The Experience of Working in a Multi-cultural Office

A multi-cultural workplace is the order of the day. At NAVIS Human Resources, we get thrown into a moment of complete bewilderment sometimes with different cultural strains floating in the thick atmosphere of where we work. Voices are rife with different emotions expressed differently each day. It is a blended culture, mixed like the purity of water imbibed with different fragrances, almost as in a hydrosol.

The space of coming together for us infuses a new life into emptiness, the mingling of different voices. NAVIS Human Resources is special in that it carves a zone for people of different cultures to meet and mingle.

There must be more than a dozen languages spoken here. It isn’t enough to say that this is an Indian company. People from different parts of India come together, each carrying a different history and belonging to a different culture based on geography. Native languages spoken vary accordingly. Students from remote parts of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal all meet under one roof each day. They speak in English. They also converse in their mother tongues. They are students of Japanese and German here at NAVIS Human Resources.

Who teaches our students Japanese and German? Japanese is taught by native Japanese living in India. It wasn’t always easy to adapt for them. However, they have grown a second skin and are now able to thrive in alien terrain. We hear Japanese spoken each day, and Japanese cuisine cooked in soya sauce, oyster sauce and black bean sauce joins us in the afternoon at the lunch table. Each Japanese teacher hails from a different part of Japan speaking different dialects and coming from different backgrounds. Each has a story to tell, just as each student does. Our German teachers are Indians from Delhi, Rajasthan and Bellary in Karnataka.

Our staff has employees from different parts of South India, West Bengal and Assam. Being a Bengali myself, I never miss a chance to speak in Bengali with other Bengalis at the office. I have learnt a few Japanese and German phrases. Our students are proficient in Japanese and German. There is the buzz of different languages in the air at all times, unless people are so busy at work that silence takes over.

It’s an experience on its own being surrounded by those of other cultures and languages all the time. The tempo is different. To be multi-lingual is akin to being saintly, almost. Our learning shapes our identities, and at NAVIS HR, the opportunity to learn and grow through experience and cultural exchange is what makes each of us blossom in our own ways. You can’t help but flow with the current of the river.

We hope to add more elements of diverse faces and voices to our facility of language and knowledge exchange. Portuguese is on its way, as is a native German teacher. Let’s see how we blossom as time goes by.