Question

Soltis & Sons is a management consulting firm that is attempting to grow its business by targeting small businesses that are run by women or immigrants. In pursuing this strategy, the company has hired employees of other cultures whose first language is not English. Many of these employees are under 30 and they do not have college degrees. While this effort is leading to a workforce that mirrors the clients, the company finds that employees and managers are experiencing difficulties communicating with one another. This leads to misunderstandings and a decrease in productivity and customer satisfaction. For example, if a manager gives instructions about completing a certain task to an employee who fails to fully comprehend the instructions, the employee may make mistakes.
The director of Human Resources is considering whether or not to offer some type of training, yet none has been offered to date. She thinks some employees may be impacted by negative stereotypes associated with a lack of work experience with people from different cultures. She also noted that some work teams do not like to be supervised by younger people of color. A few employees quit over this issue and management is trying to decide what to do.


Using the 3-Step Problem-Solving Approach and the Organizing Framework, how can Soltis & Sons address the problem?Step 1: Define the problem. What are the gaps between the desired outcomes and the current state?

Step 2: Identify causes of the problem. Remember, the diversity climate is an important situation factor. There are also relevant processes across the individual level (perception, attributions, and psychological safety), the group/team level (group/team dynamics), and the organizational level (options to manage diversity). These inputs and processes have critical outcomes.
Step 3: Make recommendations for solving the problem. What options does Soltis & Sons have?

Answer 1

Step 1

The current problem is that employees from different backgrounds and ethnicity does not seem to be working in a smooth manner. The expectation was that these employees will work well within the organization and given that they share similar culture will work well with the clients as well. On the client front the objective seems to be met to some degree. However, this has caused tremendous amount of internal miscommunication and culture clashes. The organization needs to find a solution to this situation.

Step 2

There could be various solution that the organization may apply. Some of them are long term and some of them are short term.

Long term solution will be to make sure that the organization changes their hiring policies. At present they are hiring people are without a college degree. This can be changed. However, this may cause short term conflict with the existing employees and new hires.

Another long term solution will be to train the employees in cross-cultural communication and sensitivity. This can improve their attitude towards colleagues and help achieve a better synergy within the organization.

Short term solutions can be various. One of them could be to create silos within organization where there is no need from people from different culture to communicate with one another. The other option could be that the organization focuses on creating strict hierarchy so that the subordinates must follow the supervisor. These will work towards reducing conflict in the short term.

Step 3

Among the possible solution the best option is the long term solution of cross-cultural training. This will empower the current employees who are already there and also make them better communicator in respect to their colleagues. In the long run, this will reduce the conflict between the employees’ and improve their understanding.