Outsourcing has paved the way to cross-cultural collaborations between both business clients and work colleagues.
While this has led to amazing innovations and business expansions, it has also introduced a new challenge for businesses that seek to globalize -- cultural and values-based differences.
Here’s an example scenario:
In an online conference, Americans tend to open up the meeting by breaking the ice with a few minutes of light conversation. Germans, on the other hand, would prefer to cut to the chase.
Not knowing the difference between these two cultures can not only cause confusion, but even spark negative relations that can hinder the company’s growth.
5 Tips to Overcome Cross-Cultural Differences in Outsourcing
1. Learn each other’s culture.
Ideally, before you even start working with an outsourcing company, it’s important to understand their organizational culture.
This may include exploring their political environment, common gestures, and even taboos.
While potential outsourcing partners are also usually open and understanding to different cultures, it doesn’t hurt to invest time to find out what these differences are.
2. Promote appreciation of cultural differences.
When you have in-house employees collaborating with outsourced workers, it’s important to maintain positive relations even when differences exist.
You can do this by establishing your own organizational culture that promotes appreciation of differences and make everyone feel like they can be themselves.
3. Be open-minded enough to try new things.
People from different countries may have a different mindset when it comes to key business procedures. This doesn’t have to be bad. In fact, it may even be what your business needs.
When negotiating the services from a potential outsourcing partner, don’t be afraid to ask questions on why they’re taking an approach that sounds strange to you.
They may have better insight into certain things, especially if they’ve applied the same strategies for previous clients and managed to produce good results.
4. Make everyone feel considered in key decision-making moments.
Both in-house and outsourced workers need to feel like they are a part of the process. This is the key to increasing work happiness and boost employee morale.
When developing a company culture, make every member feel involved. Take surveys, if necessary, and encourage everyone to pitch in their ideas and opinions during staff meetings.
5. Eliminate or reduce tension as they arise.
The easiest problem you can overlook in your outsourcing projects is the dark and heavy feeling in the air between your employees and management.
You can solve this by creating effective communication channels that encourage complaints from all parties.
Once you have all the facts, you can then find common ground and compromise. Furthermore, you can also establish rules and regulations that encourage cultural acceptance.
Takeaway
Outsourcing will always involve a form of cultural acceptance. The idea is not to create boundaries, but to build bridges that connect people from all over the world.
The good news is that it is possible to eliminate cultural clashes and even use these differences to take the business to new heights.
Submit a comment