number of people in this country will not have grown up learning words like layoffs and 'optimization'.
Bearing this in mind, the downsizing that is accompanying our recent economic downturn has affected different people in different ways. It doesn't matter whether you are from Shanghai or Shawinigan, layoffs are obviously never a good thing, but for some employees the impact is more dramatic.
For example, newcomers to Canada from China working in their first job are likely to look at a layoff as a sign of their inability to do a job right. They will consider the loss of a job as a loss of face, the preservation of which is very important in Chinese culture.
There is one example of a laid off worker who after losing their job at a high tech company continued to leave their home dressed to go to the office. The individual then quietly changed into janitor's clothes at a local shopping mall, keeping their new job and the loss of their old one, a secret from family.
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Every culture reacts to traumatic situations like losing a job differently. It is essential to provide an explanation for the layoff, to help people deal with their circumstances and move on to search for their next job.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, American (and to a lesser extent Canadian) workplaces were fraught with distrust and prejudice. Employees who had been with the company for years and in the country for their whole life, were suddenly seen as outsiders and threats to security.
While this is an extreme case, any shocking international event can lead to uncertainty in a diverse workplace. The best way to deal with this challenge is to encourage employees to be more culturally aware. Raising employee cultural awareness can be accomplished in a number of different ways. The first is with conventional cross-cultural awareness training, giving employees the basic tools and information to better assess and work with cultural diversity in the workplace.
There are numerous examples of organizations that have used cultural awareness training as the base, and then designed other programs to build on the training. Companies have introduced standing cultural diversity committees or teams (both real and virtual) with employees of varying cultural backgrounds, who plan events, draft newsletters and are ready to assist in times of crisis. A similar, but less formal strategy, are diversity networks, which encourage employees of diverse backgrounds to come together and learn more about each other.
Many encouraging stories emerged from the rubble of September 11th. One such story comes from Intel Corp., which has long encouraged diversity networks. An Arab-American employee, buoyed by company support for diversity, asked if her story about the harrowing experiences soon after the attacks could be published. The story was published and sent out to
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