Age of cultural diversity

By VIKKI BLAND

It starts with the Chinese homeowner who refuses to see a mobile mortgage manager from a major New Zealand bank unless the manager is Chinese by birth or can speak Chinese.

It progresses to a major telecommunications call centre which deliberately recruits diverse cultures and multilingual speakers to communicate with its customer base. And it ends with two IT employees, one Muslim and one Hindu, who couldn't be relied upon to work on any project together without their religious differences getting in the way.

Those three examples alone are enough to indicate New Zealand employers would do well to pay attention to managing cultural diversity in the workplace.

But why bother? Surely it's a matter of employing the best people for the job and then expecting a certain level of personal responsibility from each employee to get the job done?

In an abstract world, that theory is sound. In reality, businesses must meet the needs and expectations of their customers while maintaining quality employees. So when customers expect to interact with people of cultures that reflect their own, a business will try hard to meet those needs. And when two valued employees clash over deep seated religious or cultural differences, a wise employer will try to keep those employees happy - either by encouraging understanding or by keeping them apart.

Phillipa Reid, acting CEO for the Equal Employment Opportunity Trust (EEO), says while equal employment is about recruiting the best person for the position; this includes employing someone of a specific ethnic background, language or even gender.

"The example we use is that you wouldn't hire a man to model women's underwear. In the same way, banks are experiencing an increase in the number of Asian customers asking staff who are Asian speakers or understand Asian culture."

John Barclay, HR manager for the ASB Group, says the bank's workforce has to reflect its customer base.

"There are a lot of new New Zealanders. If you are dealing face to face with a service provider, you like to have a rapport with them and one of the best ways to build a rapport is to deal with people who are like you."

He says the ASB Group's migrant banking is a big growth area and specific language skills are sought for customer service personnel.

"The most useful languages for our customer base would be Asian languages; Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and Indian languages. By employing diverse cultures you get the language skills automatically."

Having said this, Barclay says good English diction is important for telephone call centres.

"It is important that each person in the call centre is clearly and easily understood. But just because English is a second language doesn't mean people can't speak the language clearly."

Confirming the growing importance New Zealand businesses are placing on employing a culturally diverse workforce, John Nevill, principal of sales and marketing recruitment firm Gaulter Russell, says employers regularly ask to see candidates with culturally diverse skills.

"We get clients who specifically ask for speakers of Asian languages and various Indian dialects are popular, as well. After that it gets very broad. At the business to consumer end of the market, culturally diverse skills are becoming more important."

Reid says most businesses understand that having people who can relate to all sorts of customer groups is beneficial. But while finding culturally diverse employees is not difficult, managing them may be.

Nevill says if not managed properly, language and religious barriers can cause segregation and misunderstandings between employees and a business and its customers.

"If you embark on a course of cultural diversity, you need to have diversity management practices in place and a plan. The key is to treat people as individuals first; they won't always put work ethics before personal ethics, but you can't go around expecting trouble, either."

Nevill says some employers build culturally diverse project teams or run training which encourages tolerance and understanding between diverse cultures.

"You have to demonstrate your own support of diverse cultures and encourage your workforce to do the same."

Reid says managing a diverse workforce requires skill.

"There are two types of diversity; cognitive, where people will conform to only one way of thinking; and values based. Of the two, values based diversity is the hardest to manage."

She says the first step is to be aware of good diversity management practices, understand the commercial benefits of such management, then observe best practices used in other organisations. Strategies can include committed resources, surveys, focus groups and pilot programmes.

"A diversity council is one way of ensuring managers are trained in awareness in diversity and diversity practices," says Reid.

So who has a diversity council? In New Zealand Carter Holt Harvey does; so does IT specialist EDS.

Emma Rutherford, HR delivery manager for EDS New Zealand, says the EDS diversity council consists of an Asia Pacific strategic council and a New Zealand operational council which develops local projects including a multicultural week.

"The goal of the councils is to promote diversity and to develop initiatives appropriate to our region," says Rutherford.

She says participation at senior levels sends a positive message to EDS staff and its wider market and an Asia Pacific market focus means EDS needs to think about other cultures on a daily basis.

"If the technical expertise [EDS needs] doesn't exist in New Zealand, we look to leverage our wider global resources. If this throws up cultural or language differences we work hard to work through these to achieve the best solution for our clients."

Rutherford says such efforts have paid off; EDS has a lower attrition rates than the average for the IT industry; a wider skill base that includes working parents and older workers, and uses its diversity policies as a selling point when seeking new business or employees.

Nick Lambert, managing director for IBM New Zealand, says many of IBM's 700 local staff have been transferred from IBM businesses in other countries. These include the United States, Peru, India and Great Britain.

"The insight into perspectives and mindsets other than our own is of great benefit to business," says Lambert.

He says IBM has a history of actively focusing on diversity that goes back to IBM founder Thomas Watson jnr.

"As such, it has become second nature to IBM staff to nurture and foster a wide range of cultures and beliefs."

Which is great for IBM, but what should businesses approaching cultural diversity practices for the first time be thinking about?

Reid says the first and most important step is to take a good hard look in the mirror.

"Even those of us who can be positive about diversity in an abstract way can find it challenging when that diversity cuts across our own comfort zones."

In other words, employers who want to be culturally diverse for commercial reasons probably won't get far unless they believe cultural diversity and understanding is important to society.

In this country's political climate, adopting such perception will challenge those employers who see an influx of other cultures to New Zealand as undesirable.

Reid says the answer is to understand that endorsing cultural diversity does not mean endorsing the death of your own culture.

"We can embrace cultural diversity while remaining clear about the values we hold dear."