Apr 26 2008 8:28AM GMT
Posted by: Yusuf Salwati
Project management,
Diversity,
IT management tips
Today’s work place is more diverse than ever, even within the small business setting, you would find employees with very diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. In my traveling throughout few countries, I noticed how different cultures deal with diversity at work place.
In some countries, the locals or the citizens of the country always have an upper hand in the workplace, talent and experience come second, in other, talent and experience determined how employees are evaluated.
Smart and futuristic managers always treat diversity as an asset to the company. In today’s ever connected world, your work force will be compromised of people with various backgrounds and learning how to deal with such diverse work force is both challenging and exciting.
In my current job, I am dealing with Asians employees, most if not all of them are on their first international assignment in a foreign country (currently I am working in the Arab state of Qatar.) What did I learn working with this diverse group of people?
The first thing I noticed, the how they write their resumes (CVs), the usual resume has so much personal information that I found it bit more than what I need to know about the employee. Most resumes contain information such as (birth city, martial status, passport number, how many kids and religion.)
Most of the employees are not out-spoken and they don’t communicate their objectives clearly, so when I started to work with my new company, I really had to sit with my staff few times to learn more about their objectives and also to find more about their skills.
Usually, the employees won’t take initiatives on changing the work environment, the initiative must always come from the management, so as a manager, I learned not to wait for my employees to come to me with their ideas and problems, but I have to go to them.
Although the employees require close supervision, which makes it hard on the management, they are hard working and usually do what they asked to do.
The work environment and local laws here give so much power to the management, although that is changing now, which may intimidate some employees, as a manager, I am trying to strike a balance between employees rights and responsibilities.
I am dealing with a work culture that I have not experienced before, but with little patience and good coaching, I am able to get a lot from my employees.