Cross-Cultural Success: Settling in Australia

If your company has a new employee from another city or state, perhaps you would ask another employee to welcome them – point out popular places for lunch, give them directions to the nearest public transit station, and recommend a local bank. But what if the new manager is from a different country? They may not understand when someone says “fair dinkum” when they present their arguments.

Think of the many things the new manager must learn: new geography, new transportation system, new form of government, new currency, new climate, and new language idioms (or even a new language). In Australia, even our toilets are different from those in other countries because ours are dual-flush. We’ve seen Americans forgetting to drive on the left side of the road, or struggling to tip the right amount in a restaurant.

Our staff members have experience in moving and traveling to other countries. We studied the languages, navigated the local shops, used public transit, made friends, and “went native,” going beyond typical tourist activities in each country. For example, one of our team members is a native Aussie who has lived and worked in the U.S., Germany, and Malaysia. Another is from Hong Kong and has lived and worked in the U.K., France, and Austria before moving to Australia. We have a Chinese consultant who lived in Japan, Germany, and China before moving to Australia.

In addition, we have worked with thousands of tourists and new immigrants in our research projects, which helps us to see our own country through the eyes of a foreigner.

These experiences have taught us the most important essentials about moving to another country and quickly assimilating a new culture. We share these lessons in a workshop we call “Cross-Cultural Success: Settling In Australia.”

For example, we welcomed some newly-arrived Brazilian executives and their families from a multi-national American company in one of the Cross-Cultural Success workshops. Our agenda for the personalised workshop (which was delivered in English and Portuguese by our bilingual consultant) included:

• Australia itself – geography (map basics, comparing Aussie cities to U.S. cities by size and industry), demographics, history overview, political system
• Australian business culture compared to U.S., Brazil, markets, products, and team building and communication 
• Settling in – Aussie slang, tax, leisure, shopping, education for children, sports, public transit, driving and road signs, safety, media 

In another CEO workshop, we also took the participants on a cultural walking tour.

Did you know that only Aussies call “000” for emergency service? In the U.S. and Canada, they call “911”, but in New Zealand it’s “111” and most of the European Union uses “112”. You may not notice little things like that, but they are important.

Settling in Australia

We've just conducted a Settling in Australia workshop for a client who has some South American executives coming to work in Australia.

The workshop was conducted in English, Portuguese and Spanish, a wonderful mix of languages. We talked about the basics like taxation, health, education, leisure, sport, safety, work culture – and other interesting facts about Australia such as slang.

Both federal and state governments are doing a great job by providing much useful information in foreign languages, thus allowing new temporary workers and their families to integrate into Australia.

At our workshop, we had a particularly good discussion of the spiders found in Australia. I'm scared of them but we can't avoid them, unfortunately.

Photo source: csiro.au

Two cultural workshops to ensure your success!

Did you know that:

• 1 in 4 Australian residents, 30% of business proprietors in Australia and around 2 million overseas visitors to Australia come from non-English speaking backgrounds.
• 33% of Sydney and Melbourne residents speak a language other than English at home.
• This translates into around 8 million people in the non-English speaking market in Australia.

It is clear that communicating successfully to non-English speaking communities represents a significant strategy for any business and government body! We offer you two of our popular cultural workshops:

1. Cultural Harmony in the Workplace (Wednesday 7 September 2011)

Are you operating in a workplace that includes people from different ethnic backgrounds?  Do you find it difficult to keep your workplace in harmony?

Our dynamic half-day cross-cultural workshop will enhance your communication skills, and help you work effectively with your multicultural colleagues and clients.

Cultural Harmony in the Workplace will cover:

• Working with colleagues and clients from different cultural backgrounds
• How to motivate team members with consideration of their cultural backgrounds
• Strategies to overcome barriers to communication among the multicultural workforces

Who should attend: Employees in multicultural workplace, frontline staff and managers


2. Successful Multicultural Research (Wednesday 31 August 2011)

Do you manage a multicultural market or social research? Do you find it difficult to achieve successful outcomes when working with ethnic audiences?

Our dynamic half-day cross-cultural workshop will enhance your understanding of organising multicultural research, and help you effectively manage your multicultural stakeholders and contractors.

The Successful Multicultural Research workshop will cover:

• Target audience
• Culturally sensitive research instruments
• Multilingual target audience and fieldworkers
• Reporting with a multicultural perspective
• Budgeting

Who should attend: Small business owners who want to conduct research to help grow their business; and research managers in government, commercial and community organisations.


Testimonials for MMM workshops

"I found Multicultural Marketing and Management's workshop very useful. I gained a lot of knowledge that will lead to better business relationships. The presenter's knowledge was very thorough." - Jimmy Minassian, Coca-Cola Amatil

"The workshop opened my eyes to a wide range of options. It was very useful, and the presenter's knowledge was wide ranging" - Peter Austen, Jenolan Caves Trust

Details of the MMM workshop
Time:    11 am – 2.30 pm
Venue: Rhodes Phoenix Chinese Restaurant, Level 5, Rhodes Shopping Centre, Rhodes, NSW
Cost:    $198 per person per workshop

All prices are inclusive of GST, a light lunch, handouts, and certificate of completion.

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Training course for Asian lifeguards

One very interesting thing about our work is that we get to undertake different projects, many of which are quite unusual.

For example, due to the high number of drownings among non-English-speaking residents and tourists, we have helped the NSW Department of Sport and Recreation to recruit Asian migrants to be trained as lifeguards. We were involved in the recruitment, the initial shortlisting, and the production of a bilingual training manual.

Cross-Cultural Success Seminar in September

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