HRM250 Week3 Discussion2

Background

Tensions have been high at Mario’s Italian Bistro lately. The restaurant staff is very diverse, coming from many different cultures and communication styles. As a result, many employees have felt offended or frustrated by other staff members. Rosemary quickly begins addressing this issue by sending out a needs assessment. She is not surprised by the results; the management and staff desperately needs cultural competency training, so Rosemary gets to work on designing a comprehensive program.

What is Cultural Competency?

Professor Juanita Sherwood (n.d.) from the University of Sydney defines cultural competency as:

“The ability to participate ethically and effectively in personal and professional intercultural settings. It requires being aware of one’s own cultural values and world view and their implications for making respectful, reflective and reasoned choices, including the capacity to imagine and collaborate across cultural boundaries… Cultural competence is, ultimately, about valuing diversity for the richness and creativity it brings to society.”

Obviously this is a necessary skill in all workplaces, and clearly one that is lacking at Mario’s Italian Bistro. Rosemary decides to apply the ADDIE Model to Cultural Competency Training, which includes the following steps:

Applying the ADDIE Model to Cultural Competency Training

Analysis: includes reviewing all the data gathered about the trainees in the needs assessments. The needs assessment also explains who needs the training and the best training method (instructor-led, web-based, e-learning, etc.). Rosemary decides everyone at Mario’s will take the training, including Mario himself.
Design: Rosemary learns during the analysis that tensions are high among the staff regarding this topic. Because of this, she decides to use a blended, e-learning design to help diffuse these tensions. The staff will first read and watch videos about cultural competency online, and then come together with more education under their belts for conversations, slide presentations, and team-building. She decides to keep the Bistro’s aesthetic in the content, especially the open, welcoming, and learning-friendly culture.
Development: Rosemary then develops the blended, e-learning content. She creates the online courses, shoots the videos, and asks a SME (subject matter expert) to collaborate with her on the written content.
Implementation: Because this is an urgent and sensitive need, Rosemary decides to call an “emergency” training for this program. The staff is required to complete the online training that week, and then meets Sunday from 9am-12pm for the in-person discussion. In keeping with the organizational culture at Mario’s, she offers many mediums of training feedback, as well as provides lunch to the staff.
Evaluation: Rosemary knows she needs to evaluate a training session to understand its true effectiveness. But with this particular subject matter, she has a difficult time deciding on the best long-term evaluation plan. The plan should also determine how and when the staff needs to revisit training, and when Mario should update the training content for relevancy. You will help Rosemary decide on an evaluation method to complete this discussion.

References

Sherwood, J. (n.d.) What is cultural competence? The University of Sydney. Retrieved on March 20, 2020. https://www.sydney.edu.au/nccc/about-us/what-is-cultural-competence.html
(Links to an external site.)

Sources of Information

Alpert, R. T. (2020). Cultural diversity in the workplace, part 1: 4 essential skills. DiversityResources. Retrieved on March 20, 2020. https://www.diversityresources.com/cultural-diversity-workplace/
(Links to an external site.)

Toll, E. (2020). Workplace cultural competence – 7 essentials. DiversityResources. Retrieved on March 20, 2020. https://www.diversityresources.com/workplace-cultural-competence/
(Links to an external site.)

Prompt

Checking for effectiveness after implementing a training plan requires more than ensuring all employees completed the training. What are the best practices that would allow you to create a training plan as well as follow-up with employees who were part of the cultural competency training to measure its effectiveness?

For your citation, you might use articles that show examples of evaluations for cultural competency training programs. You can also find articles from experts that suggest best practices for training evaluations, especially ones that can be sensitive in nature.