Are you an HR manager or a line manager and responsible to ensure deliverables despite cultural differences in your organisationIJ Do you face challenges in managing people because they did belong to different culture in past and joined your organisation nowIJ Is it that you would like to build a culture that delivers despite existence of different culturesIJ If answers to above questions are yes, than below mentioned inputs should help you:
Employees know the best: With high degree of frankness and with keeping employees at ease and comfort, you can ask employees how their cultural needs can be incorporated in company culture. Good number of employees will come up with their inputs. Not only that, in fact they will make it much easier for you.
Want a team that delivers: There are cultures which are team driven and there are cultures which are individual driven. In team driven cultures people seek and give help and cooperation.
While in case of individual driven culture, professionals would like to go solo. In such cases, to achieve common goals, a very impactful cross-cultural team-building- programs must be conducted. There can be a disaster if not taken special care.
At times specific cultural traits add value: let’s take an instance wherein a CEO from a company with performance driven culture joins your organization which has not been very performance oriented despite best efforts. Business needs high performers for meeting goals. In such cases, if managed well, entire organization gradually becomes highly performance driven. In long term this helps organization in a big way.
Use the power of consistent repetition: Culture is built over a period of time and not overnight. Anything that is fed to mind on regular basis becomes stronger and stronger. For employees from different cultures, learning and adapting to new culture may be a challenge.
They won’t learn the very first time they are being told something. It is natural for employees to hear the message again and again so that they fully get it. This is true for anything and everything that you want to be a part of culture.
Perception of time: For work-life balance, professionals may have a different viewpoint of time. In some culture, professionals may see work in terms of deliverables and other culture they may see it more in terms of 9 am-6 pm time. Here it becomes very important for you to decide what culture you want. There is a lot of difference between performance driven and time driven culture. Once you have this diversity your job becomes difficult. Hence it must be dealt with and with high priority lest attrition goes up.
(The writer is Jivan Pant, principal consultant and director at Career Shapers, HR Consulting Pvt ltd)