Training Across Cultures

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As the workforce becomes more culturally diverse, it is important that trainers/instructors become aware of these changes and adapt their training methods accordingly.  

Companies are now international corporations with factories and offices in other countries outside of Canada. As a result, the employees staffing these foreign locations are nationals of different countries that will need to be trained in different ways.

Also, the growth of immigration across national borders means the Canadian workforce is now comprised of a significant number of immigrants. These cultural differences do not disappear as immigrants live and work together with Canadians.

As employers have come to terms with the changing make-up of their workforce, they have begun to implement programs such as valuing diversity and managing diversity. These programs take into consideration that most foreign employees have to learn a new language and adapt to new learning environments.  This is why it is a good idea for trainers to tailor their methods to the culturally-specific learning styles of their participants. 

Some organizational cultures are centralized and autocratic; these organizations focus on orders/lecture based training models. Effective training is based on the knowledge and expertise of the trainers, therefore all knowledge is obtained from the trainer. Organizations in Latin American take this approach, while Asian organizations also take a more content and trainer based approach.

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Organizations with a decentralized, participative organizational culture focus on trainee initiatives that focus on the learner. In decentralized workplace cultures, the effectiveness of a trainer is determined by their ability to encourage communication between themselves and participants, as well as among participants. Knowledge can be gained from both participants and the trainer. Organizations in countries like the USA, Canada and most European countries take a more interactive approach to training.

The most appropriate training methods for a particular group are the ones that challenge participants, while resulting in the least amount of resistance or discomfort for participants. For the best training results, more than one type of learning technique should be used by the instructor.

Trainers should also be aware of how their own personal values and beliefs affect their teaching methods. It is important that trainers do not appear to be imposing their own values and beliefs on their audience or they might appear preachy, and alienate participants.

Instructors also need to be aware of cultural stereotyping, which may affect the assumptions they make about the audience they are training. Stereotyping can also lead to the alienation of  the participants or audience.

Training methods need to be adjusted to accommodate the changes occurring in the gender, age and cultural diversity of the modern workforce.   



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We agree with the authors conclusions that trainers need to become more flexible, and willing to change their training method to better accommodate the cultural values of employees from different countries. We think a good instructor is able to adapt their training method to fit the audience, or even fuse approaches to include more interactive activities and oral presentations. Also, we think training sessions should facilitate open discussion and disagreement, because this could lead to more creative thinking and innovation in the worplace.

An important aspect of successful training exercises that was not mentioned in this article is having a streamlined message. Too often trainers try to fit too much information into one session and end up losing the audience’s attention to information overload or boredom. It is important to keep the audience engaged so that they can actually absorb what they are being taught. It also prevents employees from missing important information.

Here are some questions to consider and discuss:

1.  Take a look at the cartoons connected to this post. What are your thoughts? What message are they trying to convey?

2.   Do you think that training in a more diverse workplace should focus on engaging workers through a more interactive training approach or a lecture based approach?

3.  Have you ever been to a work training session? If so what was your experience with your trainer?

Training across cultures. (1995). Education & Training, 37(7), 21-21. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/237073694?accountid=3455