reply to: John Twitchin

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Cultural Awareness and skills of Intercultural Communication

1-day Workshop Outline for

§ managers and front-line staff of local authority public service departments

§ NHS services: PCTs, Hospitals, Ambulance, Hospital Chaplains, NHS Direct.

The AIM: One NHS Trust says: “Our service mission is to assist patients to return to functioning well in their community”. How can managers and staff of any public service achieve equality objectives in ‘customer care’ when members of staff and clients or patients come from cultural communities and backgrounds different from their own?

Cultural awareness and knowledge together with practical skills of cross-cultural communication – are now vital ‘tools for the job’ in all public services for

managers of a diverse team/workforce – for legal compliance in recruiting, performance measuring and appraising, handling grievances or harassment;
NHS doctors and clinical staff - to win and hold patients’ confidence and trust, and avoid misdiagnosis or insensitive or less effective treatment for minority ethnic groups;
front-line staff - not just to reduce hassle and stress, but to ensure service delivery is user-friendly, establishes rapport, and gives equality of access for a diverse population, both face-to-face and on the phone.

This participative workshop explains why such skills are needed, and sets out what they are. It does not confront people – it helps confront the professional issues. It does not tell anyone what to think – it sets an agenda of workplace issues worth thinking about.

The MODULES

1. Introduction: Purpose, aims, methods and expected outcomes of workshop.

2. Dealing with unfamiliar names: Naming systems in UK; spelling problems; best ways to handle pronunciation difficulties; ways of asking names as a first step to building trust and respect, and in NHS, concordance with treatment.

3. Questionnaire: Review of Council/Trust policies on Diversity; Checking understanding of legal requirements covering both employment (RRA) and monitoring of services (ie, duties under Race Relations (Amendment) Act: Race Equality Scheme, risk/impact assessing, monitoring, etc). De-brief on why sensitivity to varying religions, languages, family traditions, and ways of communicating, has become professionally essential.

4. Staff exchange of experiences (critical incidents) of interactions with minority ethnic groups (including, as appropriate, refugees/asylum seekers). Reviewing what it means to respect cultural identity and to establish rapport across cultures.

5. Practical Understanding of the Anti-discriminatory Policies and Laws and Codes - Explaining not just what laws say, but more importantly, what they mean: what kinds of facts of work practice could potentially found a case – perhaps unintentionally.

(With analysis of DVD showing facts of a real NHS Tribunal case).

6. Cultural Differences: Instead of being seen as ‘problems’ to be ‘dealt with’, with due skills these become welcome as interesting and valued sources of enrichment for all. Religious festivals and practices. Varying family and social traditions. How different first languages influence people’s ways of thinking and styles of communicating in English.

If locally relevant: with a special unit on the refugee experience, and how different cultures express stress/emotions differently.

7. What do I do if people do not speak English, or only partly speak English? Ways of using interpreters successfully; and professional skills for successfully communicating in English with anyone for whom it is not their first language.

8. What do I do when staff members or clients/patients can speak English fluently, but I'm still irritatingly uncertain whether we are actually understanding each other?

This is the workshop’s main agenda: how can we best establish rapport and trust in communicating with someone from a cultural background different from our own. How is it that when we find someone’s manner apparently unco-operative - whether simply unforthcoming, or at the other extreme, abrupt, demanding, rude - this is frequently a symptom of breakdown of intercultural communication.

With documentary video evidence we see how misunderstandings and misperceptions of meanings and intentions commonly happen – quite unconsciously – in Council and NHS service delivery because of the influence of people’s first language on their speaking style in English, or of cultural differences of body language, of politeness forms, of ways of structuring answers to questions, or assumptions and expectations about public services, and the roles and powers of staff within them. It is legally crucial to be able to identify when cultural misunderstandings are happening; to repair such misunderstandings; or (best of all) to prevent them arising in the first place.

[Without such communication skills managers are liable unintentionally, but unlawfully, to discriminate; front-line staff will be underequipped to fulfil their duties under Race Relations (Amendment) Act.]

9. [Optional:] Tackling the damaging effects of (unwitting) stereotypical thinking at work. We all treat others the way we see them. So what ‘cultural luggage’ do we bring to how we regard differences of language and (minority ethnic) background in our interactions at work? A review of the influence of history and image-making effects of the media.

10. Action Planning: 32-point checklist of practical activities for on-going DIY team development: both for improving quality of service delivery, and for involving a whole staff in ‘owning’ and ‘operationalising’ their Council/Trust Diversity policies.

11. Resources Display: DVDs, books, posters, calendars, handouts, etc. for helping demonstrate respect and user-friendliness towards varying cultural backgrounds.

12. Evaluation – verbal, plus written Response Sheets, with Report.

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