Career Exploration
One student's journey through the process of discovering a career.
Now that I’ve talked about trade compliance for a few weeks, I need to look into the work environment a little bit more. One of the biggest issues in creating a positive work environment is cultural competency, or recognizing the diversity within the workplace and making sure everyone is included in the work environment. This can mean keeping racism and sexism out of the office, making sure those with a disability are still able to work, or even recognizing mental illness within the workplace and how to help those suffering from it. If you follow me on Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/triciacbacon/), you can see that most of my pins on my cultural competency board focus on international etiquette. While I do pin about various other forms of diversity, global cultural differences is what I think about when I hear the words “cultural competency,” and it is the most relevant to the fields I have been looking into so far. Other cultures have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. When I was younger and my dad would go abroad on business trips, he would occasionally bring souvenirs back from China, Germany, Turkey, and many other places he visited. As I grew older, I started taking Spanish classes and learning about Latin American cultures and I became friends with people from many different countries and backgrounds, whether they were American citizens or foreign exchange students. Seeing that there are people who do things differently from America piques my interest, and it is the reason why I started looking at trade compliance in the first place. In the literal definition of the word, becoming more knowledgeable about other cultures has become very important to me, both as an interest and from an ethical standpoint. When it comes to the job itself, cultural competency is obviously very important in international trade compliance – after all, international is in the name! The work environment is saturated with influences from other cultures, and people from a variety of countries come in contact with each other all the time to trade. Intolerance for the everyday experiences, languages, and customs of these other countries would lead to a loss in business and probably a loss in your job as well. Cultural competence would also create a more positive work environment, as constantly belittling others in the office with incorrect or bigoted views of other cultures will not keep office morale very high. But this does not mean that becoming more aware of different customs is a chore that must be done for the job’s sake; it can be a fascinating learning experience (at least in my opinion), and listening to others speak of their experiences and lifestyles can help build relationships with fellow employees, expanding professional networks. As the celebration of diversity is becoming more and more prevalent in our society, keeping up with this trend is basically mandatory. Whether or not you choose to see it as just that or as an exciting chance to meet new people and learn new things is up to you.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorHello! I'm Tricia Bacon, a sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill and a current explorer of potential careers. Archives
November 2016
Categories |