Cross-Cultural Differences in HRM: Recruitment, Training Report

This report delves into the critical topic of cross-cultural differences within the context of Human Resource Management (HRM), particularly in multinational corporations. It examines the significant impact of these differences on key HR activities, specifically recruitment and selection, as well as training and development. The report highlights how cultural diversity policies, while essential, can sometimes negatively affect business profitability and HR processes. It explores the complexities of ethnic-based recruitment, polycentrism, and the challenges of cross-cultural training, emphasizing the importance of understanding cultural nuances in communication and employee management. Furthermore, the report provides actionable recommendations for multinational companies to effectively navigate cross-cultural management challenges, offering strategies to improve HR practices and foster a more inclusive and productive work environment. The report also covers the importance of geo-centrism and its effect on the selection of ideal candidates. The report concludes that HR practices should be altered and analyzed to achieve success in the organization.

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Cross Cultural Differences
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CROSS CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 1
Executive Summary
Cross cultural differences is a controversial but very important topic in multinational
companies and the following report discussed about the impact of cross cultural differences on
the HR activities. It is very important to maintain the cultural diversity policies in the
organization but sometimes it creates very bad impact on profitability of business and HR
activities which discussed in the following report.
The report particularly described about that facts which can create impact on the
recruitment and selection and training and development. These are the main activities which
performed by the HR managers on the daily basis. The report also mentioned the
recommendation which can be followed by the multinational companies in the case of any
difficulty in cross cultural management.

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Recruitment and Selection...............................................................................................................3
Ethnic based recruitment..............................................................................................................5
Polycentrism.................................................................................................................................5
Training and Development..............................................................................................................5
Recommendations............................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Reference List..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
International companies increasing the business at high speed and there is no escape to
adapt cultural changes. Cultural diversity is very important topic to consider in company and it
has great impact on the activities of human resource management because HR managers recruit
and select new employees on the basis of diversity policies of the company (Hughes, 2012).
Every company has different management and leadership style, practices and policies related to
cultural diversity. Organizational policies on recruitment, selection, training and development
have been impacted by the cultural changes. To understand the impact of cultural differences, it
is very important to understand that what culture in the context of workplace is. Culture is a
quality of an individual which creates impact on the work such as language, arts, manner and
many more (Freeland, 2014). These differences impact the many HR practices. Cultural
difference also led to confusion, conflicts and ineffective communication among human resource
management team and other employees.
The following report will discuss about the cultural changes which creates impact on the
activities of human resources management. Main HR practices are recruitment, selection,
training and development. The report will also describe the complexity of cross- cultural
differences.
Recruitment and Selection
Cultural variables and HRM policies are the two sides of coin. Both are related to each
other. Every organization gets their employees from these policies. Every organizational
structure has impacted by the culture (Lambert, 2016). Culture has also created impact on the
style of recruitment and selection in the organization. The pattern of compensation and benefits
also depends on cultural differences. In every organization, employees are paid only on the basis
of cultural differences (Bauer, Erdogan, Caughlin, & Truxillo, 2018). For instance, whichever
country considers individualism as high, an employee can be paid on the basis of his
performance. This part is depending on individual performances or cultural differences (Khan,
2018).

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The domestic assignment is completely different from the foreign assignment and on this
basis the recruitment process of completed. On getting the foreign assignment, the employee is
told that employee has to work in a different type of environment and according to that country;
employer’s payment will be made. This recruitment process is based on the experience and
language knowledge. Selection of employees is depending on the multi- language knowledge. In
the international companies, the ideal candidates are selecting on the base that has ability to get
trained about the culture and language of that country and who can adjust in that culture. This is
the major issue which faced by the International human resource management in the context of
cultural difference (Rau, 2013).
Recruitment and selection is a long process which has done by the human resource
manager of the company to hire new employees. This process is comprises of a lot
communication. But in the context of cultural differences, it is very difficult to understand each
other’s language (Ivancovsky, Shamay-Tsoory, Lee, Morio, & Kurman, 2019). An employee is
selected who has knowledge of many languages and can easily understand the language of
another country; he is the ideal candidate to select because communication and interaction is an
important aspect of HR activities. During the interview, when the employee and the manager do
not understand each other's language, they will have a lot of trouble in understanding each other's
words. In such a situation, the employee will not understand the manager's point. This is a
biggest drawback of cultural difference in HR activities. This problem can also create
misunderstandings and conflicts between the manager and individual (Bdareen & Khasawneh,
2019).
In this situation, HR managers refer to recruit candidates who that understood a
managerial ability, is selected for this work. The employee who is ready to understand the
language and culture of another country and is ready for that training is considered the ideal
candidate. Priority is given to the employee who can handle the stress and who can mold himself
in the culture of the other country (Stankov, 2017).
For example, In France, when the IKEA Company started hiring employees, they faced a
cross-cultural problem because the company was hiring people who would work according to
their values. But at the time of recruitment, the HR manager did not understand the meaning of
word “humbleness” in French but it was one of the key values. According to the author, there is

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no meaning if a lion can speak, because company would not understand that what it had to say to
just and just like that there is no meaning of skills and ability of person, if he speaks in another
language and company have no idea about what is he speaking (Gates, 2008).
Recruitment policies are different in every country. Some main points are mention here
which are followed by company and organization these are:
Ethnic based recruitment
An ethnic group is a group of humans whose members identify themselves as
descendants of a race through a common or imaginary common ancestry. This common heritage
lineage, history, blood relations, religion, maybe based on language, common area, nationality or
physical appearance (i.e., appearance of people).this attitude is not good for the company and
business.
Polycentrism
Any parent company keeps its recruitment process based on polycentrism and appoints its
main employee as the local manager and attaches cultural behavior to it.
Under this, an employee can be appointed with management experience. Geo-centrism:
This employee can be approved on the specific situation of the organization. The employee who
has an understanding of different cultures is considered best for this because with the rest of the
employees can be aligned very well.
Training and Development
Training and development is an important part of the HR activities which play very important
role in the performance of the employees. This is a method in which every employee gets
training to understand the work of company or Organization as well as its culture. In the context
of Multinational companies, they have to follow cultural diversity policies in which they recruit
people from different cultures and countries and in this case give the training is very difficult for
the HR department (Hildebrand, 2018).
Training section is an intellectual section in which managers interact and communicate with
employees. In this section, manager gives training to group of individuals and that people come
from different culture and country (Minkov, 2011). In this situation, it is very difficult to train

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people because manager cannot be able to understand very language and speak in every language
at one time. Usually managers find it very problematic because when people come from different
countries, then they have different culture, language, dressing habits, food and norms. For
example, the American people like to maintain a distance about 6 inches when they interact with
anyone, on the other side Arabs like to interact and communicate closely. Not only language and
way of talking, rather the gestures and significance of words is also different in many countries
which creates it more difficult to interact with employees effectively (B. , 2015).
When an employee is sent to another country, then that characteristic of management ability
is seen in that employee who can understand cross-culture. Cross-cultural training is a process
that can end cultural conflicts and make cultural management a reality. The main advantage of
this is that the employee who has gone there can easily understand that culture, then the
employee should get used to the culture as well as the environment so that the employee can
work in that environment without worry. The employee who has understanding of the cross-
culture and acts as a bridge for the companies of countries and it can employ employees as a
team. The specialty of cross-culture is that it can prevent cultural conflict and the company
achieves its goal easily (Maude, 2011).
When any company wants to organize its business globally, the company introduces its
employees about the cultural components of that country and trains them about those
components. The main objective of this training is that Employees can easily adjust to the culture
that the employee has gone on foreign assignments. Employees are not trained about new
technology, but rather that country's culture, language, the goal of assignment and family stress,
how to work are the main objective for training (Bauer, Erdogan, Caughlin, & Truxillo, 2018). In
other countries, the success of the assignment depends on cultural training. If the employee is not
culturally trained, they may fail in the assignment. The biggest example of this was offered by
Revlon, when Revlon expanded its business, the Revlon Company did not have the knowledge
that Camellia flower used in a funeral in Brazil and Revlon used these flowers to make perfumes
and this product failed miserably in Brazil.
Cross-cultural skills require a lot of training and a lot of time is spent on it as well as a lot of
experience, knowledge, sensitivity and awareness also needs. If a company lacks cross-culture
then that company is mismanaged and its management is considered to be a failure, which affects

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the company's profitability as well as increasing competition (Moran, Robert, & Moran, 2011).
The project fails due to lack of cross-cultural culture. Apart from this, the following obstacles are
also seen:
 Misunderstanding arises in work
 Failure of management on intercultural issues
 Unable to create an exact format and misunderstand that format
 Time consumption also increases when the company grows schedules further
 There is also a hindrance in preparing the budget (Bonache, Trullen, & Sanchez, 2012)
Recommendations
With the help of various research and analysis it can be concluded that Human resources
practices may vary from culture to culture. To ease the methods of implementation of HR
practices and to facilitate learning in training and development and improvement in planning of
selection process and to deal with cultural differences the following recommendations should be
considered:
 The company should focus on developing knowledge skills to deal with the cultural
differences as the management has to learn the point of differences between different
perspectives.
 The Human resource team should include people who are from different culture and can
speak different language to communicate the policies to the employees. In this approach
the employees will also get platform to speak their concerns to the management freely
and honestly.
 The selection process should ne planned properly and the ratio of diversity should be
analysed and segregated in proper approach to remove discrepancies in all the
departments.
 Enhance investment in the cross cultural training and skills development of the
employees.

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Conclusion
In this report, the major topics discussed are training and development and Recruitment
and selection in relation to cultural diversity in the company. It is important to note that with
changing employment needs and focus the company has to alter and analyze the HR practices to
achieve success in the organization. Cross cultural differences have some good impact on profit
on company but this does not mean that its losses are minimal and the report discussed about
these losses.
The major elements which need to be focused while recruiting or training the employees
are discussed in the report. With the discussed examples of IKEA Company and Revlon, it can
be concluded that the HR practices are not transferable as the approach to implement the training
varies with different culture.

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Reference List
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and Lessons for Success. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge.
Bauer, T., Erdogan, B., Caughlin, D., & Truxillo, D. (2018). Human Resource Management:
People, Data, and Analytics. California: SAGE Publications.
Bdareen, R. A., & Khasawneh, H. (2019). Human resources staffing process and its impact on
job involvement: Irbid District Electricity Company as a case study. Problems and
Perspectives in Management, 17(2), 254-266.
Bonache, J., Trullen, J., & Sanchez, J. I. (2012). Managing cross-cultural differences: Testing
human resource models in Latin America. Journal of Business Research, 65(12), 1773-
1781.
Freeland, A. (2014). Cultural Differences. ITNow, 56(3), 24-25.
Gates, M. (2008, January 15). Recruitment across Cultures. Retrieved August 31, 2019, from
crossculture: https://www.crossculture.com/recruitment-across-cultures/
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Intercultural Differences in Business Contexts. Munich: GRIN Verlag.
Hughes, V. (2012). Cultural differences. Nature, 492(7427), S14-S15.
Ivancovsky, T., Shamay-Tsoory, S., Lee, J., Morio, H., & Kurman, J. (2019). A dual process
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the absorptive capacity framework. Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications

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