Effective Communication in a Diverse Workplace
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENHANCED RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT & COMPUTER APPLICATIONS VOL. 2 ISSUE 2, FEB.-2013 ISSN NO: 2319-7471
Effective Communication in a Diverse Workplace
Ritu Rana
Programme Associate, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India riturana2222@gmail.com Abstract: Due to globalization, today’s work environment has become diverse as people from different cultures, religions and backgrounds have come together. They bring with them, diverse skills, knowledge and expertise. They have their own views, ideas, perceptions and opinions which are totally different from one another's as they all come from different walks of life. To succeed in a multicultural society, an organization must value the differences of its workforce, respect the individuality of all employees and maintain a climate in which everyone is treated with dignity. Everyone in business today needs to better understand other cultures, as well as other age groups, gender groups, and lifestyle groups. All this can happen only if there is an effective communication among all the employees, from top to bottom. This paper explains how important is it to have a diverse workforce, what difficulties could come in the way of effective communication in such diverse workplaces and how to overcome these difficulties in an effective manner. Keywords: Diversity, Effective Communication, Globalization, Workplace, Strategy.
Introduction Effective communication is an important part of business success. It becomes more important, and even complex, when the workforce is multicultural, or, is diverse. Diversity makes good business sense in today's globalized world, so we cannot ignore it and cannot limit our organization to a uni- cultural environment. Building a productive workplace with employees from many backgrounds can enrich a company on many different levels—but it's not a process one can take for granted. Language barriers and cultural misunderstandings can get in the way of effective
Effective Communication in a Diverse Workplace
Ritu Rana
Programme Associate, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India riturana2222@gmail.com Abstract: Due to globalization, today’s work environment has become diverse as people from different cultures, religions and backgrounds have come together. They bring with them, diverse skills, knowledge and expertise. They have their own views, ideas, perceptions and opinions which are totally different from one another's as they all come from different walks of life. To succeed in a multicultural society, an organization must value the differences of its workforce, respect the individuality of all employees and maintain a climate in which everyone is treated with dignity. Everyone in business today needs to better understand other cultures, as well as other age groups, gender groups, and lifestyle groups. All this can happen only if there is an effective communication among all the employees, from top to bottom. This paper explains how important is it to have a diverse workforce, what difficulties could come in the way of effective communication in such diverse workplaces and how to overcome these difficulties in an effective manner. Keywords: Diversity, Effective Communication, Globalization, Workplace, Strategy.
Introduction Effective communication is an important part of business success. It becomes more important, and even complex, when the workforce is multicultural, or, is diverse. Diversity makes good business sense in today's globalized world, so we cannot ignore it and cannot limit our organization to a uni- cultural environment. Building a productive workplace with employees from many backgrounds can enrich a company on many different levels—but it's not a process one can take for granted. Language barriers and cultural misunderstandings can get in the way of effective
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