A productive and healthy workplace environment requires progressive management dedicated to practicing cultural competence. Simply put, cultural competence represents a set of behaviors, attitudes, and policies converging in the workplace to enable efficient productivity in cross-cultural situations.

Culture refers to integrated patterns of human behavior that include the language, thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, and values associated with racial, ethnic, religious, age or social groups. Competence implies possessing the capacity to function effectively as an individual and an organization within those divergent cultural beliefs, behaviors, and needs evident in employee and customer communities.

Cultural competence is more than just good business; it is the right thing to do. In today’s economy rewards flow from efficiency, innovation, creativity and human resource practices that embrace diversity and inclusion.

Good management that practices cultural competency is more than respectful, it is an organization that values diversity and inclusion; a workplace that promotes harmony as a distinguishing attribute to attract and sustain the best talent. Smart companies recognize the competitive advantage that exists when they embrace and cultivate a diverse work force.

Cultural competence within the context of diversity and inclusion requires commitment and dedication. It is a developmental process evolving over an extended period, and one that recognizes that employees and management are at various levels of awareness, knowledge and skills.

While we can agree that cultural diversity in the workplace uses employees’ skills to their fullest, and contributes to our overall growth and prosperity, the reality is cultural competence may still be an abstract or misunderstood concept to some executives and managers.

It is never too late for management to become more culturally competent and institute practical methods that affect performance, motivation, success, and interactions with others that break barriers and open pathways to higher individual and institutional performance.

To achieve cultural competence, management needs to recognize that diversity and inclusion are not code words for expedient affirmative action on race, ethnicity and gender. It is much broader. Cultural diversity embraces human qualities that are different from our own and outside the groups to which we belong, but are present in other individuals and groups in our community, schools, businesses and houses of worship.

Management must recognize and embrace the concept that managing diversity well not only creates a competitive strength, but that organizational systems, practices and training need to be well-planned and implemented to maximize potential advantages, while minimizing potential disadvantages.

To attain and sustain cultural diversity, management should:

• Assess the impact of organizational policies, practices and ways of thinking on different cultural groups.
• Review what organizational changes may need changing to meet needs of diverse workforce to maximize potential of all employees.
• Revise the golden rule into the platinum rule of establishing policies and programs that treat people as they want to be treated, which incorporates culturally sensitive ways of managing a diverse workplace.

Management holds the key to achieving cultural competence that honors and reflects the values and benefits of a diverse workforce. This includes committing to understanding and accepting responsibility for managing culturally diverse concepts. It also requires becoming more self-aware of your own culture, identity, biases, prejudices and stereotypes. Last but not least, management must possess the courage to challenge and change institutional practices and break barriers.