It’s a phrase we hear regularly, but what does cultural intelligence actually mean?
Cultural intelligence: an outsider’s seemingly natural ability to interpret someone’s unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures the way that person’s compatriots would [1]
It’s easy in HR to get bogged down with the more tangible day-to-day of our job, like payroll and recruitment. However, one of the most fundamental roles for HR experts is ensuring global workforces are fully supported – and that they support the wider business.
As organisations become increasingly international it’s even more key for HR to strategize to ensure cultural intelligence (or cultural quotient – CQ) crosses borders. Here at ADP we operate in more than 100 countries, bringing a series of challenges – from legislation to regulation – but more noticeable are the cultural barriers. As a result one of our most important goals is keeping culture aligned and robust, with an essential respect for individual needs, values and differences. Here are just some of the ways to ensure CQ is introduced to your workplace:
- Teach CQ
As companies get larger, the HR challenges that arise become more integral to their success or failure. If HR and management don’t incorporate the four CQ capabilities (motivation, cognition, meta-cognition and behaviour) into their employees’ learning, they could see their cultures become siloed and no longer feel part of one business.
To ensure each region, country, office and worker carry the same core values, education is key. Consider introducing a programme which improves working relationships across borders, identifying individuals’ strengths and weaknesses when interacting with others.
- Demonstrate with leadership
Behaviour is learned in a workplace, and whilst it’s vital you teach everyone CQ, it’s even more important that you ensure those in positions of leadership are demonstrating it. Management should exhibit the CQ it hopes to filter down to the workforce, working across borders to enhance the shared culture while understanding the separate distinctions. Firstly, this teaches the wider workforce these communication techniques, and secondly, ensures that employees feel their culture is respected.
- Use technology
Fostering cultural intelligence is trickier the more international a workforce is. We are also seeing a rising number of remote, contract and flexible workers adding to this problem.
HR need to consider how to properly implement technology, to ensure it doesn’t separate and alienate colleagues. Technology should be used to help connect your workforce, allowing them to communicate on a more human level despite the physical distances between colleagues.
Through building on these three techniques, CQ can become an integral and seamless part of how your workforce operates and communicates. Ideally, it will become a core part of workers’ identities from the very beginning of their employee lifecycle.
