International employees and how you avoid to scare them away

Looking at job offerings in Denmark, it is obvious, that there are difficulties to attract enough talented candidates for open positions. There are plenty of jobs, but no talents to fill them with. Denmark does not stand alone with this problem; it is the same for most industry nations.

International recruiting seems to be the answer. Being a German living and working in Denmark, I am though also observing tendencies, which make it even harder to attract or keep foreign talent coming into Denmark. ?

?1.??????Language barrier

An obvious challenge is the language barrier, and it comes with a variety of problems:

There are not many foreign talents, that have knowledge of the Danish language. Far too many Danish companies disqualify themselves for foreign workers, as they only post job ads locally in Danish, even though the job would be perfectly doable by someone from outside Denmark, with knowledge of the English language.

Many companies who do post English job ads and have a more international focus, do lack a strategy for using English as working language consistently, when foreign employees are around. So even if these companies are lucky to hire a talent from outside Denmark, they risk losing this employee again, if the primary language at work remains Danish. What happens here is, that the international talents are (most of the time unconsciously) excluded and segregated from the others: They cannot participate in the ongoing conversation, and cannot be sure, what their co-workers talk about – might be that they make fun of them? The list of possible misunderstandings in such a scenario can be rather long. And the problem goes even deeper: I appreciate, that it is harder for a Dane to keep a conversation going in English than in Danish – but that means often also, that there is a tendency, that the Danish core-team of employees avoids socialising with foreign employees after work, as it means that also the conversation in their spare time needs to be held in English, which can be exhausting.

Personally, I think it is alright to discuss expectations with foreign employees, e.g. that it is an advantage and also a focus area, that the employee uses time to learn the Danish language. But as an employer, you have also the duty (a.) to enable this and to (b.) build bridges by making English mandatory, when foreign employees without the Danish language proficiency are around. Otherwise, you will see the new employee leave your firm again in no time.

2.??????Cultural barriers

I love the Danish working culture. The principles of flat hierarchies, trust, enablement, flexibility, work-life balance are remarkable features of most Danish companies, and it is a competitive advantage compared to what many other companies outside of the Scandinavian area believe in and practice.?

However, working culture has a context, and that is something which is forgotten far too often: The general working culture, that could be attributed to Danish companies is subject to (a.) the specific culture/values of and promoted by the company in question and (b.) to the cultural background and experiences of the individual workers in question. And culture as a concept is in this respect a mixture of beliefs, experiences, assumptions, attitudes and behaviours, which are seen as acceptable, unacceptable, normal, abnormal and so forth. I will try to give some examples and I am aware of, that those are a bit stereotype – so do not crucify me for coming with “flat” and unnuanced examples, they are just here to help illustrating what I mean:

• Example 1: You have a pure Danish company, which strongly believes in and exercises the aforementioned working culture. As all employees are Danish, they accept and support the company’s approach, as they can “see themselves” in this setting – it feels natural and is in compliance with own experience and values the employees have seen / heard / exercised as Danes – both workwise and as children. The Working culture is in such a case mirrored in the company culture, which again complies with the personal cultural background and personal experience of each employee.?
• Example 2: Now we take the same Danish company, which hires a German. Danes tend to think, that Denmark and Germany are quite alike, but this is not the case. The German working culture is more hierarchical, and the worker is hence used to receive orders and instructions on what to do when and why from a superior. A German worker is usually not used to have much responsibility for the wider good of the company – that is the boss’ task, which is also why a German worker will seek to get clear instructions from the boss. This again also matches a German’s experience in childhood: Parents, teachers, officials etc. are persons of respect, which rank “higher” than yourself, carry “more responsibilities” or “rights” than yourself. A German worker being confronted with a pure Danish working culture will therefore have difficulties to handle empowerment / freedom to make decisions on his own, without getting clear instructions from someone superior. It does simply not match with his/her perception of how things should be. A German would most likely see the lack of instructions and bosses shouting orders as a nice and welcome change to earlier experiences, but would at the same time feel, that the company is in “chaos” and “lacks leadership”. A German would also have difficulties to use flexibility at work: Going home at 15.00 to pick up the kids? Working from home? Could be nice, but only if the boss allows it explicitly and to be honest, we will rather not ask for that permission, as the boss might feel we are lazy. There are still many Germans who would rather sit at work late being unproductive just to make sure, that they are not leaving earlier than their boss, because that could be seen as laziness. Sad but still true.

What the example tries to illustrate is, that a pure German “cultural compass” might be a bad fit to a Danish company with predominant Danish culture. And vice versa: Keeping employees with another cultural experience/background happy at a Danish company requires, that the company is actively and constantly doing something about cultural misalignment.

The (a.) awareness of cultural gaps and challenges on all leadership levels is crucial to (b.) disarm misunderstandings and conflicts and it is best handled with (c.) empathetic leadership, where you observe and listen to your employees’ thoughts, fears, joy and needs. Understanding and knowing the human being and the culture that human being emerges from sets you in a position to ease the gaps and to make misunderstandings driven by cultural difference go away. It enables you to adapt your own, your departments or your company’s culture, if necessary. It takes loads of time, it does not end, it is hard work and it is not a trivial task – but it is doable and if it is part of your way of thinking, it is getting easier every day.???

Your company needs to embrace, that it is in fact a multi-cultural and NOT just a Danish company. That means also, that you should keep the benefits of the Danish work culture (speak openly about problems, flat hierarchies, work life balance etc.) in place, but be open to welcome and combine benefits from other cultures and/or help foreign employees to adapt their cultural compass.

Having a healthy working culture means to be open to learn and adapt as time goes by and to be extremely verbal about that process. It means also, that you accept, that your working culture in the company changes a bit with every new international talent, that enters your company. See it as a fun journey, where you should listen and learn from other cultures, that are materially different then your own – it will help you adjust your company culture and make the benefits of the Danish working culture even clearer to international new-joiners.

3.??????The social component

As foreign employee, you have in the beginning a non-existent social live. It took me as an example more than 2 years to get invited to private social activities by colleagues at work – and funny enough, that fell together with my ability to express myself fluently in Danish rather than English.

Point being: It is hard work to make integration of non-Danish workers a success. It takes more than offering a good workplace – it takes a welcome culture, that spreads over the boundaries of the workplace into the private life of your employees. You must enhance the curiosity and joy in your workforce to spend time together with people from other cultures, also after work in a social context. That can be done in different ways, e.g. by engaging in projects or travels to other parts of Europe as an employee benefit, it could be an employee association with social activities, it could be sports-activities actively promoted by the company, where the work force meets and mixes up, it could be mutual language courses, where employees teach each other the opposite’s language etc. etc. – again: this takes time and commitment, which is well spent, if you want to keep your international workforce together and happy.

4.??????Danish humour

There is a saying, that a smile is a unique human gesture, that does not know cultural difference or misinterpretation. True statement for most societies, but it does not go for humour or irony – that works differently in every society. Germans have e.g. at times difficulties to grasp Danish irony (which is indeed hilarious – but only if you grasp it) and it leads easily to misunderstandings.

A specific example on humour going wrong:

I attended in my earlier live a business meeting in between a Danish company CEO with his German counterpart – target was to establish a trade partnership in between both companies. On the very first personal meeting in Germany, the Danish CEO made two major mistakes:

First of all, he was addressing his German counterparty with his first name, which you only do in Germany when you know each other really well. That could still be seen as “charming” by a German counterpart and that’s it. But the second mistake cost the Danish company the business opportunity. The Danish CEO made fun of the fact, that his German counterpart had the title of a “Doktor” in front of his last name by saying something along the lines, that he “had not met anyone yet who had become a better person of having acquired a long row of fine titles”. The statement was made with a big smile on the face, so no one could be in doubt of, that it was meant as a joke – but it hit a nerve and was seen as respectless. The business talks thereafter where – to put it mildly – frosty and ended without an agreement – in fact, the German company did never return calls from the Danish company again. ??

Transferred to our topic: Does that mean, that you need to weigh your words, when you communicate with foreign employees? The short answer is yes, as they really might get your humour the wrong way – at least in the beginning. The longer one is: Do use your humour, but disarm it, by giving context and explanation at the latest after you have set the punchline and choose the situations wisely to start with, until your employee knows you well enough to know, when you are joking.

And as a side-comment to the aforementioned example: When you are in Germany and talk business: Do not mix it with personal stuff and “we are all good friends here” talks – in Germany, business is business and everything else is reserved for close friends at the barbecue you are probably not invited to… ??