Make Certain Your Online Training Program Includes Cross-Culture Elements
For corporate success, diversity and acceptance are key. How do you offer online training courses that appreciate and teach every member of your team how to honor cultural differences?
Online Training Resources You Should Include In Cross-Cultural Online Training
In the workplace, cross-cultural online training helps create awareness and acceptance. When workers are more conscious of different cultures and social standards, it also helps their clients, which allows them to improve the customer experience. It goes beyond just respecting cultural diversity, and encourages the corporate learners, even though they do not agree with them, to respect the ideas, views, and ideas of others. To be included in your online training course, here are 8 important cross-cultural online training tools.
Online Training Cross-Cultural Elements to Include
1. Invite Multicultural Instructors to Host Webinars
Invite various members of the company to host their own live online training experience, reflecting different cultures. As a Q&A or a more involved presentation that includes online training activities and supplementary online training tools, it can be anything simple. The aim is to provide the opportunity for each member of your organization not only to learn about new cultures but to ask real-time questions. A webinar is a two-way dialogue that helps us to do away with preconceived ideas of how or what they think a society behaves. The hosts can also discuss experiences in the workplace that have made them feel out of place or awkward. In reality, that encourages participants to think about their behaviour and whether they are out of touch with cultural diversity.
2. Use Real World Case Studies in Your Program
Text-based stories can give workers a glimpse of other cultures, but simulations of online training allow them to immerse themselves in scenarios in the real world. For example, an online training simulation that poses specific challenges that may be faced on the job by clients from certain backgrounds. Or issues in which their foreign co-workers have to deal regularly. By learning what it’s like to step into the shoes of others, these immersive online training platforms help them communicate at a deeper level.
3. Address Skill Development Cross-Cultural Opportunities
A critical part of the cross-cultural online training course is interpersonal skills. As well as reading their body language, facial gestures, and other non-verbal signals, corporate learners must be able to communicate with others and value their points of view. Branching situations give the workers the ability to improve these valuable skills and learn from their mistakes. They must work with a virtual employee, for example, who comes from a different context.
4. Avoid Cliché’s and Bias
Even if they aren’t conscious of it, some workers might be depending on assumptions. These need not always be negative. They may be under the impression, for example, that certain cultures are astute negotiators or that they excel in a certain skill. Stereotyping, however, still stands in the way of societal acceptance and comprehension. With real-world examples, you can help dispel the most popular misconceptions and preconceptions. The use of personal anecdotes as subtle eye-openers is another perfect way of questioning their assumptions.
5. Increase Empathy By Sharing Your Perspective
Seeing things from a new viewpoint will assist corporate learners to consider others’ motives and choices, including those of their co-workers and clients. It also encourages them to cultivate compassion and develop cultural understanding. POV stories give them the ability, from a particular point of view, to discuss problems and circumstances. They will learn, for instance, how client complaints are treated by their counterparts from foreign branches. Or, by showing them how it’s done in their respective country, why clients can find their sales pitch too pushy.
6. Leverage Facebook and Twitter Groups
Already, social media brings us together and introduces us to new cultures. In online preparation, however, you can also use it to your advantage. Launch a closed social media community that enables your culturally diverse employees to share their experiences in a more private environment. Given the fact that they can upload resources, links, and tips to help their peers raise cultural awareness, this also serves as a valuable knowledge-sharing forum. As an example, workers from your branch in Germany can offer a taste of what it’s like to do business in their part of the world to their American counterparts. Or even provide insights that help them plan in Europe for a customer meeting or product launch.
7. Help People Understand Your Sensitivity
To avoid offending, every culture has some etiquette laws that must be followed. For individuals who don’t have the same history or experiences, however, certain “norms” can appear odd or unfounded. Video demonstrations will help the workers understand etiquette, and why upholding the unwritten rules is so important. They help you learn, for instance, how to greet a Japanese client through video conferencing. Or how a gift from a customer who finds it perfectly appropriate to deliver a token of appreciation can be respectfully refused. Despite the reality that your COI protocols are being violated. Demo videos may also provide a short guide for troubleshooting to resolve the cultural “gap” without disrespecting the other group. They will teach you, for instance, how to let a co-worker know that their acts or remarks are not acceptable or that they violate regional compliance practices.
8. Role Playing Can Be Very Effective
It is entertaining to add serious games, and this attracts employees to encourage them to immerse themselves in the online training environment. However, they may also express meaningful experiential awareness that encourages workers to test new social norms and cultural perspectives. Each level of the serious game, for example, delves into how the same situation is treated by five distinct cultures. Like meeting etiquette for clients or settling a job conflict. Corporate learners must navigate the challenge effectively and choose the best course of action based on the values and etiquette of that community.
My Thoughts
A healthy work climate is created by cross-cultural online training that makes workers feel inclusive and valued for who they are. No matter where they come from or what professional goals they might have. Use this article to cover 8 main components of a cross-cultural online training course and promote your remote workers to an all-inclusive culture.
Does your latest online training course honor various points of view and make it feel welcome to any member of your team? It is more than essential for modern organizations today to design culturally responsive online training. Consider hiring an eLearning content provider who can deliver niche expertise if you are prepared to go global and build a cross-cultural online training but still have a bunch of questions emerging.