by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: October 29, 2009   Last Updated: August 04, 2011

Cultural diversity is what gives a workplace class. A workplace with diverse cultures is a most interesting place to work; a workplace without cultural diversity is a workplace going nowhere, doing nothing to ensure continuance. People with different cultures are living treasures to an entrepreneurial business. They can be, is in the right light, educational means for everyone. The benefits of working with others that are unlike your family, your friends, is a good way to prevent narrow mindedness. Cultural diversity enhances workplaces by serving as learning experiences for all, employers as well as employees.

 You may not learn French by working with a French co-worker but inadvertently you will pick up a few words and some gestures and mannerism that will enrich your own life as well as theirs. This keeps the world view in perspective, promotes sharing and equality and adds dimensions to what could be an ordinary place of work.

Let's face it. We all were not born wealthy and good looking and glib conversationalist. Nor are we all upper class society folks. Some of us are downright inadequate where social graces are concerned and have no idea whether a red wine or a white wine should be ordered at a fancy dinner. No knowing this, we are glad we have a wine connoisseur only two offices over when we are in charge of the menu for our annual party.

Cultural diversity is meaningful. Having that refugee working in your office as an understudy is good for her as well as for you. You see her struggling to learn and it brings out the best in you. You find ways of helping her and when she successfully passes her tests and is hired, you are delighted. It is in these kinds of environments that we learn of each other's struggles as we carry out our office routines each day.

Having others different from us share our work experience on a daily basis keeps us from becoming isolated and feeling only our way is best. It is only best for us and when others look upon our ways as foreign to them, this gives us an incentive to loosen up and not be so up tight all the time. Maybe it is true that they know something that we need to know. And they too may find our way not so bad.

We learn from each other. That is the meaning of the new global society we have created in the last fifty years. Once when communication was sparse and news was days old news when it reached us, we had scant knowledge of people from other countries. World War 11 changed that. Then Television became affordable and we got glimpses of others unlike us. The more of them we saw, and they of us, the more we learned how to talk and to how to listen and how to improve our lives. Then we started working with them and traveling to their home countries and now just look at how cosmopolitan and learned we have all become. Would we have it any other way? Of course not.

The melting pot is no longer the United States but the global community. So much of each of us is in other places helping out and working and giving and receiving instructions. We have become invaluable to each other. Especially in the work place. Cultural diversity in the work place has enlarged our horizons and we have no desire to go back to dull and boring places of work. It's onward and upward!

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