The Velcro-ing of America’s Workforce

Gladis Benavides, President
Benavides Enterprises

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I call it the "in-laws nightmare." It’s what results at far too many businesses when verbal and nonverbal communications create an unwelcoming and noninclusive work environment for employees on the same team. For employees, it’s as if they’re coming into a family that doesn’t want them and will close ranks, whether it’s informal networks, information sharing, or socializing.

This nightmare is a common product of velcro-ing, the term I believe accurately describes what some employers do when they underestimate the importance of cultural competency factors while bringing people together in an effort to create working teams. As organizations are driven by outcomes, competition, and customer and client demands, teams must respond to short timelines, management expectations, and organizational goals. These and other circumstances may create a need for employees to be velcro-ed together into instant teams.

However, without communication of organizational culture, instant teams can result in high levels of employee dissatisfaction, interpersonal conflicts, poor performance, inconsistent productivity, high turnover, and ultimately, a negative impact on the organization. Managers and supervisors need to ensure that employees have the necessary knowledge and skills to work and provide services in a culturally competent manner.

Cultural competence is about more than race, ethnicity, or national origin. It is also about the dynamics of communication across generational, urban and rural experience, geographic, economic, and educational differences. Today’s managers and supervisors must understand the dynamics of culture and its impact on the way people work together and the creation of effective and productive teams.

Establishing Communications and Behavioral Expectations

The establishment of communication norms and behavioral expectations ensures that the members of the team have a framework for communicating and working together effectively and efficiently.

A traditional manager or supervisor focuses on describing what the employees do and how tasks are completed. Today’s multicultural work teams need to know that—but they also need to understand the process by which tasks are completed, how decisions are made, and how conflicts and problems are resolved. These are elements that form the organizational culture.

The degree to which an employee understands the acceptable or preferred manner in which conflict is handled and resolved in an organization will ultimately determine whether that employee is viewed as a leader or a troublemaker.

Creating and Maintaining an Inclusive Organizational Culture

A critical element of an inclusive organization is creating and maintaining an organizational culture that promotes trust, respect, and a commitment to valuing diversity. In that context it is important that we pay attention to subtle and obvious issues that may negatively affect the work environment.

For example, communication protocols are not always obvious and formal. Success is sometimes based on the supervisors’ or employees’ ability to know the ropes and to choose the right wars. The advice and the sharing of the wisdom by those who are already in the organization and are willing to mentor and assist those coming into it is sometimes the key to new employees’ success.

On the other hand, long-term employees need to understand the need to change not because they are doing it wrong but because they may need to do it differently based on technology, changes in the market place, new ways in which to deliver services, and other factors.

Peer relations are critical to successful team building. Their verbal and nonverbal communications can either create a welcoming and inclusive work environment or force employees out of a job by creating the in-laws nightmare.

Some employers allow for socially related events sponsored by the employer where behaviors may tend to get too informal and in certain cases very inappropriate. Or spouses and significant others may not be of an expected background, religion, or sexual orientation. How employees deal with these issues might be the difference between an environment of trust and respect or liability for the employer and the loss of an excellent employee for the wrong reasons.

Tools and Strategies for Managers and Supervisors

Flexibility of management style is no longer just a preferred trait, but a critical job-related performance element for high-quality management and supervision. Changing priorities, system and organizational shifts, evolving markets, and the multicultural nature of the team’s membership are just some of the reasons why management flexibility is so important.

Traditional management styles have served us well. The skills taught to managers and supervisors in the past were appropriate for a stable, predictable environment with homogeneous workforces and similar customer or client populations.

Today’s workforce requires managers and supervisors to attain and enhance a different set of skills and competencies. These include: cross-cultural communications, leadership and "followership," coaching and mentoring, conflict management and resolution, negotiation and problem solving, and managing change and strategic planning. Cultural competency and effective diversity management are not issues of preference—they are issues of performance.

A manager or supervisor can be a successful leader by establishing a framework for internal communications for his or her team. This can include formal and informal protocols, expected use of time, space and resources, implementation of policies and procedures, and conflict management and resolution processes.

Leaders should develop training and orientation for new employees that includes information about the organizational culture, effective ways of working with people of diverse backgrounds, and their responsibility for behaviors that result in the creation and maintenance of a respectful and fair work environment.

Samuel Betances, a nationally known consultant, says, "The future is ahead of schedule." I believe the future is here now. It is a future with multicultural teams comprised of individuals who bring the richness of their life experience, their backgrounds, and at times, their multiple languages.

A leader today must understand how to navigate through organizational earthquakes, manage and deal with ambiguity, and effectively supervise, lead, and coach a multicultural and sometimes a multilingual workforce.

The nature of the work being performed, the organizational structure, the composition of your teams, and other variables may not be conducive to having a traditional team. So, instead of simply velcro-ing people together, we can provide them with an opportunity for individual and collective success by giving them the necessary tools.

Being able to play tennis does not make you a good basketball player. A good coach should be able to convey to his or her employees what game they are playing and how to win. The results are effective teams, high employee retention, efficiency, and profit.

Alliance for Children & Families Magazine
Summer 2008, Vol. 8, No. 3