Cultural Sensitivity: How to Boost Teamwork and Productivity Remotely

Remote work comes with a lot of benefits. One of them is that you, as an employer or a team member, get access to a lot of talent globally. However, you have to keep in mind that a global workforce means a diverse workforce. If you are not ready to deal with diversity in a way that benefits your business, you can be in trouble. Cultural sensitivity — on your part and that of your workers — needs to be a consideration to avoid miscommunication. We want to discuss some ways to be culturally sensitive in a remote workplace.

Do We Need Diversity?

Diversity is generally an advantage. Cultural diversity means a diversity of thought, which translates to greater creativity and innovation in your team. However, diversity also requires careful management to ensure proper communication between people from different cultures. Most importantly, though, diversity is a fact of life. You will be hiring diverse people (unless you choose to discriminate in hiring, which is highly unethical). And so, you need to help them work together.

Diversity is not about how we differ. Diversity is about embracing one another's uniqueness.

Ola Joseph, author

What Are the Benefits of Cultural Sensitivity?

Cultural sensitivity can have a number of effects on the team. Here are the key ones.

• Morale. Cultural clashes tend to result in negative experiences for team members. Unpleasant encounters make people feel like they are not seen or valued. On the other hand, culturally sensitive workplaces see improved morale. People are happier and more engaged. That feeling also improves loyalty. Overall, people feel better — and more like a team — when the environment fosters cultural sensitivity.
• Collaboration. It is difficult to collaborate with misunderstandings and missteps making team members feel like they are not speaking each other’s language. When cultural differences are taken into account, collaboration becomes easier as miscommunication becomes less frequent.
• Productivity. Naturally, it is difficult to be productive when you literally cannot communicate without causing trouble. When miscommunication is limited, people are more productive, and you can benefit from all the diverse views on your team.

What Aspects of Communication Need Cultural Sensitivity?

There are a few key aspects that you need to keep in mind when working on cultural sensitivity programs for your employees or teammates.

• Styles of communication. In some cultures, people choose to be direct. However, other cultures prefer indirect statements to avoid being rude. Also, in some cultures, people choose more formal communication, thinking everything else to be rude. However, representatives of other cultures may feel like formal communication establishes an undesirable distance between the people involved. 
• Punctuality. In some cultures, being punctual is very important, but other cultures do not value it very much. Their attitudes to time are more relaxed, which may reflect itself in their work. Naturally, it is not rude to reinforce the idea that deadlines should be met. Still, this knowledge can help to understand some team members. 
• Power distance. In some cultures, hierarchies are more important than in other ones. Some of your remote employees may feel uncomfortable with an equitable approach to work and seek to reinforce hierarchies.
• Individualism. Individualism is characteristic of some cultures that favor personal achievements. Other cultures are collectivist: they value the community over individualism.
• Humor. Humor is simply different across the globe. What is funny in one culture is offensive in another one. 
• Non-verbal communication. Things like gestures or even facial expressions vary between cultures. Something that is appropriate in one culture might be offensive in another one.

Overall, studying cultures of your team is important from these perspectives. 

Cultural Sensitivity Promotion

You can use a few techniques to improve cultural sensitivity in your workplace! It is true even for completely remote teams and small businesses that do not have too many funds to spare. Here are a few tips.

Inclusivity Culture

Your corporate culture needs to be inclusive. It needs to be welcoming to people from diverse backgrounds. It also needs to empower everyone to participate. Here are a few suggestions on how to achieve that.

• You can enable cultural exchange discussions. They can center on difficulties and solutions. Do it through a special channel on a platform of your choice, for example, Slack or Teams.
• You should create a safe space where your employees can leave feedback regarding cultural sensitivity. It can be a bot for anonymous reports, for example. The point is that your workers should feel empowered and safe in their speech.
• You need a plan for addressing challenges as they arise or are reported. Create an algorithm and follow it for the most effective conflict resolution.

Cultural Awareness Training

Cultural awareness can be learned. In particular, people can be educated on the differences in cultures and taught how to deal with cultural clashes and biases. In addition, effective collaboration between people of different cultures can also be learned.

Cultural awareness is a set of skills that can and should be improved continuously. A small business might not have the funds to invest in an actual cultural sensitivity program. But it can do other things to improve the well-being of its workers. For example, it can facilitate the exchange of cultural knowledge between workers. Think about a holiday awareness day, during which the people who celebrate a specific holiday can share their ways of celebrating it. Just make sure that the people you want to share their culture are interested in doing so.

Group activities that you can create for your workers may include the following.

• You can pair workers from different backgrounds for group problem-solving puzzles and games. That helps build the team spirit and teaches your team vital skills like collaboration. 
• Trivia games with cultural themes can broaden understanding of specific cultures in workers.
• You can arrange small language learning sessions, in which workers teach each other some basic phrases and words from their languages. 
• Music exchange can be a fun way to explore other cultures. Book clubs can include books from a particular culture. The same can be done with movies.

Communication

Communication with people of different cultures is going to be complicated. There is no way around it. However, you can improve cultural awareness by creating a guide for communication. It can include recommendations like these.

• It is better to use clear language without idioms or slang to ensure good understanding for all teammates.
• Promote asking questions. If something is unclear, your workers and teammates should feel comfortable asking about it. They can do it in private, but they must know that questions are encouraged and will not get them in trouble.
• Promote empathy. Teammates should be able to put themselves into the shoes of whoever they are talking to. Emotional intelligence is a great vehicle for reducing miscommunications and improving cultural awareness.

Virtual Meetings

In addition, virtual meetings require some attention.

• Despite diverse attitudes to time, it is better to enforce punctuality to demonstrate respect for everyone’s schedules. It is especially true in meetings with people from different time zones. Somebody might be missing sleep because of this conference.
• Try to schedule the meetings in a manner that does not favor a specific timezone. You might have to do a rotating schedule so that no one person is constantly forced to visit meetings at an inconvenient time.
• Use visuals if you are creating a presentation or otherwise augmenting your speech. Visuals are easier to understand for a diverse audience.
• For video calls, allow people to switch off their cameras. Video calls might be a substitution for face-to-face communication, but being forced to use a camera can cause a lot of anxiety. It is better to avoid that. 

In Conclusion

Cultural sensitivity is a very important skill for remote teams who unite people from all over the world. Cultures differ in their attitudes to hierarchies, individualism, and even time. To better understand each other, teams might require special training. But even if you cannot afford to train them, you can create a welcoming environment that empowers everyone to raise questions and solve issues with empathy.