Cultural Diversity in The Workplace

Culture is a way of living which is unique to each and every specific groups in society. The way of communication, language, foods, beliefs, costumes, traditions and customs are diverse from each group. A society has different cultures which brings its a life with various kind of living behaviors and values to protect humanity. But when mentioning about these good impacts for the society there are also negative impacts to society from some of the cultural values which practice by a certain group of people. Most people live according to their cultural values and it has become their identity because of that it’s really difficult to change such behaviors in a short period of time. If any kind of cultural behavior is threat to a country or disturbing or inappropriate it may take some time to change it because these behaviors are rooted mentally and need to go through a long process of changing. For example, culture is a something which comes from generation to generation and it connected to their respective history. Some cultures don’t value the gender equality. This is much more common in Asian countries. As a result of this representation of female groups created automatically based on education level, personalities, personal preferences etc. 

Workplace is a place where people who came across the world with different cultural values and work to achieve same goal. Therefore in workplaces cultural diversity is a common thing and as said earlier it can bring positive and negative impacts to the workplace. Communication, attitudes and team work plays a major role in a workplace to achieve its preset goals efficiently. 

Communication is the way of sharing ideas verbally or in writing within a group of people. One of the core activities in a workplace is sharing information, giving instructions and guidelines to complete a given task, informing about updates, preparing presentations, writing letters or reports etc. To accomplish each of these, language becomes a barrier as per the elements of cultural diversity. Because people use various languages, there are about 6500 languages used in world. Most countries use their mother language or English for their official activities as a solution to break this barrier. Among these two languages English is the widely used language when it comes to official interaction with foreign countries. But still there are lots nationalities which don’t use English in their official events and they tend to use their mother tongue rather than using English. As per statics countries like Russia, China, Japan, Korea are some of the countries who practice this. Therefore, if one workplace needs to engage in business with one of the above said foreign country, they will definitely face misinterpretations and lack of communication. So, they have to use an interpreter to translate their conversations and documents which will again rises consequences as by appointing an interpreter who will not have the certain knowledge of the business translation may be inaccurate. If the workplace has different language speaking coworkers they can help each other in such situations as they aware about the business. This is an advantage of culture diversity in communication aspects. 

Above situation will be workplace’s favor if and only if coworkers are bilingual. If they also struggling to adjust in workplace’s mostly used language this have to be a disadvantage. When considering about this impact the struggle of learning a new language can be a nightmare for some and it will be really difficult, time consuming task. This can also make workers confused, depressed and feeling left out. All this affect only and only on the journey of the workplace. 

The way two people behave or react to the same situation can be different as they might have different attitude. Attitude linked with the personality, how someone will respond to certain situation is differ from one another. This derives from the cultural differences. Some cultures mainly forced to work in effective and efficient manner, to accomplish this they have invented various concepts to stay organized and to achieve goals smoothly. As an example, 5S method invited by Japan made a significant change in promoting workplace safety and quality all over the world. Japanese people are always considered as most organized people and as a result of their uniqueness this method has been invented. Considering this as a positive impact to workplace, most countries across the world adopted it easily and continues to practice in order increaseeffectiveness and efficiency of workplace. This is a good example to show that people pleased to accept different approaches made by different cultures if it will make a good impact. 

Sometimes some cultures reject to accept other cultures and have a habit of thinking others are not acceptable in their cultures. This is an ugly side of the society and more likely to name it as racists. As a human nature it is natural to taking some time to move and open up with others who are not from the same culture and that hesitance is justified in both parties who want to connect with new culture and that culture who is preparing to admit outsiders to their circle. But after sometime all the barriers will break and everyone can attach with each other. But racism doesn’t have the same flow. It’s their attitude to jot allowing any outsiders to their circle and treat in very ill manner. Again, it needs to emphasize this is only small portion of society. In history the main cause for civil wars derived from this issue still its counties in some countries. Coming back to the main focus racism plays terrible impact in work place also, not allowing to socialize others in their circle can lead the workplace into horrible place because this can make unpleasant situation in workplace and lack of collaboration with coworkers. 

When it comes to the attitude in working in a workplace most people treat to each other in different ways, this is based on the different sub cultures created within a workplace culture. According to the education level there is a gap between top management and lower workforce as they come from different educational backgrounds. Sometimes this creates conflict between these two levels as this can result major showdown in workplace. Working methods can be a keycause for this conflict as decision making and the way of working of workers, with much experience and practical knowledge is totally different from people who take decisions only based on theoretical knowledge. But that doesn’t mean only one group is right and others are wrong, the fact is to gain the success collaboration of both parties is a must. 

Teamwork is the key to success in any organization. To work as a team and to achieve goals everyone needs to neglect their differences. To have a team spirit it’s necessary to have a good positive attitude towards everyone. Some people would like to and have the ability to move along with others easily and some are not. This depends on the various personalities like introverts and extroverts. Introvert doesn’t like to take challenges and always take safe decisions and doesn’t like to communicate that much but extroverts are open for challenges and this can make some of their decision risky and they are very socialized. It’s easy to work with extroverts and somewhat challenging to make a connection with introverts. This is one of the struggles in workplace as if one is good with individual work and in the other hand someone is good with teamwork, as an example in a project it needs to do research and present its findings and suggestions in attractive and creative manner. So, introvert can do the research part more perfectly than an extrovert and presentation part will be strength of extrovert. Therefore, combination of these two personalities can results the perfect outcome of the project. 

As seen from the essay, there are pros and cons of cultural diversity but all the pros can be corrected whether in long or short term. Considering this, having a cultural diversity in a workplace gives more good impacts than the bad impacts. Therefore, this can be concluded as, to make the best out from a workplace it’s necessary to ignore differences and accept great values of various cultures. This will make the workplace a pleasant environment and will directly affect the productivity of organization. It’s good to have different cultures around workplace so everyone can collaborate with one another with their strengths and unique skills.