Intercultural Experiences: A Report on Marks & Spencer's Workplace

This report delves into the intercultural experiences encountered by an employee at Marks & Spencer, highlighting the challenges arising from geographic expansion and employee transfers. The core issue revolves around communication barriers stemming from language differences and cultural diversity, leading to misunderstandings, reduced work productivity, and impacts on customer loyalty. The report details the negative effects of these intercultural differences, including difficulties in understanding instructions, differences in working capabilities, and misunderstandings related to physical gestures. Recommendations emphasize the need for language training and awareness of cultural working styles to mitigate these challenges and improve employee performance and organizational effectiveness. The report references several academic sources to support its findings and recommendations, providing a comprehensive analysis of the topic.

Intercultural experiences at
work

Table of Contents
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

MAIN BODY
Situation
I have been working in Marks & Spencer from a couple of years and I know that market
place is fill with tough competitors and due to which organization has to expand its geographic
reach in other countries in such a way that it is able to attract new and trendy crowd towards the
organization through this it can achieve increased sales. Through this enhanced geographic
reach Marks & Spencer often has to implement employee transfer for employees like me
between different branches by which high productivity and effective inter departmental
communication can be established by employees like me (Hyett and et.al, 2019). With my
transfer in other geographic area I had to face several languages based problems and also had to
face the negative impact of cultural diversity at my working capability due to differences in
languages for communicating.
Issue
However, this mostly generate misunderstanding between employee because each culture is
having its personal unique ways of communication due to which work productivity is affected
because of this lack of understanding communication between employees from different
background asynchronicities at workplace process can be seen. Due to which employees like me
are not able to identify the orders provided and with that this inconsistency in working of
employees makes an negative impact on my interaction with the customers by which customer
loyalty is also affected (Paparoidamis, Tran and Leonidou, 2019). With that I also face
differences in working capabilities and which was showcased to me during my initial time
segments in which the local employees had a tremendous working capabilities and with the they
are very effective while communicating with the local customers which I had trouble in
understanding. This happened because I was not provided a proper language training or any
other training regarding the problems which I will be facing during this intercultural transfer
because of which my working capability was affected. I also face misunderstanding due to
physical gesture based misunderstanding, this happens because each culture is having its
personal significance of communicating through physical hand gestures. Because of which hand
shake with the known person is also considered exceptional and because of which I had to face
strange reactions because this cultural diversity (Gut, Wilczewski and Gorbaniuk, 2017). Due to
this communication problem between me and other employees of Marks & Spencer at different

geographic location it has become very difficult to evaluate the required work procedure and
employees like me have to face trouble while implementing working changes accordingly. The
main issue of work culture differences is that it restricts employees to share their issues which
they are facing in the work environment because of which their work productivity is affected and
also loyalty towards organization is also reduced. Also makes negative on organizational teams
which are made in order to improve work productivity, thus happens because of which
miscommunication and develops poor relationship among employees.
Recommendations
On the basis of my experience during this intercultural transfer I do feel that Marks &
Spencer must provide a language training to its employees so that employees can understand the
customer requirements and changes in instructions through which work productivity can be
increased. With that company must also have showcased the chances in working capabilities to
employees because each culture is having its personal physical working significance and because
of which chances of misunderstanding through physical gestures can be reduced.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Almeida, S., Waxin, M.F. and Paradies, Y., 2019. Cultural Capital of Recruitment Decision‐
Makers and its Influence on their Perception of Person‐Organisation Fit of Skilled
Migrants. International Migration. 57(1). pp.318-334.
Gut, A., Wilczewski, M. and Gorbaniuk, O., 2017. Cultural differences, stereotypes and
communication needs in intercultural communication in a global multicultural environment.
The Employees’ perspective. Journal of Intercultural Communication. 43(1). pp.1-20.
Hyett, N. and et.al, 2019. Trialing virtual intercultural learning with Australian and Hong Kong
allied health students to improve cultural competency. Journal of Studies in International
Education. 23(3). pp.389-406.
Paparoidamis, N.G., Tran, H.T.T. and Leonidou, C.N., 2019. Building customer loyalty in
intercultural service encounters: the role of service employees’ cultural intelligence. Journal
of International Marketing. 27(2). pp.56-75.
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