Do your employees travel internationally?

Do you have frequent contacts with business people from other countries?

Are any of your team members from other countries?

Understanding the company culture and the working culture of other countries is essential for effective global business interactions. Organisations have a pattern of behaviour - a set of common principles, myths and symbols. An organisation’s culture has a profound impact on the effectiveness of the organization by influencing how decisions are made, how human resources are used and how people respond to environmental challenges. Organisational cultures can be divided into 4 types: Power, Role, Task and Self.

The dimensions, as described and interpreted in the Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire, are: 

1. Individualism - The degree to which action is taken for the benefit of the individual or the group. 
2. Power Distance - The degree to which inequality or distance between those in charge and the less powerful (subordinates) is accepted. 
3. Certainty - The extent to which people prefer rules, regulations and controls or are more comfortable with unstructured, ambiguous or unpredictable situations. 
4. Achievement - The degree to which we focus on goal achievement and work or quality of life and caring for others. This dimension also tracks the relative masculine and feminine influences in the workplace. 
5. Time Orientation - The extent to which members of a society are prepared to adapt themselves to reach a desirable future, or the extent to which they take their guidance from the past and focus on fulfilling their present needs and desires.

The Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire (CWQ) produces individual cultural profiles. Benefits of CWQ:

1. It helps them to understand how other people with different values and behaviours will interpret your actions
2. They will know how to express values through actions that will be effective in culturally diverse workplace
3. Recognise behaviours of others
4. Helpful for people travelling internationally on assignments
5. Provide information and guidelines to people working in different countries

Through workplace culture assessment, people start appreciating differences among diverse culture group, rather than criticising them. They start to think of other possible approaches to handle a situation, instead of following their own natural style. Organizations need to create awareness among their employees about cultural preferences of their employees, customers, vendors etc. Organizations can use company culture survey to provide this training.CWQ introduces culturally-based behaviours and provide insights on how to effectively work and manage the multicultural workplace.