Building Cultural Competence
Recognising and developing cultural competency, is an important aspect of building an agile and inclusive organisation that embodies effective leadership.
It enhances skills and knowledge that, in turn, supports your business to benchmark best practice in diversity and inclusion.
'Culture' is developed through upbringing and societal values and norms and behaviours. It is also reinforced through our own personal knowledge and experience.
Redefining Workplace Culture
Most of us tend to view the world through our own, very specific, cultural lens. We may not be aware of the unconscious bias that permeate our thoughts and impact our behaviours.
This bias, and associated prejudices, can negatively impact workplace relations, reducing the business capacity to harness a culture of inclusion.
Cultural competence helps to improve diversity and develop inclusive organisations. It builds skills and understanding and promotes inclusion within the workplace, helping to support innovative working practices and increased productivity.
It is important to understand that building cultural competency is not a process with a start and an end point. It is a pragmatic process that grows and develops with your business, enabling you to strengthen workplace environment, build inclusive business relationships and expand your customer / client base.
Cultural competency supports both business and behavioural success, whilst promoting a positive work environment.
​
Carmen Morris - Managing Director.
Why is Cultural Intelligence Important?
Cultural competence is developed through a set of balanced behaviours that are supported by the values, attitudes, policies and systems of the organisation.
These congruent behaviours, enable the fluent and systematic development of diversity and inclusion.
Developing an understanding of our own biases, and the ways in which we view the world, is the first step to appreciating cultural sensitivities. This will improve our interactions with colleagues from other cultures.
We help you to address the multiple factors that affect effective communication within a cross-cultural environment.
There are a number of critical skill sets, necessary to embed cultural sensitivity into the workplace environment by enabling effective cross cultural communication.
These skills will, in turn, assist in building effective interpersonal communication, through the valuing of difference, leading to an increase in innovation and productivity.
Effective cross- cultural communication is also important in understanding a wide range of potential client and customer needs, and marketing to a wide range of communities.
Key Benefits of Cross-Cultural Competency
Cultural competency is a key driver for advancing diversity within a business, promoting inclusion and generating excellent results. Cultural competency helps to:
-
Increases competitive advantage
-
Leads to higher staff morale
-
Enhances leadership skills
-
Attracts high calibre talent
-
Attracts global investment and partnerships
-
Increase innovation through different perspectives
-
Develops corporate and social responsibility
-
Can attract global attention
Developing cultural competence is important for promoting inclusion and managing 'group think' within leadership
Culturally diverse companies are better positioned to expand and promote goods and services on a global level. They are more able to build relationships with an understanding of the cultural differences and nuances in behaviour that are important for effective communication.
Cultural competence adds real value to your outcomes.
Integrating cultural competence into working practices builds understanding and awareness of difference. It supports an enhanced working knowledge of diversity and works towards ensuring inclusive practices.
This can also help to protect your business from behaviours that are unfair or discriminatory and may lead to workplace discrimination and litigation against your business.
Cultural competence impacts different levels of your business operations, in the following ways:
-
Personal: develops the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours necessary to embed diversity and inclusion.
​
-
Industry and Service: includes inclusive practices, policies and procedures, management and operational frameworks and corporate and social responsibility.
​
-
Systemic: includes the ways in which your brand relates to external communities, shareholders and other stakeholders.
Culturally Competent Consultancy
At Kenroi Consulting, we support your business to excel with cross-cultural and diversity consultancy. Our consulting practice supports you to build cross cultural competence into your business functions, enabling you to plan and implement processes with cultural competences in mind.
Culturally competent behaviours, support best practice and leadership skills development.
​
Cultural competence builds knowledge, skills and a capacity for action.
We support your organisational and people development activities around cultural competence by providing a range of training, planning and support solutions to help you better engage with diversity.
We will:
​
-
Conduct a thematic review to understand your current position and assess the ways that cultural assumptions currently impact your business.
​
-
Customize a consulting solution to build cultural sensitivity and generate more inclusive processes.
​
-
Support planning, implementation and review of organisation wide cultural competency programs.