Why intercultural skills are critical in the COVID world of work.
In an increasingly globalised world rapidly pivoting to online learning and working across cultures and borders, intercultural competence has become a critical competency employers are hiring for, so students should be building this into their employability skill mix.
According to SEEK, Australia is one of the most multicultural countries in the world with one in four of our 22 million people born overseas, 46 per cent having at least one parent who was born elsewhere and nearly 20 per cent of all Australians speaking a language other than English at home.
This diversity is also reflected in our workplaces, with experts reporting that managing workforces with culturally diverse employees is requiring a new suite of skills to ensure managers are trained, teams are supported with diversity and inclusion policies, values and practices, and organisations are hiring across an intentionally diverse cultural range.
This is not just a nice to do. Research increasingly shows that workplace diversity gives organisations a competitive edge, with McKinsey & Company recently reporting that companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 per cent more likely to have financial returns higher than their counterparts when considering respective national industry averages.
“Difference can contribute to making a workplace far more interesting, more able to deal with complex problems and to view things through multiple lenses,” says Dr Dimitria Groutsis, Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School.
“There’s definitely a business case for it but it’s also in the ‘nice to do’ basket because there is a social justice need to give everyone opportunities, irrespective of differences.”
Monash University’s Intercultural Lab
Given intercultural skills are fundamental for students to successfully gain employability, Monash University has taken a proactive approach with the establishment of a designated Intercultural Lab, which works to ensure students and staff have the intercultural skills they need to thrive in globalised workplaces and communities.
Dr Nadine Normand-Marconnet, Monash Intercultural Lab Education Coordinator and Senior Lecturer, says intercultural competence is the ability to function effectively across cultures, to think and act appropriately, and to communicate and work with people from different cultural backgrounds – at home or abroad.
“Intercultural competence is a valuable asset in an increasingly globalised world where we are more likely to interact with people from different cultures and countries who have been shaped by different values, beliefs and experiences,” she says.
“As a complex set of knowledge, skills and attitudes, intercultural competence is a life-long process that will allow people to work and interact in a sensible, ethical and efficient way with people having a different cultural background. In the global marketplace, intercultural competence and cultural intelligence are in the top ten attributes listed by recruiters.”
“Intercultural competence is part of a family of concepts including global competence, graduate attributes, employability skills, global citizenship, education for sustainable development and global employability.”
Intercultural Competence Starts With Knowing Yourself
Dr Gabriel Garcia Ochoa, intercultural competence expert, says we have never been as connected as we are right now, so in a workforce crossing time zones, cultures and geographic borders, intercultural or cross-cultural competence is a crucial skillset as employees are more likely to interact with co-workers, vendors or customers from different cultures and countries, and will need to work productively with people who have been shaped by different values, beliefs and experiences.
“On a daily basis we deal with people from all over the world who may be very different from us.
Difference and how to overcome that difference, which sometimes may be perceived as something negative, is not necessarily negative. Difference just is, whether it's negative or positive, and it depends on the way we approach it,” he says.
Dr Normand-Marconnet says intercultural competence gives you tools and frameworks to better know yourself, but also to better understand other people, and ultimately to become sensitive to the fact that something you can find “wrong” or “weird” or “confusing”, is just different.
“We believe that intercultural competence is crucial to develop social cohesion, to have a more integrated community because it's not only about skills - it's about empathy, curiosity and respect of others,” she says.
“To become interculturally competent, individuals need to develop awareness about their own cultural background. They have to work on their own motivation to interact with people from other cultures, to allow for ambiguity and uncertainty, and to know how to adjust in multicultural scenarios."
The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the need for anyone learning, working or teaching in the digital realm to build intercultural competency, as we pivot to new remote working and learning practices, and the need to physically co-locate has removed previous geographic barriers and connected us with people from a diverse range of backgrounds.
“The current pandemic has revealed to everyone the extent to which we are globally connected.”
“Crisis management of COVID-19 across countries has demonstrated that there is no ‘one fits all’ solutions. Therefore, being able to navigate across cultural boundaries seems to be increasingly required. From this perspective, COVID-19 might have helped people to understand the importance of building and/or enhancing their intercultural competence. The next step is for individuals and organisations to make this happen,” Dr Normand-Marconnet says.