We’ve recently commenced a piece of work assisting a multi-national organisation with the rollout of its wellbeing strategy. This organisation has offices across the Asia-Pacific region through to India, the Middle East and Africa.
As you can imagine, people across such a wide range of geographies have very different work styles and cultural norms. And as such, they have very different ideas on what wellbeing looks like to them, how it’s expressed, and what supports are the most meaningful.
This got us thinking very hard about cross-cultural elements of wellbeing – and challenging our own norms and unconscious biases along the way. We’ve become very conscious about how we structure focus group discussions for maximum effectiveness.
For example, psychological safety and ‘speaking up’ on how wellbeing or work could be improved looks very different in an individualistic, Western culture with low power distance, compared with more collectivist cultures, where you have to factor in hierarchies and the fear of causing your manager to ‘lose face’ by challenging the status quo.
That’s not to say that people from collectivist cultures can’t or won’t speak up or can’t feel psychologically safe – just that the avenues you may pursue to get there look different. We’ve included a really good blog that summarises the issue in the resources below.
By the way – you don’t even need to be from a multi-national organisation for this to be relevant. If you have a diverse workforce (which most of us do!), consider how you’re engaging in wellbeing across the entire breadth of your workforce. Telling people to speak up against bullying behaviours or open up on mental health may run into some cultural resistance.
Incidentally, this is why we strongly believe that wellbeing and D&I (diversity and inclusion) should be really closely linked. It ensures you’re meeting people where they are.
