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Ensuring global collaboration: Proposal for Opal Mart store staff in intercultural communication

Executive Summary

To succeed in a high cultural environment, intercultural competence is necessary. A lack of cultural knowledge will result in a loss of business, a failed job assignment, poor customer relationships, employee turnover, and ultimately wasted time and investment.

Our program offers an intercultural communication program that specifically targets your company's concerns, needs, and wants. It is based on theoretical and practical approaches ensuring participants are equipped with sufficient knowledge and high-quality and all-rounded interpersonal skills. It is grounded on the participants' needs, interactive techniques and practical relevance. This 5-day training course covers every aspect needed to unpack intercultural barriers such as self-cultural awareness, acknowledgment of others, valuation of cultural differences, identification and avoidance of stereotypes and appreciation of other cultures. We will provide you with a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges of having intercultural communication in the workplace based on our experience and expertise. The training runs a total of 20 hours, 4 hours each day.

CommBridge is more than capable of assisting your company in achieving intercultural competence through effective training techniques. Our company aims to create bridges that connect employees to more robust, more efficient, and effective workplace communication. We strive to establish meaningful global collaboration for every client we handle; thus, in CommBridge, you are well-handled.

As globalization continues to be omnipresent in the world of business, so do the challenges of interacting with people from different cultures daily. CommBridge’s Intercultural Communication Training Program is designed to address these development needs.

Having a high culturally diverse workforce poses significant challenges in how employees work and communicate with each other. An approach that is effective in another culture is not necessarily applicable to the other. Such differences can quickly contribute to miscommunications and conflicts between teams, eventually causing the company to lose time, resources, and people.

Given the sheer scope of intercultural communication and the risks of ignoring and being unaware of these cross-cultural differences, it is only appropriate that employees learn corporate communication dynamics. To allow successful and professional performance across cultures, inclusivity must provide all employees with the requisite global competence (Hargie & Tourish, 2009).

The intercultural communication training program of CommBridge will unpack the five phases of successful internal communication that are concrete and easily accessible global strategies that will help reduce the risks and obstacles posed by cross-cultural work at Opal-Mart.

The training is specifically designed for Opal-Mart’s store staff. It has been mentioned that the company experiences miscommunications among its employees. This program will not only enhance the communication skills of the participants but will also improve their interpersonal skills. Employees’ communication and interpersonal skills will influence whether or not they advance in their careers. An essential element of workplace growth, therefore, is investing in enabling employees to communicate effectively across different cultures. Doing so will increase their rank position as an Opal-Mart employee.

Purpose of the training

This intercultural training program aims to fill the cross-cultural gaps between employees. It intends to broaden cultural understanding and make the process easier by providing them with the necessary knowledge, skills and techniques to engage effectively across other cultures.

By the end of the program, participants should be able to:

1. Enhance their own intercultural understanding and develop broader sense of inclusiveness.

2. Improving their perception of the impact on communication styles of cultural values and attitudes

3. Learn to identify what obstacles that hinder in achieving effective intercultural communication

4. Recognize and avoid stereotyping in the workplace

5. Design and incorporate methods to develop their communication skills in

Training Philosophy

(Company Logo)

Our course is specifically designed based on theoretical and practical approaches. The training program is adopted from the African Americans Multicultural Interventions (Beckett et al., 1997). It is based on the five stages of intercultural communication programs that design the multicultural communication process model of multicultural competencies. We believe that a training program that offers theoretical and practical applications can provide a deeper understanding of intercultural communication and help acquire specific techniques as a tool for success for both the employees and the organization.

The company's training philosophy underpins the training program – To build and nurture inclusivity in the workplace. CommBridge believes that having cultural diversity is not enough. Inclusiveness is where the differences between individuals are respected and used to allow all to succeed at work. Employees develop a sense of belonging when organisations are more inclusive, which is extremely critical in building bridges of trust, respect, and understanding across cultures (Prince & Hoppe, 2000). How does one company achieve this? It starts with our competent and global intercultural training program. This will allow Opal-Mart staff to explore how different cultural perspectives, values, and patterns affect how they communicate and how it translates to achieving the company's business goals. CommBridge provides advice and practical expertise to identify successful and meaningful solutions to issues resulting from cultural diversity. In our company, we strive to create bridges for more robust and more effective communication.

(Poppulo, 2019)

The course will cover five phases of unlocking intercultural barriers.

1.Self - Knowledge of Self

· Helping participants to be culturally self-aware

2.Others - Knowledge of the cultural differences

· Enhancing employees’ knowledge of cultural differences

3.Difference - Acknowledgement and valuation of cultural differences

· Understanding different intercultural communication frameworks

4.Assumptions - Identification and avoidance of stereotypes

· Unpacking and reflecting workplace stereotyping

5.Appreciation - Appreciation of other employees’ cultures

· Developing sense of empathy

Timeframe and Delivery Mode

The program runs a total of 20 hours, 4 hours each day. It fits with the employees’ work schedule as they cannot be absent the whole day. Store staff will be divided equally to attend the training and others to man the store.

1. Improved trust and barrier-free communication

· This training program will enhance participants' knowledge and skills to work effectively and efficiently in a high cultural workplace environment. It broadens one's understanding of different intercultural communication frameworks. Additionally, it helps them communicate effectively across different cultures and thus eliminate intercultural barriers (Beckett et al., 1997). As such, fostering the sympathetic listening and understanding of various cultures can form mutual understanding and trust.

2. More efficient and more competitive team

· Our program serves as a bridge in promoting clear communication channels and better working relationships. Through this course, the participants can enhance their cohesion and self-confidence to master demanding workplace challenges. Moreover, it enhances the cooperative cooperation and improves work efficiency and productivity.

3. Broader thinking and vision

· Our cross-cultural training will help them improve their cultural awareness, thus broadens mindset and vision. We will guide the participants in finding the emotional balance and creatively shape the framework of collective behavior, which are considered essential skills in today's world and should be taught (Szkudlarek, 2009). This skill can help adapt to the current world development and push the company to go international.

Conclusion

To conclude, our training proposal demonstrates the keys points of intercultural communication. It delivers high-quality and all-rounded intercultural training for the participants. The program focuses on enhancing one's intercultural communication skills and moulding intercultural perspectives and insights. Moreover, it highlights the importance of cultural awareness in building mutual trust, respect, and collaboration to achieve better work performance and productivity. Therefore, our high-quality intercultural training program can provide a competitive advantage for the employees to be more competitive and outstanding in the business market. As such, this positive working environment can retain and attract more talented workers at Opal-Mart.

Beckett, J.O., Dungee-Anderson, D., Cox, L., & Daly, A. (1997). African Americans and multicultural interventions. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 67(3), 540-563.

Hargie, O. & Tourish, D. (2009). Auditing Organizational Communication: A Handbook of Research, Theory and Practice, Routledge, London.

Kalinoski, Z. T., Steele-Johnson, D., Peyton, E. J., Leas, K. A., Steinke, J., & Bowling, N. A. (2013). A meta-analytic evaluation of diversity training outcomes. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34, 1076-1104.

Prince, D., & Hoppe, M. (2000). Communicating across cultures. Center for Creative Leadership.