Introduction
Business communication is a vital concept that makes it possible for organizations to improve their internal and external work functions. Organizations that have proper communication policies are likely to benefit from their employees’ skills and talents.
Business firms need to establish strong inter-cultural human resource policies to enable their workers perform their duties more effectively. This makes them have organizational cultures that are multi ethnic and this strengthens their appeal in the global market.
Cultural, political and racial differences may act as barriers to effective communication in large organizations if they are not handled properly. Business firms need to improve their workplace communication strategies to help them achieve positive results out of different workplace functions.
This paper will discuss key elements and processes of international business communication and how they contribute to effective communication between employees at work.
Diagram 1: An illustration of international business communication processes.
Cross-Cultural Skills
Managers need to improve their cross cultural skills to make them adapt to changing work environments they are exposed to. They need to understand employees’ backgrounds to enable them to communicate effectively with them.
Managers need to improve their communication skills to make them understand strategies they need to use to get quality output from their employees.
This makes it possible for them to create strong workplace systems that recognize the importance of ethnic diversity and cultural exchanges at all levels. Globalization has increased interactions between people from different countries, cultures and racial backgrounds.
This has made more organizations recognize the importance of embracing human resource diversity at the workplace (Karahanna, Evaristo & Srite 2005, p. 8).
Therefore, international business firms need appropriate communication strategies that allow their multi ethnic employees to interact freely and exchange different ideas at work.
Language
International business organizations have workers who communicate in different languages as they perform duties. Business organizations need to encourage their employees to improve their language skills to make them achieve their objectives at work.
Employers need to understand that employees have different linguistic skills which impact on the way they communicate. English is widely spoken in many parts of the world. However, there are significant numbers of people who speak French, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic.
An international business organization needs to employ multi lingual employees who are able to communicate easily in different languages (Samovar, Porter & McDaniel 2007, p. 46).
Programs need to be put in place to encourage all employees to communicate in one language to ensure they understand each other easily. The workplace environment needs to be made more flexible to make it possible for all employees to improve their language skills.
Cultural Practices and Barriers
Workers should be trained to distinguish misunderstandings that occur due to language barriers. Employees deduce different meanings out of phrases used by their supervisors to communicate instructions at work.
For instance, a phrase that seems normal in English may be offensive to a person who comes from a different cultural background, where English is not spoken widely.
Effective communication at the workplace can only be achieved if all employees make efforts to understand and accommodate their colleagues’ cultural differences. All employees need to take note of prejudices and other habits that may hinder positive interpersonal communication at work.
Employees need to be encouraged to bond with their colleagues to enable them collaborate more effectively. This makes it easy for workers to encourage each other to improve the way they perform their duties (Schmidt 2007, p. 77).
There are different cultural practices observed in various regions in the world and they may act as barriers to effective communication.
Employees should be encouraged to be more tolerant towards their colleagues’ cultural differences to ensure work functions are not disrupted by breakdowns in communication. Multinational corporations have operations in different countries in the world.
Therefore, their employees work in different geographical time zones, which make it difficult for them to communicate (Kim 2002, p. 96).
It is necessary for all employees to be made aware of different corporate cultures practiced in various company locations to establish good working relationships.
An international organization needs to develop a comprehensive communication policy that makes all employees in different locations to have a common understanding of what is expected of them.
This will make it possible for all employees to understand what they need to achieve as they perform duties assigned to them at work.
Leaders in charge of multi ethnic employees need to understand their employees’ religious backgrounds and how they affect their performance.
They need to interact with their employees more to understand religious ideals that are valuable to them to ensure they perform their duties effectively.
For instance, an American working in the Middle East needs to understand that Islam is a way of life there and some habits are considered offensive. He needs to understand how to communicate with other employees to ensure that he does not offend them.
He needs to adjust to an environment that is culturally conservative where people get offended by certain habits.
For instance, in many Islamic societies, alcohol consumption and promiscuity are considered as despicable habits. Therefore, expatriate workers need to learn how to communicate with people they work with in to ensure they perform their duties more effectively (Kim 2002, p. 108).
Business firms need to establish positive links with all stakeholders to make them more competitive in what they do. They also need to anticipate how customers are likely to react to different situations to help them establish strong consumer relationships.
Business firms that operate in different global markets need to conduct market studies to find out more about specific cultural practices that are observed in different areas.
This approach helps them understand how they need to communicate with their customers to improve their image in the market. Therefore, this makes it possible for an organization to develop suitable products and services that meet the needs of customers in specific market segments.
Employees need to be trained on effective communication practices to ensure they interact well with customers. This helps a firm to develop effective communication practices that help it strengthen relationships it has with its clients (Rugimbana & Nwankwo 2003, p. 120).
Conclusion
In conclusion, business firms need to develop effective communication policies to make their workers appreciate working in multicultural corporate environments. They need to establish positive working environments that encourage employees to communicate freely.
They also need to eliminate cultural, language and social barriers that discourage intercultural harmony at the workplace.
This will make them more competitive in their functions to ensure they achieve their objectives more effectively. Organizations need to harmonize their internal processes to ensure smooth flow of work place processes.
References
Karahanna, E, Evaristo, R & Srite, M 2005, ‘Levels of culture and individual behavior: an integrated perspective’, Journal of Global Information Technology Management, vol. 13, pp. 1-20.
Kim, MS 2002, Non-Western perspectives on human communication, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks.
Rugimbana, R & Nwankwo, S 2003, Cross-cultural marketing, Thomson Learning, Melbourne.
Samovar, L, Porter, R & McDaniel E 2007, Communication between cultures, Wadsworth, Belmont.
Schmidt, WV 2007, Communicating globally: intercultural communication and international business, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks.