The globalization of business means companies have interests in other countries and it is necessary to have their people on the ground. It is well documented why understanding the values, attitudes and behaviours of people in various countries are key to knowing how to do business with them. Businesses take for granted that everyone’s culture is somehow an international culture of business. This is false. Each country and culture have different approaches to doing business.

Cross-cultural training has become a vital part of the expatriate relocation process. Businesses are realising the need to equip their employees with the cultural know-how to ensure a smooth transition process as well as maximising their effectiveness when in the new host country. With cross-cultural training, work is not negatively impacted and companies avoid costly mistakes.

1. Globalization has increased the importance of cross-cultural training due to the realization of the importance of cultural differences. Contrary to some popular belief, we are not all becoming the same: in fact, we are experiencing our differences more acutely than ever before.
2. The most successful businesses now and in the future will be those that maximize their most valuable resource – their staff. By offering staff cross-cultural training a business minimises stress, frustration, failed assignments, poor retention rates and low morale that can result when people take on overseas assignments without proper training.
3. Poorly prepared staff has a certain impact on the bottom line. A failed 3 year overseas assignment can cost a company upwards of £1 million. This does not even account for loss of business, impact on reputation and poorly managed work.
4. Important skills training such as man-management, client relationships, etc cannot be addressed properly through informal chat sessions between colleagues. In order to develop global skills one needs training administered by professionals with culture-specific expertise, trained to counsel individuals through difficult processes of adjustment.
5. Businesses need cross-cultural training because their competition is providing it to their people. Choosing between working with people who know how things are done “over there,” and novices with incorrect assumptions, which company will get the deal?

Tags: Cross-Cultural, Economics, Finance

This entry was posted on January 5, 2010 at 7:37 am and is filed under Cross-Cultural. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.