Working with international cultures in business

Working with international cultures in business

The global range of cultures joining the New Zealand workforce is continually growing, with an increasing number immigrating to New Zealand seeking to integrate into the Kiwi workplace and life-style. 

The new-comers to NZ bring new skills to NZ businesses through their work experience and overseas training, benefiting NZ business and services in many ways, balanced with the many hurdles for the migrant has to overcome to gain a successful employment relationship.

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As the new-comers establish their families and start to integrate into NZ society, they go through a significant change in their work place norms as their family learns to adapt to NZ schools, food types, cultural expectations, including the simplest language and cultural expectations of greeting and interacting with NZ locals.

NZ employers are generally very supportive, assisting the migrant employee in their journey to NZ and assisting the employee to initially settle into the NZ environment, with the appropriate living needs to start their new life and employment.

The employer has the expectation that the migrant employee has enough relative knowledge to be able to communicate in the workplace and complete the tasks they have been employed for, yet the employer may temper their expectations in the acknowledgement that the migrant employee will have work differences compared to those in NZ. 

The employer generally expects the new employee's knowledge and skillset to become more aligned to NZ methodologies within a short period of employment, as time is money and the new employee has been employed for the prime reason of benefiting the business.

The employee generally tries their best to meet the work expectations, yet there are a large portion of employees that find that the expectations are simply too difficult to meet, partially due to the foreign skillset of the employee, the basic communications gaps in the workplace and outside of work for the employee and family, as the a simple sentence can mean two very different things for different cultures.

Adding to the hurdles are the challenges for the family unit to integrate into local society. Communication, education needs, activities, being socially accepted and simply being understood by the surrounding locals can be difficult, as migrant cultures can be significantly different.

For further details on ‘Working with International Cultures in Business’, please contact me or get my latest book "Getting back to business" through amazon: https://amzn.asia/d/0a82hjxu