A cultural awareness training program can also be seen as cultural competency training, intercultural training, cross-cultural training, it provides learners the skill that they should have inculcated within themselves, work, develop in and with different cultures other than their own. It helps in the development of cultural values and attitudes, intercultural management skills, cross-cultural communication styles, dealing with language differences, and intercultural business strategies all these topics are covered during the training which also includes CQ cultural intelligence. It helps people to be able to assess how to deal with diversities. Cultural awareness training courses and certifications are important for the growth of businesses. It is also beneficial for those who are operating beyond their original national borders and those who work with culturally diverse communities or partners.
Benefits of Cultural Awareness Training:
Investment in cultural awareness training is constructive in various aspects for businesses as well as their employees.
- Not only in building stronger, long-lasting relationships with your International partners, CQ cultural intelligence also helps them feel good about the business and bring them back again and again by the efforts of company culture consultants.
- It also helps in attracting the best talents which will help in the growth and success of the business in the future.
- It outperforms your competitors in the national markets as well as international markets through company culture consultants.
- CQ cultural intelligence enhances the bonds between staff which result in cross-cultural in building productive, harmonious, as well as ecstatic teams.
- For the improvement of your international product and service offering, it provides better learning in understanding the customers from a diverse range of cultures.
- International customer service can also be improved from the cultural awareness training program.
- It also benefits in reintegrating employees and company culture consultants that have a great experience of working abroad.
- In international assignment and leadership roles, career prospects are improved by the cultural awareness program.
Measuring a company’s culture by using cultural assessment tools can be challenging but it is very important as it helps in measuring the progress to check whether your efforts are resulting in your desired fallout. Considering that a company’s behavior is the sum of all the individual behaviors you will find it easy to find the measuring techniques. It is very difficult to shift from one culture to another as it requires behavioral change on an individual level. Most of the time employees get back to their old habits, even after the cross-cultural training event, after facing the regular constraint. Everyone must make changes on an individual level and the cycle should be repeated after some time hence, norms are created and a new culture is formed. The following seven tools can be used for the transformation of a company’s culture:
1.PULSE CHECK
It is very important to know, through a cross cultural trainer, the current state of the organization or business before starting a cultural awareness training program to look at CQ cultural intelligence. A short questionnaire is introduced to the employees of the company during the pulse check to first take the record in the beginning and then measure the change over some time.
2. KEY MILESTONE:
It is very important to form the expected standard and find what must be done to achieve it as it is responsible for the change in the culture and use the experience of a cross cultural trainer. Most of the time culture shift starts with a big push but fails after some months as the employees get back to their old habits.
3. Knowledge Testing
The cultural assessment tools also include knowledge testing in which it is important to know that the delivered information by a cross cultural trainer is understood by the members during the cultural awareness training program. If the participants are not getting the points that are delivered during the training program, it will not result in the change of the company’s culture. A cross-cultural trainer plays an important role in the company’s culture change process by using cultural assessment tools.
4. Mobile Boost Learning
Once you get the confirmation that participants have understood the points, the next step towards the change in the company’s culture should be that you should have to fight the effects of the learning decay. Boost learning can help in keeping the new concepts as well as behaviors on the top of the mind. Reteaching is not required to revise what was delivered in the training program as the mobile tools can deliver short messages that will lead to efficiency, better quality, productivity, or whatever you have decided for a change in the culture of the company.
5. Self-Assessments
In the process of changing the culture of the company, employees reach a point where they can understand what is expected from them and they make desired changes as well as genuine efforts to apply new skills and change their behavior. Self-assessments are beneficial tools by which the employees can test this new behavior. Culture change can also be achieved by having a manager who will help the employees in attaining the specific goal or tasks by making the correction and generating feedback when they try a new behavior which will be a long-lasting effect on the change in the culture of the company.
