Mar. 03, 2010 - Issue #750: Megadeth

Diff’rent strokes

Courses teach how to utilize diversity in the workplace

While cultural diversity can bring fresh, new ideas to Canadian workplaces, it also brings along challenges—for instance, communication barriers—that some employers may find too daunting to tackle. The inability to deal with the challenges has led to various problems including high unemployment rates amongst highly-skilled-immigrant workers and animosity between staff within organizations that already have diverse workforces.

To narrow the cultural gap between employers and newcomer employees and to better welcome and retain immigrant workers in Alberta, the Centre for Race and Culture (CRC), with the support of Alberta Employment and Immigration, Foreign Qualifications Unit, will be offering subsidized diversity training workshops under its Cultural Crossroads Workplace Training program. The customized professional development workshops are specifically tailored to address the issues of a particular organization and are delivered at the worksites themselves.

"For a lot of [employers], they know that they have to do something, but they don't know even how to start ... so we need to then use a bit of a shotgun approach in terms of asking questions that will just get them to think about it," explains Ricardo Carlos, manager of Cultural Crossroads.
In order to figure out the requirements of a particular organization, a Cultural Crossroads facilitator first conducts an in-depth needs analysis with each organization asking questions ranging from the corporate culture of the organization to human resource practices including whether or not interview formats take into consideration interviewees who are not proficient in English.

Depending on the outcome of the needs analysis, workshop activities are varied and may contain discussions, case scenarios that have actually occurred within the organization, videos and ice breakers. The workshops are, in Carlos's own words, "Very experimental, very interactive, very engaging."

Carlos recalls one organization which had been successful at attracting people from different cultures but not with keeping them.
"So we will go in and try to do a bit of an analysis of why that is happening and then try to offer solutions to them."

In addition to increasing efficiency and productivity in the workplace, the reason Safeway Canada participated in the diversity training workshop was to improve intercultural communication, explains Stephanie Duncan, human resources district employment specialist with the company
"There's communication barriers between new Canadians and native-born Canadians," Duncan acknowledges. "One barrier that we found a lot was that, in one of our departments—say, our deli department—we may have someone from Germany working in that department and someone from China."

Duncan points out that, culturally speaking, Germans tend to be more straightforward while the Chinese are less direct.

"Having those two cultures work together can sometimes be challenging because one's thinking the other one's rude and the other one's thinking they're just being too nice about it," notes Duncan.

With about 46 countries and 23 languages represented within its staff, Jo Heggerud, educator at St. Michael's Health Care Group, found that her organization also faced similar communication problems to Safeway's.

"People will speak in their foreign tongues to their coworker which will offend other people in the group, because they obviously think that they're talking about you or whatever," says Heggerud.

Carlos explains that misconceptions in the form of stereotypes are behind most complications in intercultural communication. One workshop activity may show participants a cultural iceberg, a graphic that indicates the visible aspects of culture which Carlos calls "the DDD": dress, diet and dance.

"But there is way more underneath that is affected by culture," Carlos points out. "Some generalizations do have elements of truth, but at the end of the day, our message is that ... you should not judge people based on some of those generalizations that you might have heard, or even experienced, but that you should really get to know your employees and co-workers on an individual basis."

Carlos adds that stereotypes can lead employers to dismiss potentially good candidates. One example he brings up is the lack of interview callbacks for applicants with "ethnic" names.

"It's not that these [employers] were mean people not liking immigrants but unintentionally, people might look at a name and say, 'Well, gee, Ricardo Carlos—oh, that sounds too Spanish, so maybe his English may not be up to par, maybe he doesn't really know how workplaces operate, or he has done this position in Mexico, but it's different here. It will mean—for us—costs on getting to know whether or not he has the skills or not, maybe we'll need to provide him with English training—you know what? Let's just take him out,'" Carlos roleplays.

However, the reality is that education level amongst immigrants is often much higher compared to those who are Canadian-born, Carlos points out.

"Another issue would be that [someone with an 'ethnic' name] could be a second-, a third-generation Canadian with perfect English and educated here," notes Carlos. "Our job is to make employers aware that they could be unintentionally biased—and by being so, they are really missing out on good talent that's out there."

Cultural Crossroads encourages organizations to not only learn about the benefits of cultural diversity in the workplace, but to implement change as well. To support this, it offers the Cultural Crossroads Champions Series, a train-the-trainer program which is specialized for organizational leaders who will, ideally, be driving change from within, explains Carlos.

"You can come in as an outsider and deliver the workshop and it will be good learning," Carlos notes, "but if there isn't anybody inside driving those initiatives for work, then it is more difficult to create those welcoming and equitable workplaces, because there isn't going to be anybody who knows the dynamics of their organizations and who could really make sure that whatever was introduced in the sessions becomes a reality."
Cultural Crossroads also offers more general workshops that offer participants an introduction to cultural competency. These workshops are open to the public.

"[The open to the public workshop] is awareness more than anything" informs Carlos. "We'll give [participants] some tools to first find out what their own personal culture is, be aware of it, and how that is affecting the way that they relate to others."

Carlos is hopeful that organizations will see the value in diversity training. He remembers a colleague who pointed out how Canada's need for a knowledge-based economy over the years has sought out people with high levels of education.

"I think Canada has done a very good job in attracting immigrants with those qualifications, but unfortunately, my fellow immigrants, some of them are driving cabs and parking our vehicles and serving us coffee," Ricardo observes. "So I think that the reason why [organizations should take cultural diversity training] is to really tap into that knowledge. Don't deny yourself from accessing that knowledge because a person might have an ethnic name or a person might have a little bit of an accent."

Carlos adds that using internationally trained professionals to make connections with potential markets overseas is good business sense for businesses that work on an international scale.

"If you don't do it, your competitor might be doing it." V

Cultural Crossroads Workplace Training
Customized Professional Development Workshops (Edmonton & Calgary)
$500 (1 – 10 participants); $1000 (11 – 30 participants)

Diversity workshops open to the public:
Wed, Mar 31 (9 am – 4 pm)
Centre for Race and Culture's Training Room
10871 - 96 St, $50

Champion Series Workshops
Thu, Mar 18 & Thu, Apr 15 (9 am – 4 pm)
Centre for Race and Culture's Training Room
10871 - 96 St, $200 per workshop

For more information, please contact:
Ricardo Carlos
Manager, Cultural Crossroads
780.425.4644 ext 5
ricardo@cfrac.com

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