With 2017 flying by and 2018 fast approaching, the team at Commisceo Global have decided to share a snapshot of some of the cross-cultural training trends we have witnessed so far this year.

Remember this is only what we have seen as a company, not what the whole cross-cultural training sector is experiencing.

In a global marketplace, companies are increasingly rolling out training courses across international offices with the intention of providing consistent and homogenised messages to all their staff – regardless of location.

There is sometimes little, if any thought, given to whether the materials will be well received by the recipient's international office.

Global Mobility staff are routinely faced with complex challenges when it comes to effectively managing relocation assignments. The fact that not all countries promote equality and respect for human rights, to the same degree, being one of them. 

Although demanding, the complexities don’t stop at matters such as contractual amendments, cost of living and bridging loan calculations.

With a ‘no deal’ Brexit looming, the need to trade outside of Europe is becoming a reality for many British businesses.

In fact, just this week, Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzō Abe told Britain we’d be welcome to join the Pacific Free Trade Pact (TPP) following our European exit if we’re unable to leave with a deal intact.

If you work in Learning and Development, then it’s likely you know about the 70-20-10 Model.

If not, then it can be simply summarised as the work of three academics in the 80s who used extensive research to establish optimal learning conditions.

In a rapidly changing training world, learning trend reviews reference terminology which would have been incomprehensible to learning and development professionals not so long ago.

With terms such as E-Learning, Mobile Learning, Online Learning, Gamification and Virtual Learning, peppering our training conversations, the training culture has changed dramatically.

The training world is evolving at an incredible pace.

Indeed, discussions of blended learning by L&D professionals have quickly moved beyond ‘why do we need it?’ to ‘how do we do it?’

Providing an abundance of new experiences, relationships and opportunities, relocation can be an incredibly exciting opportunity for most relocating expats.

However, relocation is not all fun and excitement.

The news is full of accounts of people who have fallen foul of the law when working overseas.

Although for many readers, these stories can provide a little online interest to mull over during a coffee break, for others, they are a stark reminder of the tragic repercussions that can happen when travelling with no understanding of local laws and culture.

At this moment in time, the increase in cross border human traffic has meant that companies are no longer dealing with a homogenous native community from which they recruit their staff.

Companies are now facing cross cultural challenges in how they recruit, manage and develop a multi-cultural staff. One area of note where HR and management are finding difficulties is in the interview room.

This blog was originally written in 2008.  Revisiting this in 2021 makes for interesting reading.

It's fair to say that HumaNext certainly got it right as everything they mentinoned came to fruition and these topics - particularly cultural competency for leaders, are still trending training topics!

A charity that campaigns to provide a "secure base for Britain's minority ethnic communities" has called for effective leadership to promote diversity, after a poll revealed that almost nine in 10 recent graduates have experienced some kind of discrimination at work.

The Ethnic Minority Foundation, called for leaders to be held accountable for discrimination which, it says is "ruining the life chances of young people".

It follows a survey of 200 graduates by recruitment site Milkround.com which found that 86% of had faced discrimination while working.

Race discrimination affected two in five respondents, with age discrimination affecting 14% and gender 12%. Other reasons for unfair treatment included sexual orientation and height.

One respondent said: "People like me coming from a different country or continent to study and then try to get a work placement here are very vulnerable, particularly if they are unfortunate enough to have employers or managers as ignorant as the one I [worked for]."

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

A true story: when a US telecoms giant decided to replace its manager in Thailand several years ago, it chose an ABC - 'American-born Chinese' - in the belief he would be more culturally attuned to doing business in Asia.

He was not shy about telling his colleagues how to behave and one evening berated a couple of European rivals who had been caught engaged in financial shenanigans.

They decided to play a joke on the new arrival.

They told their driver to follow him and tell him he was going to be killed.

According to a survey of more than 100 senior Human Resource managers, 81% of companies agree that international work experience is a crucial criterion for leadership in a global organization.

Why? Because international leaders cannot lead global teams without the necessary intercultural skills and insights. 

The survey, "The Importance of Cultural Skills in Senior Managers," conducted by RW-3 LLC, an international training organization, and ORC Worldwide, a global human resource consulting firm, was designed to measure the importance of cultural competencies and global experience as criteria for senior management.

"During the current liquidity crisis, we've seen yet again how the global economy is entirely interconnected and how international cooperation is critical for the world's economic well being," said Michael S. Schell, president of RW-3.

Leading research and workplace innovation company, Career Innovation (Ci) has today published the results of its latest study, Cross-Cultural Development Conversations.

Carried out across 45 leading companies worldwide, the new study has found that although organisations are aware of the need to skill up their leaders to manage the cross-cultural workforce, few have acted to make this a reality.

At a time when the pace and scale of globalisation has never been higher, competition for the best talent remains intense. The effectiveness of development conversations in organisations is known to play a significant role in engaging and retaining key talent.

Factoring in the complexity of a diverse and dispersed workforce makes it even tougher to ensure that these conversations are at their most effective.

According to the 45 organisations interviewed (Sept-Nov 08), the business importance of working effectively across cultures is high and rising. Most are already operating complex organizations across multiple regions and almost all (91%) indicated they expect cultural diversity in their organisations to increase over the next 3-5 years, with nearly 50% expecting a “significant increase”.

The study revealed three top factors that impact cross-cultural development conversations:

1) The directness of communication style
2) Language differences – especially when people are not communicating in their first language
3) The need to establish high levels of trust across cultures, in order for development conversations to be effective

Differences between Asian and Western cultures were consistently reported as a particular challenge by respondents with 50% of organisations reporting this as an issue.

Companies identified many key employee development processes that are impacted by these cultural hurdles. For example, 60% of organisations said that coaching relationships can be much tougher to establish in some cultures than in others. Giving feedback can also present challenges, with one company finding that its Chinese employees quit after receiving challenging feedback.

“This issue has a big impact on global organisations”, says Ci’s founder Jonathan Winter. “Although they are increasingly aware of the need to encourage meaningful dialogue with employees about their careers and development, only a few have really taken on board the additional complexities overlaid by the cross-cultural dimension. Left unresolved the cross-cultural conversation gap hits the bottom line in a way companies can ill afford in today’s tough times.”

Organisations who are placing the strongest focus on building their employees’ cross-cultural competence report significant benefits including improved attraction and retention rates.

Following on from this study and Ci’s previous Conversation Gap research, Ci will be developing its existing career tools and approaches to encourage more leaders to develop cross-cultural thinking as part of their everyday style. Winter offers an example of how this will be incorporated, “Our Engaging Conversations multi-rater tool is already helping mangers around the world improve their staff dialogue skills and habits. We’re going to take that to the next stage and incorporate the cross-cultural dimension”.

Some recent findings by The London School of English show language and cultural training are still not getting the attention they deserve within companies today.

In fact, the spirit of Basil Fawlty seems to live on within some British businesses!

Despite the Government pinning hopes on UK PLC exporting, it brings into question whether UK companies are thinking globally and making the effort to understand their target cultures, or whether they are instead relying on the rest of the world to think and act like them?

The findings suggest that, "UK-based businesses could be risking international growth by failing to invest in cross-cultural and communications training."

The results spwan from research carried out that questioned 100 HR directors on their attitudes towards communication skills and their approach to training.

“These centenary research results show a shocking lacking of regard for our international business partners,” says Timothy Blake, Chief Executive of the London School of English. “The Brits may be reluctant to learn other languages, but this research suggests that we are not even prepared to invest in understanding the cultures they work with."

Headline findings in the report include:

•    98% of HR Directors believed their non-native English speakers should communicate effectively in English.
•    Although 67% of those questioned believed that it was “very important” for business people to have a good cultural understanding of their trading partners; only 23% would offer training.
•    Only 4% believed the “Basil Fawlty” approach of speaking “more loudly” would be effective in communicating with non-native English speakers.

Worrying stuff isnt it?

As a team manager leading a multicultural team, you go through the stages of team development perhaps a bit longer than when working with most monocultural teams.

When you feel you’ve had enough of battling the cultural differences, and that you just want to call it a day, don’t despair – keep in mind that due to the diversity, the ups and downs feel extreme however in the end, there is simply much more to gain.

Last week, Triple Pundit published an interview with impact investment expert Jed Emerson.

Here, Emerson explains why multilingual leadership is important for those involved in this field.

Most of the reputable global relocation companies conduct annual surveys whereby they gather data on global mobility trends in international companies.

Plus Relocation – a company operating in corporate relocation for the past 40 years, just published the results of their Planning for International Mobility Survey.

The 18th annual Corporate Relocation Conference and Exhibition took place on the 3rd of February this year, in London.

We attended the conference to gain further insight about the latest discussions in the field of global mobility.