Cultural Competence: the skill that underlies diversity & inclusion work.
We at Crescendo believe that through education and exposure, comes ability and understanding. Through educating and exposing employees to other ideas and other experiences, employees can work to increase their increase in cultural competence.
By now, we're sure you're asking "what is cultural competence, anyway?" and "why does it matter to me?" Never fear, we're here to teach you more about this subject and how increasing it can aides in better employee and business opportunities.
As workforces across the world diversify, so are your consumers. Companies must hire and retain talent that understands different cultures and generations, but current D&I training solutions are not affordable or effective at scale. This is where cultural competence comes in.
Breaking it Down
The definition of cultural competence:
Cultural competence is the ability to recognize that people have different experiences than you, understand the social, economic, or political reasons why those experiences are different and use that understanding to effectively empathize or build stronger relationships with people from those backgrounds.
Traditionally used in the medical and counseling industries to design culturally sensitive patient treatments, cultural competence is a skill that has a deep-rooted history and has become more ubiquitous in the past 20 years.
While 'culture' has traditionally referred to where a person is from regionally in the world, today the word has evolved to encompass the many different subcultures and intersections that have come with globalization and access to the internet. Culture now includes identities that span multiple geographies. Some examples are Age, Sexuality, Gender, Ethnicity, Socioeconomic status, etc.
Culture is a combination of the groups that people belong to, and an acceptance that is key to truly understanding an individual’s actions, behaviors, and perspectives and knowing how to properly empathize and relate to them.
At the end of the day, we see cultural competence is the skill that underlies diversity & inclusion work.
What does this mean for your company?
This has effects both inside and outside the workplace. With products and services becoming increasingly hyper-personalized, having an effective grasp of cultural competence is more important for today's workplace than ever before and has dramatic effects in roles like marketing, product design, sales, or customer success.
Increasing cultural competence in your organization can help employees learn about different cultures so they can:
Have stronger working relationships across global and distributed teams
Create products and campaigns that succeed with diverse consumers
Breaking down how Crescendo uses Cultural Competence to build products
With a goal to make learning relevant to your workplace and your business, we have considered several different approaches to building out our product for maximum effect.
As many of us know, personally and within an organization, consistency and accountability are two of the hardest parts of any D&I education program. To build Crescendo’s automated content delivery bot, we broke focused on creating a product that was:
1) Relatable: Focused on real-world stories, not training - that are specifically tailored to your location.
2) Integrated: We are where your employees are! Engages employees in Slack. Whether it’s in the office or on the go, employees can interact on their terms.
3) Personalized: Content relevant to employees’ current challenges and trends in the workplace and society.
A data-driven framework, that works
By taking existing cultural competence frameworks and applying these goals to them, we at Crescendo, in conjunction with leading researchers, have created our own understanding of cultural competence:
Cultural Competence can be broken down into 3 sections:
Awareness: Recognizing that someone’s experiences are different from your own.
Understanding: Understanding why those experiences are different from your own. This area often includes an understanding of historical, economic, political, or other social factors that result in inequity.
For example, to truly understand some of the challenges and experiences that many African-Americans face today, an individual needs to understand the economic and social history of slavery in America and how the inequities created in the past transitioned and evolved over time.
Application: Being able to apply your understanding of other people’s experiences to effectively empathize with them. Some examples of individuals and organizations who have done this effectively are:
Matt Lambert who is is known for his work in the LGBTQ+ community designed Sephora's "We Belong to Something Beautiful Campaign"
Nike with their "Dream Crazy" campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick which boosted sales and brand loyalty with Gen Z and Millenials (to the tune of 6 Billion Dollars)
Unilever with their Dove Men+Care campaign and understanding the changing concepts of gender norms inside and outside the workplace.
Bumble with their campaign in India focused on the changing norms and views on women's empowerment that Gen Z and Millenial women have in the developing country.
Bringing your employees closer together
Companies that have used our product have reported behavior changes linked to developing cultural competence. From an increase in their employees' sense of belonging at work to changes in their attitudes towards D&I learning, an intention and propensity towards learning more (they get hooked!) and to changing interpersonal behaviors.
Working towards building an inclusive and diverse space should be the forefront of every business's priorities, and even more so if they are considering expanding globally (or have already grown across the globe). By building cultural competence into your business and people's efforts, you're sure to build a brand that brings people together.