SHRM-CP / SHRM-SCP Certification Exam: Behavioral Competencies - Interpersonal Skills - Global and Cultural Effectiveness

Behavioral Competency 5—Global and Cultural Effectiveness
Even organizations that do not actively participate in direct international exchanges have a stake in how those relationships influence their own organization. What suppliers do does influence the pricing of products used in both manufacturing and as consumers. Follow along as we explore the nuances of a global mind-set in this section. According to SHRM, “In the context of today’s increasingly global workforce, HR professionals must be able to effectively and respectfully interact with colleagues, customers, and clients of varying backgrounds and cultures.”17

Three subcompetencies comprise the Global and Cultural Effectiveness competency.

They are defined by SHRM as follows:
- Operating in a diverse workplace Demonstrating openness and tolerance when working with people from different cultural traditions
- Operating in a global environment Effectively managing globally influenced workplace requirements to achieve organizational goals
- Advocating for a diverse and inclusive workplace Designing, implementing, and promoting organizational policies and practices to ensure diversity and inclusion in the workplace

Key Concepts
- Cultural intelligence
- Cultural norms, values, and dimensions (e.g., Hall, Hofstede, Schein, Trompenaars models)
- Techniques for bridging individual differences and perceptions (e.g., barrier removal, assimilation)
- Best practices of managing globally diverse workforces
- Interactions and conflicts of professional and cultural values

Definition
According to SHRM, Global and Cultural Effectiveness is defined “as the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) needed to value and consider the perspectives and backgrounds of all parties, to interact with others in a global context, and to promote a diverse and inclusive workplace.”19

Proficiency Indicators for All HR Professionals
Behaviors all HR professionals should be able to demonstrate include each of the following.

Having a Strong Set of Core Values While Adapting to Conditions, Situations, and People
Appreciating and accepting input from other cultures can be a beneficial management technique. But having a solid foundation in the cultural expectations where we conduct business is paramount. U.S. culture is different from culture in Israel or Chile. Each has its strong points; each can contribute to the success of our enterprise. Yet if you are based in the United States, it is critical for that success to be based on compliance with U.S. requirements and culture.

Maintaining Openness to the Ideas of Others
It only makes sense to take advantage of all the knowledge and abilities other people can offer. So, does it really matter if they are U.S. citizens or from other countries? If they have positive input to the discussions you have about employee issues, shouldn’t you be listening? The answer, of course, is “yes.” There is no expectation that you will accept 100 percent of their input 100 percent of the time. That is no more realistic than taking 100 percent of the input of U.S. employees. But overlooking valuable resources can cause you to fall short of your effectiveness goals.

Demonstrating Nonjudgmental Respect for the Perspectives of Others
By listening more and talking less, you can learn more from other people about their mind-sets. Listening shows respect for what people have to say. It doesn’t obligate anyone to agree with what is being said. It does require strong resistance to preparing rebuttal arguments while pretending to listen. When we listen to others, we can gain the nuggets of value that they have to offer.

Working Effectively with Diverse Cultures and Populations
One of the drivers of our need to communicate across cultures is the ability we now have to work remotely. It is therefore easier to have people participate from distant locations than it used to be. How we communicate effectively with them is now the problem.
Although it is not a cultural issue, time zone differences are a large issue when working with people in other parts of the world. Why? Because of this, there are often delays in responses to phone calls and messaging.
Even within the same language there are sometimes issues because of spelling differences. Labor in U.S. English is spelled labour in Great Britain and Australia. Sometimes that can confuse things. Part of the communication challenge is to be aware of these differences and encourage people to work with them, not change them for their own convenience. Thinking that someone in a different culture is stupid because they can’t spell correctly will block acceptance of any value they have to offer. And believing that someone in a different country is not very smart because they have trouble with vocabulary when speaking English can ignore the fact that they are multilingual. Only about 15 to 20 percent of Americans consider themselves bilingual, compared to 56 percent of Europeans surveyed in 2006 by the European Commission.

Conducting Business with Understanding and Respect for Differences
Our global interactions bring us into contact with customs we may find strange, even unacceptable in our own culture. For example, “Many foreigners new to Saudi Arabia have to adapt to significant limits to public interaction and contact between men and women, even in business environments. Saudi Arabia is one of the most gender-segregated countries in the world. Public places such as shopping malls, restaurants, and the workplace have entire areas that are female-only. Female businesswomen meeting male counterparts in public locations are expected to be accompanied by another male.”

Appreciating the Commonalities, Values, and Individual Uniqueness of All Humans
We each market ourselves based on our uniqueness. Our language skills, our business background, and our specific skill demonstration all become our self-expression about who we are. If we do that, wouldn’t other people as well? Of course, they do. The trick for HR professionals is to train themselves to recognize, and even encourage, self-expression from others. Getting to know who you deal with is the first stage of developing a healthy relationship. Any sales expert will tell you that it is critical to determine what the customer wants and then speak to that. In HR terms, determining a person’s background, experiences, and cultural influences is important to creating a healthy relationship with them. Find out what is important to people and then speak to that topic, and you will build a long-term relationship.

Possessing the Self-Awareness and Humility to Learn from Others
“JetBlue airlines founder and former CEO, David Neeleman, spent one day each week flying on JetBlue planes, working alongside his crew serving passengers drinks and snacks and cleaning planes between flights. By doing this, Neeleman showed his humility and that work he was expecting others to do well was not beneath him. Result: The word spread about Neeleman’s leadership and helped JetBlue become an employer of choice. Two years after JetBlue was founded, it was growing so fast it needed to hire 2,000 new employees. The company received an astounding 130,000 employment applications!”21 Humility is letting your experiences speak for themselves and not believing that you are more important than you are.

Embracing Inclusion
We would all behave with an attitude of inclusiveness if it weren’t for our personal biases. Embracing inclusion begins with recognizing our biases and working to prevent them from blocking other people’s contributions. Racial and religious biases are two of the biggest biases in our population today. To embrace inclusion, we must be able to reach out to people of different races and religions. Even though our laws say that we may not use these group memberships in our employment decisions, the biases we carry can often result in unseen discrimination. As HR professionals, we are responsible for leading the way with our organization’s staff members and getting them to focus on recognizing their own biases. Employment decision-makers must particularly keep these thoughts in the front of their thinking when selecting people for job openings, assigning training opportunities, and making other employment decisions.

Adapting One’s Perspectives and Behaviors to Meet the Cultural Context
In recent times a new term has crept into our lexicon regarding cultural acceptance and inclusion. That term is cultural quotient (CQ). It joins intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional quotient (EQ) in how we think of people. “CQ is a system consisting of three interactive components: cultural knowledge, cross-cultural skills, and cultural metacognition.”Sometimes cultural metacognition is described as cultural mindfulness. This is the ability to recognize cultural context, analyze the cultural issues, and develop strategies to work within them.

Navigating the Differences Between Commonly Accepted Practices and Laws
When meeting someone for the first time in Japan, it is customary to present a small gift. Giving gifts in Germany is usually not done and may even be considered offensive. Gifts are seldom presented in the United Kingdom or Belgium. When conducting business meetings in the Middle East, it is expected that small talk will be exchanged before beginning a business discussion.
There are scores of legal differences between countries of the world. Here are just three areas of labor law that have different expectations.
- Laws on paid time off Germany and Spain mandate 34 days of paid vacation and holidays for every worker each year, Italy and France require 31 days of paid time off, Belgium and New Zealand require 30 days, Australia mandates 28 days, and Canada’s federal law requires 19 paid days off. Even Japan, which has a reputation for working employees to their limits, requires 10 paid holidays for every worker.23 In the United States, by contrast, paid time off is mandated only under certain circumstances. For example, states such as California require paid time off for parental leave when the employee has a new child.
- Laws on paid vacations The United States is the only country with an advanced economy that does not guarantee paid vacation to its workers. In the United States, no company is required to provide paid vacations to employees or pay its employees for federal or state holidays. This is considered an optional employee benefit that employers can choose to provide. The law doesn’t mandate additional pay for employees who work on holidays unless such work is overtime as defined in state and federal law.24 Paid holiday entitlement in the European Union is set at a minimum of 4 weeks (20 days) per year, exclusive of bank holidays; however, many countries are more generous. Sweden, France, and Denmark offer the most, at 5 weeks (25 days) for a standard Monday to Friday job.
- Laws limiting hours worked In the United States, the Fair Labor Standards Act defines when overtime must be paid and how much that amount will be. There are few upper limits to employees working overtime. In Mexico, the constitution establishes a maximum of 8 work hours for shift workers, a maximum of 7 work hours for the night shift, and a maximum of 9 hours of overtime per week. For every 6 days of work, Mexico’s workers must have 1 day off.

In the European Union, the maximum average working week (including overtime) is capped at 48 hours. The minimum daily rest period is 11 consecutive hours in every 24, and breaks are required when the working day exceeds 6 hours. The European Union requires a minimum weekly rest period of 24 hours plus an 11 hours daily rest period every 7 days.

If you have employees working in other countries, it is critical that you understand the labor laws in those countries. Payroll requirements are also an obligatory focus for HR professionals.

Operating with a Global Mind-Set
Glen Fisher describes mind-sets as “differing ways that the subject at hand is perceived, understood, and reasoned about.” Stephen Rhinesmith says, “A mind-set is a filter through which we look at the world.”27 Being open to all cultural contributions doesn’t mean accepting everything that comes along. Like any problem-solving effort, it is important to establish criteria that represents the filter you will use in identifying the way forward or solution to your problem.
 

National norms are one thing; local needs may be slightly different. A classic example can be found in holiday observance. The United States generally observes the following federal holidays: New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. On the local level, Columbus Day in the Eastern portion of the country is an important holiday. Some locations have holidays like Founder’s Day and Armistice (or Veterans) Day. In other countries, the same types of examples can be identified. Walpurgis Night, the Friday After Ascension Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day are celebrated. In Brazil, holiday celebrations include Our Lady of Apparition, All Souls Day, and Public Proclamation Day. Locally, in Rio de Janeiro people celebrate holidays such as Umbanda, the Festival of the Goddess of the Sea, and June Bonfire Festivals (Festas Juninas).

Operating with a Fundamental Trust in Other Humans
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Our distrust is very expensive.” Without trust, influence wanes, intimacy erodes, relationships crumble, careers derail, organizations fail to prosper (and ultimately, also crumble), and, in short, nothing much works. Wherever trust is missing, opportunity is lost. Opportunity to collaborate, exert influence, deepen intimacy, build understanding, resolve conflict, expand peace, and succeed at the very things that matter most, individually and collectively. It’s why building trust is the foundation of every peace negotiation, every business collaboration, and every truly meaningful endeavor.
According to Roderick M. Kramer, human beings are predisposed to trust others. And touch is one way we indicate acceptance of trusting another person. The American handshake is one example. It not only says “hello” and “goodbye,” it also says many other things including “I trust we will have a good relationship.”30 Sometimes we are too eager to trust. It is important, Kramer says, to temper our trust with some conscious examination of the circumstances. HR professionals are key players in building trust with stakeholders by demonstrating that HR will do what it says it will do. Making and keeping commitments is part and parcel of a trusting relationship.

Taking the Responsibility to Ensure Inclusion
Respecting individual differences will benefit the workplace by creating a competitive edge and increasing work productivity. Diversity management benefits associates by creating a fair and safe environment where everyone has access to opportunities and challenges. Management tools in a diverse workforce should be used to educate everyone about diversity and its issues, including laws and regulations. Most workplaces are made up of diverse cultures, so organizations need to learn how to adapt to be successful.31

Incorporating Global Business and Economic Trends into Business Decisions
Incorporating sustainable development principles into a business’s mission can improve its reputation and regain public trust, increase profit margins, open new business opportunities, and reduce risks associated with less sustainable processes. Businesses are influenced to incorporate sustainable development into supply chains by consumer demand and, in some cases, by investor pressure.
HR professionals must be sensitive to economics when analyzing strategies for employee benefits, payroll issues, policy development, and business impact. It is no longer acceptable for HR professionals to work in a vacuum and just make recommendations without support from a business case analysis.

Proficiency Indicators for Senior HR Professionals
In addition to the “basic” behaviors all HR professionals are expected to master, these behaviors are essential for the success of senior HR people.

Setting a Strategy to Leverage Global Competencies for Competitive HR Advantages
More and more today, business leaders are concluding that competency in human resources is a core requirement for success. Are your human resources ready and able to answer key questions like the following?
- Do you need radical change, or will you move forward with incremental adjustments?
- Will you “rock the boat” today and add more uncertainty to your strategy, or should you wait until things are more settled?
- Is it less risky to mitigate the uncertainty of large and complex organizational changes or the potential downside of the status quo?
- Does your future business need new skills and competences, or are you comfortable with the talent you have today?

Businesses need to answer these questions, and increasingly, HR plays a key role in doing this. Suddenly, HR performance is positioned to influence the overall business performance of a company. HR leaders find themselves under heavy pressure, which calls for new skills, competencies, and profiles across the HR profession. There is also a special focus on HR senior management in charge of driving organizational medium and long-term changes.33

Using a Global Economic Outlook to Determine Impacts on the Organization’s Human Capital Strategy
Many converging issues are driving the need to rewrite “the rules.” Technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate. Individuals are relatively quick to adapt to ongoing innovations, but organizations move at a slower pace. Many still retain an industrial age structure and practices that are long outdated. Even slower moving are public policy issues such as income inequality, unemployment, immigration, and trade.
It’s these gaps among technology, individuals, businesses, and public policy that are creating a unique opportunity for HR to help leaders and organizations adapt to technology, help people adapt to new models of work and careers, and help the company, as a whole, adapt to and encourage positive changes in society, regulation, and public policy.

Maintaining Expert Global and Cultural Knowledge/Experience
Learning is a continuous process. It isn’t enough to go to a weeklong course about the culture in the country where your company wants to conduct business. It is necessary to keep up with changes in that culture and in the expectations for legal compliance and customer service. HR staffs should maintain that intercultural knowledge and experience. When someone with those talents moves on to another job, it is necessary to identify a qualified replacement so that the needed components of HR strategic contributions can be maintained.

Maintaining Expert Knowledge of Global Economic Trends
How will the global economy impact the countries in which you do business? What are the economic trends in those countries? Who has the knowledge necessary to deal with these issues? What backups do we have for that key contact person? What role does HR play in educating employees about these trends? Answer these questions, and you will be on your way to being in control of your strategic contributions.

Understanding Global Labor Markets and Associated Legal Environments
International trade and workers’ rights are two of the most complex issues in which HR can get involved. Laws vary widely around the world when focused on employee rights and treatment. Due diligence is necessary if you plan to expand into a new country. Your international labor attorney can become your best friend when that happens. You need to understand the nuances of labor laws in a new country so you can properly adjust the focus of your company’s policies. This is an example of how important HR’s contribution can be to the strategic decision-making process. Identifying workforce-related costs in the new country can contribute to a business decision-making exercise that will determine whether the move will be profitable.

Fostering the Organization’s Cultural Norms
According to SHRM, “(It) is important to have a culture based on a strongly held and widely shared set of beliefs that are appropriately supported by strategy and structure.” That’s a mouthful. It means that culture evolves from shared beliefs. And if those beliefs are not supported by strategy and organizational structure (e.g., reporting relationships), the beliefs will ring hollow with employees and others outside the organization.

If a company says, “We believe in customer service at the highest level” and then doesn’t behave as though customer service is important, the culture will wind up being based on poor customer service. Managers who say “People are our most important asset” and then cut into policies affecting working schedules and job assignments will have a decided impact on the organization’s culture. It isn’t what we say that impacts culture as much as what we do.

Proving the ROI of a Diverse Workforce
The consulting firm McKinsey & Company conducted some studies related to the question of return on investment from corporate diversity efforts.
- Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.
- Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.

Managing Contradictory Practices to Ensure Cross-Cultural Harmony and Organizational Success
If you accept the definition of culture as the patterns of behavior and beliefs shared by a group, then you can examine the impacts of those behaviors within the group. When cultures clash (e.g., religious dress codes, beards, or holiday observance), HR professionals are usually called upon to intercede and find some common-ground resolution that will fit for the entire organization. Doing so respects individual cultural expectations while preserving the employer’s need to get work done.
How these conflicts are resolved usually involves gathering data from individuals and examining what common ground exists between conflicting viewpoints. Involving those same individuals in discussions about the issues, with HR playing the facilitation role, can often result in acceptance of the common ground as a way forward.

Integrating Perspectives on Cultural Differences and Their Impact on the Success of the Organization
Some of the elements found to have the strongest impact on cross-cultural or multicultural business include the following:
- Communicating Explicit versus implicit
- Evaluating Direct negative feedback versus indirect negative feedback
- Leading Egalitarian versus hierarchical
- Deciding Consensual versus top-down
- Disagreeing Confrontation versus avoidance
- Persuading Holistic versus specific
- Scheduling Organized time versus flexible time
- Trusting Task versus relationship

Setting the Vision That Defines the Strategic Connection Between Diversity and Organizational Success
Organizational leaders are the ones on whose shoulders rest the need to set and communicate the vision for the company. They must set forth the clear desire to embrace diversity and acknowledge that diversity brings its own set of problems. With an eye on the need to resolve those conflicts, leaders can create a culture of diversity acceptance, knowing they will get a fair chance to express their needs and have those needs respected. Leaders, including HR professionals, must communicate that people should not expect to have all of their needs met as they are expressed but, through discussion and negotiation, can meet them in ways acceptable to others in the workforce as well.

Building Cross-Cultural Relationships and Partnerships
Regardless of their background, when cultural representatives interact, they can build strong cross-cultural partnerships if they observe seven tips recommended by Juliette C. Mayers.
- Seek to understand. Don’t make assumptions. Ideally you want to learn about different cultures through a variety of credible sources such as your own personal relationships, books, travel, research, and ongoing education.
- Keep an open mind. Avoid stereotypes. Expand your base by building a broad cross-section of relationships such as gender, race, sexual orientation, country of origin, and people who think differently from you.
- Start with “who you know.” The best place to start is with others who you know inside and outside of your organization, business, and social organizations.
- Attend multicultural networking events. Professional organizations, cultural events, conferences, diversity forums, minority business expos, and community events are all great places to network.
- Get involved. Volunteer and partner with groups and organizations where you can add value, while interacting and getting to know others from different backgrounds. It will take time to build trust and to establish authentic relationships, so think long-term.
- Keep your word. Establishing trust is the key to sustained successful relationships. If you say you’re going to do something, do it!
- Assume positive intent. Be positive. At some point miscommunication is likely to occur. When this happens, don’t give up. Assume positive intent and continue your journey. Persistence is the key. Stay the course and establish yourself as someone with genuine interest in maintaining relationships across cultures.