Culture Coach

Is your organization interested in recruiting and retaining a skilled immigrant workforce but you don’t know how to do that?
Do you need cultural information, protocol or business etiquette details to help you increase your international market share?
Do you need training tools and programs to help new employees transition to your workplace, e.g., English as Additional Language or multi-lingual training materials?
Are you looking for tools and resources to manage diversity and foster effective cross-cultural communications in your workplace but don’t have time to search for relevant, cost-effective sources and resources?
Do you want to offer diversity, cultural competence, civility, or social intelligence training to your work teams or need toolkits and trainer programs that would enable your in-house trainers to deliver this training?

Civility Experts in partnership with The Center for Organizational Competence (COCC) offers the following to assist your organization in becoming more culturally competent.

At your fingertips culture resources and reference materials 24/7 through www.theculturecoach.ca
Programs for welcoming immigrants into your workplace
Culture at Work© Train-the-Trainer
Culture at Work© Workshops including:

Navigating a World of Differences© – Building Cultural Competence

With labour pool shortages looming in almost every industry sector, employer’s are increasingly reliant on recruiting and retaining immigrants and internationally trained professionals. This necessary influx of diversity in our workplaces creates an opportunity to embrace and build on the wealth of experiences, histories, customs and perspectives of others. But, to reap all those benefits, we need to be able to set aside our fears and biases and embrace change. To effectively retain diverse employee pools, organizations must reach beyond cultural awareness and consciously choose to build cultural competence.

With assistance from civility and culture expert Lew Bayer, participants in this workshop will engage in compelling self-assessments, interactive exercises and lively discussions, and learn to do just that. Topics covered include:

Recognizing how the current immigration demographics impact your organization
Differentiating between cultural awareness and cultural competence
Identifying your personal biases, values, and assumptions and learning how these hinder your cultural competence
Choosing respectful language that shows you value others
Being attentive to culture-based differences in work style and motivation
Having a stronger comfort and knowledge level in communicating and interacting with people of multiple cultures

Setting Your Workplace Culture Compass™

The face of the Canadian workplace is changing. By 2012 statistics show that almost 100% of the Canadian Labour pool growth will be New Canadians. Progressive businesses understand that in order to compete locally and nationally they need to prepare for these changes. This interesting and practical workshop assesses current organizational culture using the Cultural Compass Assessment Tool™, analyzes the outcomes and offers strategy and techniques for setting your workplace culture compass for success.

NOTE: This is an assessment workshop, delivered as a half-day session. After the session, the client is provided with an outcomes summary and recommendations for ongoing customized training.

NEW – Working around the World: Business practices and workplace culture

If you travel for business or if your organization interacts with organizations around the globe, fostering respect and understanding the business etiquette and culture of those you work with makes good business sense. For this workshop, you choose 4 countries of interest, and the experts at COCC will prepare a tailored workshop about the business practices and workplace culture of those countries. (*To allow for appropriate customization time, this session must be booked a minimum of 90 days in advance of desired training day)

Canadian eh! Fitting into the Canadian Workplace Culture

Starting a new job can be an adjustment for anyone, but for New Canadians including Internationally Educated Professionals, fitting into a workplace where the nuances of communication are not included in the company policy manual can be especially difficult. This session – intended for an immigrants and New Canadians audience, hi-lights aspects of workplace culture such as: nonverbal communication, elements of rank, gender issues, social expectations, workplace dress and decorum and other organizational culture subtleties that are specific to most Canadian workplaces.

Building a Culture of Connectedness™

In a world where a click of a button creates global business opportunities and workplaces are increasingly more diverse, forward-thinking companies recognize that respecting our differences while focusing on what people all over the world have in common is the first step to improving business communication and overcoming demographic obstacles. Understanding that we are all ultimately focused on the business priority and making efforts to connect in a human, high-touch way builds long-lasting business relationships.

Join Canada’s Civility at Work™ Expert, author, and entrepreneur Lew Bayer and learn best practices for creating a culture of connectedness. Topics covered include: how different cultures handle some of the basics of civility in the workplace including: greetings and introductions, corporate and personal gift-giving, multi-cultural dining, guidelines for interacting and communicating during meetings and negotiations, professional attire and gender and other sensitive issues.

Building Capacity in Multi-Generational Workplaces

“People resemble their times more than they resemble their parents” Arab proverb.

There are at least 3 and in many cases 4 generations represented in most workplaces in almost every occupation, and in every sector. By understanding the expectations, experiences, and perspectives of co-workers and by addressing some of the issues that arise in multi-generational workplaces, we can reduce stress, increase productivity, build relationships, and impact the bottom line. The objective of this interesting and relevant workshop is to enable participants to be able to:

Describe the four generations: Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennial (Gen Y/Nexters).
Recognize influencers in each generation.
Identify potential “hot buttons” in mixed generational work teams.
Adopt strategies for leveraging generational differences.
Apply best practices for recruiting, retaining, and managing performance of a multi-generational workforce.

Topics covered in this session include:

Generational concepts and demographics.
The values and expectations of each generational group.
Generational work styles and impact in the workplace.
Engaging and Motivating each generational group.
Recommendations, Application, and Insights.