The Key to Measuring Cross-Cultural Competence

Today’s global organizations know that they have to go beyond just being legally compliant in the way different cultures are treated in the workplace. They understand the importance of ensuring that their employees are cross-culturally competent.

Cross-cultural competence has become critical to the overall health and performance of geographically dispersed organizations. It can be defined as the ability to navigate through cultural differences in order to reach practical goals in a way that makes sense. For organizations, it means that the workplace is not hampered by diversity but strengthened by it…employees are able, individually and collectively, to manage differences so they can work productively together.

Training measurement experts claim that, just as with other competencies, cultural competence can be assessed and measured.

Your goal should be to determine just what employees need to know and how they need to behave to work more effectively with one another in your unique environment for your specific strategy. Once the gaps are identified, then you can begin to design a diversity education program that targets the specific issues in your organization. You are no longer guessing; you know what to focus on to make your organization more productive and inclusive.