Culture Sensitivity Training Program-Objective

Agustin Cabanas-Lopez (ID n8912998) [e-mail] Cultural Sensitivity Training program for the 21st century Australian global corporations

-OBJECTIVES-

The purpose of this program is to offer a comprehensive training in cross-cultural awareness and the methods to overcome the possible misunderstandings and make the most of your culturally diverse staff and international businesses. Thus, your company will address successfully the cultural diversity that Australian corporations face today at home and overseas.

By offering this program within the framework of Engineering Education Australia (EEQ, subsidiary of Engineers Australia) we can guarantee you a high quality and effective program.

The program is always tailored according to your specific needs, taking into account the cultural background of your staff and international business partners.

EXTERNAL OPERATION OBJECTIVES

• To train your management staff (top management especially) in the best ways to make business with your international partners, providing the most important hints and tips for every type of contact depending on your partner’s origin:

­ Approaching (salutations, eye contact, use of titles, etc.) and punctuality.

­ Dress code and gender differences.

­ Negotiation, both direct and indirect communication styles. As Australians are very direct, we stress the importance of using and understanding the indirect communication style (the most spread in Asian cultures).

­ Body language and how to detect the actual thinking and feelings of your partner.

­ Social events needed to build trust and their opportunities and risks:

▪ Business meals, behaviour and etiquette. What to do and what not.

▪ Informal events (sports matches, cultural events, parties, etc.). These are often the situations to know each other and actually build trust, but they are also dangerous. What to do and what not.

­ Asdf

• To train your legal staff in the cultural influence on bureaucracy operation depending on the country you want to make business:

­ Impact of the legal structure in your operation.

­ Impact of the bureaucracy ways of doing in your planning, scheduling and costs.

­ Impact of corruption.

• To address all the problems that arise with offshore outsourcing:

­ Human resources cultural awareness and influence of society structure on employees behaviour. Differences between strongly oriented hierarchical societies (India, China, the Arab world, etc.) and weakly ones (Australia, USA, UK, etc.).

­ Religious feelings and uses and their impact on worker’s productivity.

­ asdf

INTERNAL OPERATION OBJECTIVES

• To reduce cross-cultural misunderstandings within your staff and, thus, enhancing internal harmony and productivity:

­ Team and individual working, tendencies depending on culture and how to align them with the company’s culture and goals.

­ Commitments and accountability versus harmony and hierarchy, how to foster the former (valued in Anglo-Saxon business culture like Australian) without breaking the latter (valued overall in Asian and other cultures).

­ Tolerance with all religions. Sensitivity approaches to non-Christians (breaks for praying, awareness of religious rules when offering food in celebrations, etc.).

• Reduction in non-Australian staff high turnover caused by lack of promotion. Implementation of a culturally aware promotion program, which takes into account other approaches to promotion than the self-oriented most Australian companies have.

• To increase the performance of international virtual teams:

­ Building trust among team members.

­ asdf

­