Businesses cannot thrive without the constant addition of a dynamic workforce. One reason is the rate of attrition – i.e., staff turnover.
Every company has the challenge of replacing departing staff. In the USA the average rate of attrition is between 12% and 15%, though worldwide it’s a little lower at 10.9%.
To keep ahead of the staff losses in the olden days, this usually meant hiring one or two highly qualified or educated people. However, now the stakes are higher, and the focus is on creating an engaged workforce with the addition of international experience.
Inclusive Company Culture
Inclusive cultures, building dynamic work environments, and adding newer perspectives to the mix are essential to the business’s success in hiring staff and retaining customers.
A diverse workforce across all levels, from executive and C-levels to entry levels, is a great way to contribute to the company’s growth positively and customers respond in kind with their loyalty.
To meet the workforce challenge, many businesses consider hiring staff from offshore. For example, with Brexit and then the pandemic, many companies have applied for a sponsor licence UK to integrate international hires into mainstream business quickly and efficiently.
While this sounds great theoretically, it will not work without management creating an inclusive company culture.
For international hires, things like cultural nuances, slight errors, and more can become colossal make-or-break factors.
Creating An Inclusive Culture
Let us look at how you can create an inclusive culture for foreign hires so they integrate well into your company.
1. Care About What Matters
Everyone talks about caring and making a place for international employees. However, the same can not be said for taking the time to understand what matters to the foreign workforce.
If you want to build an inclusive environment for your foreign workers, consider taking these actions:
- Learn which events or holidays are noteworthy
- Which cultural or religious traditions and views matter
- What leisure activities, hobbies, sports, and interests do they have
- Which charities and social causes do they believe in
With knowledge comes the opportunity to fully integrate your foreign staff. Understanding what matters to all your workers and how your business can help bring their traditions and customs into the workplace creates team cohesion and unity.
Create social events for celebrating traditions and other strategies for spreading awareness, respect, and appreciation for all the diverse backgrounds pushing down biases and misinformation.
2. Encourage Inclusion
Creating inclusive spaces does not only mean focusing on what can be done to help. It also relates to energizing a positive workplace environment, one in which everyone believes they belong.
When we are comfortable in our surroundings, more significant interaction occurs. Employees have the confidence to be creative in their problem-solving and innovation. Plus, mutual appreciation encourages supportive relationships.
Humans are gregarious and gravitate to spaces that accept them for themselves. A diverse and inclusive workspace takes time to build, and with each new foreign hire, time and energy will be spent working on the new dynamic to avoid the alienation of notably quieter staff.
There is just one rule that applies to everyone.
Instead of being picky about what to do and what not to do, celebrating the diversity of cultures and customs is the greatest place to start. Including international workers and listening to their views would promote inclusiveness while guaranteeing tolerance and sincere enjoyment among all workforce.
Bad conduct may be encouraged by false information. Therefore, the company has to demonstrate and support its one rule that applies to all policies.
Code of behavior
Your expectations for behavior might include respecting the knowledge and abilities that each employee was recruited for. While many activities might be optional, other events must be attended for all staff members to socialize socially.
All employees will be challenged by social gatherings, introductions, and team-building exercises and will value the opportunities.
The company’s “we’re in this together” culture will foster the idea of “one team” and support dismantling barriers based on religion and culture.
3. Support
Support and empathy are shown in the workplace, along with a desire to get to know one another. There can be a linguistic problem when hiring foreign workers.
English is spoken as a first language in the UK, and most people are not multilingual. Employees who don’t speak English will thus need to utilize it as often as possible, and the company may hasten their learning through courses.
Take language classes.
There are several top-notch English language programs for foreign workers, like the Cambridge ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) and the London School of English.
Living Resources
Higher productivity at work will come from giving your foreign personnel the resources and equipment they need to sustain themselves outside of the office. Assigning a friend to assist with:
- Obtaining services for legal, financial, tax, and accounting requirements
- Assistance in choosing to house, such as family-friendly neighborhoods and top-notch schools to enroll children in
- Places to go include places of worship, ethnic eateries, food courts with various cuisines, and other attractions.
It might be challenging to get about in a new place. You may demonstrate to your international employees how much you value their life. Empathy, tolerance, and some investment, i.e., money to access the correct resources, are necessary for offering help and your time.
However, the assimilation and success of their foreign employees will be considerably greater for firms that pay careful attention to these factors than for those that do not.
4. Establish a Distinctive Company Culture
A society that values financial success and fosters fierce rivalry cannot grow to be inclusive.
Investigating diversity, equality, and inclusion pays off. Additionally, recognizing it and offering resources and tools to aid in integrating all new employees would assist create an inclusive culture rival businesses envy.
