Cultural clashes

Office attitudes

Leaders in the building and construction sector need to learn new skills to manage multi-cultural teams, claims Bradford University School of Management. An increase in overseas nationals makes it a challenge for managers to work out whether the problem with an overseas employee is because of poor skills, attitude, language or different cultural perspectives.

According to the School, the number of overseas nationals working in the UK last year increased by 51%. To help managers understand the key cultural issues that could affect performance, the university has produced a guide called ‘International Cultures: differences that enrich our lives’.

The guide covers issues such as the need for some cultures to avoid loss of face, the impact of learning by rote or through creative or challenging thinking, understanding how different cultures view success and failure, and how some cultures have little grasp of team working.

“In researching this guide, we realised many difficulties at work are often attributed to language problems – and it can take months for a manager to realise it is a different cultural approach,” says Arthur Francis, Dean of the School of management.

“Business leaders need to understand and develop techniques to manage cultural differences, which can affect health and safety, product quality and efficiency – to say nothing of not making the most of the skills of employees,” he adds.

According to Alan Needle, former divisional CEO at Filtronic, problem-solving meetings can be a particular problem for multicultural teams: “Our western culture encourages a proactive approach to thinking – we are used to trying out ideas and putting them forward. Other cultures do not want the risk of losing face if an idea is not accepted,” he explains. He says that if you ask a team with a mix of westerners and Chinese people to look at a problem together, the westerners will be the ones talking too much while the Chinese will stay mostly silent.

Business

Business organisation the CBI and Trades Union body TUC have signed a pledge to change current working practices.

The Work Wise UK Concordat supports the development and implementation of objectives to promote smarter working practices, such as flexible working, home working, and mobile and remote working. By adopting smarter working practices the organisations hope to improve workers’ work-life balance, reduce time spent travelling and improve productivity.

The aim is for thousands of other organisations to sign the concordat, via the Work Wise website (www.workwiseuk.org) over the coming months.

Legal

Lawyers are advising business owners to pay close attention to the draft Corporate Manslaughter Bill as it passes through the House of Lords early this year. If it becomes law the Bill will mean that companies will face prosecution for manslaughter if they cause the death of an employee through management failings, warns law firm Mace & Jones.

“The Bill covers the whole of the UK and will enable the courts to consider the overall picture of how an organisation’s activities were managed, rather than focusing on the actions of one individual,” says lawyer Ian Hodgkinson. The Bill will also lift Crown immunity for government departments.

Business

Corporate failures have jumped by almost 11% in 2006, according to business information provider Experian.

The company says there were 20,067 business failures last year. The largest number of failures in a single sector was 4202 in the business services sector, followed by the building materials and property sectors.

Of the 34 industries reviewed by Experian, only 12 industries recorded a fall in corporate failure including the oil and utilities industries. London was the region with the highest increase in business failures, up 29.2%, while Yorkshire and the Humber had the lowest increase in failures – up just 2.1%.