Stronger Communication Practices Are Now Essential, As Remote Working Becomes a Necessity
According to new research from Globalization Partners Inc., more than 90 percent of employees who work for a global organization describe their companies as diverse. However, a lack of understanding by the organizations themselves around how to manage this growing disparate and diverse workforce means that three out of ten respondents don’t feel a sense of inclusion or belonging. This negatively impacts employee engagement, trust, happiness, as well as staff turnover.
Globalization Partners’ 2020 global employee survey, Examining the Impact of Diversity on Distributed Global Teams, asked1,725 randomly selected employees about their experience as distributed global team members. The research also uncovered that global teams are struggling to make communications work for them with 46 percent of employees still relying most frequently on email, but only 31 percent finding it effective.
Other key findings include:
- Two thirds of companies are finding it challenging to align with and be sensitive to local culture and communication styles,especially when a company spans multiple geographies.
- Organizations that embrace multilingualism are seeing better team results across the board.
- Nearly nine out of ten employees (89 percent) say their company would benefit from the assistance of outside experts to help with cultural training and cross-organization education.
“Gartner predicts that by the end of 2022, 75 percent of organizations with frontline decision-making teams in distributed geographies and with diverse mindsets will exceed their financial targets. As a company with offices in every corner of the globe, I’ve seen the incredible business advantage in hiring and building diverse teams,” said Nicole Sahin, CEO of Globalization Partners. “I also know that now more than ever, in these trying times it is critical to have the right communication tools in place to ensure success. The employee experience matters now more than ever, and collaboration tools like Slack can make a positive impact on the ability for teams to collaborate on projects and provide a social connection for employees around the world.”
For the full report, please visit: Examining the Impact of Diversity on Distributed Global Teams.
For additional information, Globalization Partners has also recently published an eBook: The Complete Guide to Building a Remote Global Team.
Survey Methodology:
The Global Employee survey was conducted by Globalization Partners® from October 31-Nov 5, 2019. This is the second annual deployment of this survey. The final sample of the survey was composed of 1,725 randomly selected fully employed persons (aged 18 or older), balanced for gender and age, who are employed at organizations with a staff size of 1,000 or more employees. Respondents were randomly provided by independent market research firm SurveyMonkey, from our list of representative countries that included Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam. Surveys were deployed in English to Singapore, India, the U.S., the UK and Canada, in German to Germany, in French to France, in Portuguese to Brazil, in Spanish to Mexico and Chile, in Vietnamese to Vietnam, in Polish to Poland, in Bahasa Indonesian to Indonesia, in Mandarin Chinese to China, and in Japanese to Japan. The survey had a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points at a 95% level of confidence. Margins of error for individual country results vary.
