Chances are that if you work for a large organization, you work with people from diverse backgrounds be it their ethnicity, culture or religion. The presence of these cultural differences in addition to the mindsets it inevitably creates in individuals pretty much defines cultural diversity in workplaces.
But how can one take advantage of this diversity and work efficiently?
Promoting intercultural relationships.
No not romantic ones but an environment that fosters collaboration and seeks to encourage communication across cultures. You can do this by doing the following:
Recognize Cultural and Independent Days of Your Employees: This lets your employees know that they are appreciated and it also allows colleagues to learn more about what makes each other tick. it encourages people to ask questions.
This helps your employees to become better informed.
Have Themed Lunches: To take the previous point to another level have employees work together to come up with themed lunches from their backgrounds.
This creates an environment where your employees are working together AND learning more about each other.
Diversify Your Teams: Your company is diverse but having people from diverse backgrounds doesn’t automatically translate to immediate success. What does is the magic that can happen when they work together to solve problems. So to take advantage of this, have your employees work across different departments each quarter.
This allows innovative solutions because different problems will inevitably be looked at from different angles.
Encouraging these types of interactions will allow employees to establish deeper bonds. Bonds that help lessen implicit biases and misconceptions they might have had otherwise. It will also enhance communication skills among different employees which creates a transparent environment to work equally.
In today’s cut throat world of competition for success, companies that know how to take advantage of their diverse talent will benefit the most.
