Cultural Competency and HR’s Role
Uncategorized 1 CommentWhat is cultural competency and what does it look like in an organization? I found a blog post by Deeta Jones on cultural competency and what that actually means for an organization.
According to Jones, “Cultural competence is about our will and actions to build understanding between people, to be respectful and open to different cultural perspectives, strengthen cultural security and work towards equality in opportunity. Relationship building is fundamental to cultural competence and is based on the foundations of understanding each other’s expectations and attitudes, and subsequently building on the strength of each other’s knowledge, using a wide range of community members and resources to build on their understandings”.
Global HR professionals must be aware of cultural competency within their organization. As HR defines the culture of the organization, it falls on Human Resource leaders to create a culture that is competent.
At the core of cultural competence is the ability to understand and effectively communicate with people across cultures. Communication is the first step towards cultural competence. So what can HR do as leaders to help strengthen communication when language barriers exist? Is there a way to overcome the lack of communication amongst multi-lingual teams in order for an organization to become culturally competent?
Grainne Murray
You ask some great questions Anne! I agree that much of the work of cultural competency begins with communication skills. And while this is more challening on multi-lingual teams, it’s true for common language speakers as well in my opinion. It all comes down to relationships and trust as you point out here.