Cultural Fusion

The Problem with Traditional Interviewing

One way you may be communicating a lack of cultural competency in yourself and your camp may be in the way you interview job applicants.  Traditional interviews based on "gut instinct," evaluation of experience and skills, and focused on hypothetical questions test someone's interviewing skills, but fail to predict future on-the-job behavior.

A 1992 Wall Street Journal study revealed that 70 percent of hiring decisions were made on first impressions made within the first five to ten minutes of an interview.  Many of these judgments are based on "physical appearance, ethnic background, affability, and intelligence."  Telephone interviewing may actually lead to more accurate hiring decisions because it eliminates, according to Lou Adler in Hire with Your Head, "visual aspects of the first impression."

Those with "proper" social graces -- who are polite, pleasing, and articulate -- "appear more highly competent ... particularly when questions about opinions, experience, or intentions are asked."  (D. Cohen, The Talent Edge:  A Behavioral Approach to Hiring, Developing, and Keeping Top Performers)

After an initial "intuitive" judgment is made, the interviewer will start "selling" the position to the candidate if she likes her or underselling to a highly qualified candidate about whom she has gotten an initial negative impression (i.e., saying "you would be bored in this position" in the hope that the candidate will self-exclude).

Next post:  Bias and hypothetical questions in interviewing.

Dress Code - Tattoos and Piercings

Many of my clients are summer camps and Girl Scout councils.  Many camps include dress code policies in their application packet.  Dress code policies at camp not only include requirements for proper attire, but also guidelines for body piercings, tattoos, and hair color and length.  It's wise that these camps let applicants know up front whether or not they will be able to follow the organization's policies -- and whether or not they want to work there.

A Wall Street Journal Online article documented that:

one in every ten Americans have tattoos, up from one out of every hundred three decades ago, according to the Alliance of Professional Tattooists based in Annapolis, Maryland.  A growing acceptance in corporate America of Upper-middle-class women between the ages of twenty and forty, especially those that dread mutating later in life into Soccer Moms, fuel most of the growth, according to tattoo parlors.

While Boeing and Ford Motor allow "non-offensive" tattoos and piercings that are not a safety-risk, Wal-Mart and Subway ban facial jewelry.  Restrictions on tattoos and piercings are most commonly found in health-care fields, fast-food service industries and mass-market retailers.  But as the New York Times reported last month, tattoos are gaining visibility in all manner of professions.  And the customer pushback has been minimal.

Parents are a special market.  Will tattooed camp staff keep them from sending their children to camp?  Or will prohibition of tattoos keep tattooed parents from sending their children?  The topic is definitely controversial, as evidenced by the heated discussion taking place on The Wall Street Journal's blog "The Juggle."

In today's rapidly changing world, choosing to keep a possibly outmoded dress code needs careful consideration, rather than "that's the way we've always done it."  Tattoos and piercings are common in many ethnic cultures, including some we might not think of as ethnic (think Ed Bradley and his earring).

Businesses that are looking to increase diversity in their workforce, and consequently in their customer base, might have to rethink policies that clearly eliminate expression of certain ethnicities and religion, other than mainstream (whatever that is anymore in most countries).

Wondering about the legalities of your dress code and visible tattoos and piercings?  Check out this intelligent post at the Pennsylvania Labor and Employment Blog. And over at the HR Capitalist is a discussion about the economic impact that tattoos may or may not be having on your business.

Dress Codes - IT and Jeans

My husband is a software engineer.  If you've hung around any IT folks in the U.S. for very long, you know that they make business casual look fancy.

I once asked my husband what the presenters at a "No Fluff, Just Stuff" conference wore.  I was surprised to learn that most of them wore jeans, and probably wouldn't be respected if they had shown up in a tie.  For engineers, it really is a matter of what you know being primary.

Software engineers are the folks that have to work overnight the day a product goes live.  How neat your code is trumps how neat your clothes are.

The corporation where my husband works has recently decided that the quality of dress might be more important than the quality of work.  They can't quite make up their mind if the IT department is allowed to wear jeans or not and considering taking disciplinary action against those who don't show up in khakis. 

Imagine the time that was wasted in meetings on this inane topic when the IT department was coming upon a major product launch.  Yikes!

I'm all for presenting yourself in dressy clothes when it matters.  If I give a presentation, even at the weekly Toastmasters meeting, you guarantee I'll be in a blazer.  If you're departments such as sales, human resources or you sell fine jewelry, dressing to the nines is probably appropriate.  There's also plenty of legal precedent for having different dress codes for different departments or regions.  (See this post on the Human Resource Blog about when it's okay to have variations in dress code.)

To be culturally competent, there's going to be mixed standards if you have a combination of fields in one company.  Gone are the days where one size fits all and everyone wears a tie.

Cultural competency in benefits

Are your benefits programs in your workplace culturally competent?  Do they meet a variety of needs and backgrounds?  For seasonal, temporary and permanent year-round employees, which of the following do you have?

• College-credit internship programs in a wide variety of fields
• Health insurance that includes mental health coverage and domestic partner benefits
• Diversity trainings
• International festivals and other ways the organization celebrates diversity
• Floating holiday leave that allows employees one to two days to celebrate the holidays of their choosing
• Acceptance of modern variations in professional appearance across the organization (e.g. the IT department gets to wear jeans)
• Child care assistance and maternity and paternity leave
• Sabbatical leave for long-time employees

Even if some of these benefits do not apply to a particular employee (i.e., a temporary or seasonal employee), knowing that the organization has considered the cultural needs of its staff overall may assure employeees that they have found a great place for them to work.

Is your organization culturally blind?

Previously, I asked you to figure out where you might lie along the Cultural Competence Continuum.  Chances are, in the United States or not, your organization is suffering from "cultural blindness."  You make sure there's no overt discrimination and the language is free of racial epithets, but culture isn't freely discussed.

The political correctness movement of the early nineties scared many Americans into a state of "don't ask, don't tell" for anything obviously cultural.  For instance, one camp I worked at forbids the wearing of any T-shirts by the staff that state any sort of religious belief (i.e., "WWJD" on the shirt pocket).  Instead of celebrating the diversity of spiritual traditions represented on the staff, the camp instead chose to completely eliminate all mention of religion.  For staff, campers and parents with strong beliefs and cultural ties, such policies can be terribly alienating.

A shift in attitude is necessitated by today's world.  Instead of following the "Golden Rule" (i.e. treat others as you would wish to be treated), the twenty-first century necessitates the "Platinum Rules" (i.e., treat others as they wish to be treated). 

If we indeed treat everybody equally (the equivalent of everyone wearing a plain navy blue T-shirt everyday), we're doing them a disservice.  Where diversity is masked and not celebrated, we feel depressed.  How sad to deny expression of so much of ourselves, that is, our culture.

Attracting culturally competent employees

Culturally competent individuals (those from both minority and dominant cultures) will be most attracted to organizations that value the contributions of a diverse array of individuals from all cultural backgrounds.  If one cultural group is openly rejected from your organization (i.e., making sure "homosexuals" or "retards" know they are unwelcome), others may fear that their culture may be the next target, or they are simply unwilling to work for or donate to such an intolerant organization.

Who might your organization be purposely excluding?  Who is not welcome in your organization?  Think you're welcoming everybody?

Think again.  There may be subtle ways you're making sure that not everyone is welcome.  Watch the next few posts for details.