Business without Borders: Diversity knocks
A multicultural workforce gives Canadian companies a global edge. Too bad we don’t use it.
Oct 25, 2010 Angelina Chapin
Paul Beamish hired Gigi Wong because of her answer to a simple question: how would she react if a Chinese
businessman belched after his meal? It was a difference in cultural etiquette he’d observed hosting Asian clients and
wanted to know how a prospective employee would handle the situation. A Canadian-born job candidate said she’d
politely tell the person to stop, but Wong had the correct response. “I would ignore it,” she said. “It’s a sign they are
enjoying themselves.”
Thirteen years later, she’s still the associate director of Asian Management at the University of Western Ontario’s
Richard Ivey School of Business. Beamish, director of the Asian Management Institute, was looking for someone to help
set up an Ivey School branch in Hong Kong. A colleague recommended Wong, who had been working at the university
registrar’s office for 10 years, and before that in Hong Kong as a high-school teacher. He needed someone with cultural
sensitivity, who could help develop teaching materials for the region, host Asian business people and anticipate
challenges that would arise. Wong was the perfect fit—entrepreneurial and culturally savvy.
Beamish says when it comes to expanding internationally, often companies need only look as far as their own staff to
find someone with the cultural expertise. “These people are often already in an organization and should be the next
incremental hire,” he says. “Too many Canadian companies are so risk-averse they don’t notice.”
According to the representatives of 833 Canadian companies surveyed by Canadian Business as part of the Business
without Borders initiative, 82% strongly or somewhat agree that their organization has a multicultural workforce, but
only 38% feel that companies generally take advantage of it to do business abroad. Among those employed in a
multicultural workplace, just 63% felt their own company was leveraging that advantage to conduct business
internationally.
Some corporations, such as RBC Financial Group, have built diversity into their hiring processes. Their reasons are selfserving; it gives them a leg up in certain markets. Still, many Canadian firms aren’t recognizing this advantage, and are
leaving immigrant employees in low-level postions where their multicultural knowledge goes unused.
Stephen Siu, assistant director of public relations for the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Toronto, says in the
past 10 years, 30% of Hong Kong immigrants have returned there for better job opportunities. “They were underpaid or
the job they found [in Canada] was not on par with previous employment,” says Siu. “If young immigrants return to
Hong Kong after graduating, within five years they can rise to a senior position.”
Corporate Canada’s risk-averse nature could be to blame. Alex Alagappan, whose Toronto-based strategic consulting
company Rmagine focuses on helping companies enter Middle Eastern and Indian markets, says Canadian companies
don’t take advantage of their multicultural staff for the same reason they continue to do 80% of their international
business with the U.S. “We’re comfortable dealing with Americans,” he says. “The status quo is a comfortable place to
be in, and that’s the single biggest barrier we need to overcome.” Indian-born Alagappan says this means though
Canadian companies have the talent on staff to help them expand internationally, these people aren’t promoted to the
proper positions.
Joan Vogelsang, CEO of Montreal-based animation software company Toon Boom, says five of the seven members of
her executive team are first-generation immigrants. She thinks Canadian companies need to look past immediate
differences like imperfect English and cultural customs when hiring. With clients in 120 countries, Vogelsang says the 20
languages spoken on staff have proven invaluable when doing business internationally. “Our Spanish-speaking
employees are worth their weight in gold,” she says over the phone from Colombia. “Two of our staff members speak
Japanese. You can hardly do business in Japan if you don’t speak it.” She estimates business has increased by 10% in
markets where employees born in those countries are in charge—a fact she attributes to putting the client at ease and a
deeper level of communication.
Wong, who speaks Cantonese and three other Chinese dialects, says Asian clients feel more comfortable when they can
speak and write in their own language, and she is able to capture the nuances. “I can understand when someone says
‘thank you’ whether they meant a sincere thank you or ‘no thanks,'” she says, “and can hazard a guess whether a silence
means no.” Wong works with publishers to distribute collections of business cases put together by Ivey, and since she
started, Ivey has developed 90 books specifically for the Asian market. In January, Wong signed a memorandum with
190 Chinese schools to develop business cases about Chinese companies.
The most common way companies leverage their multicultural staff is using language skills, cited by 66% of respondents
to our survey, followed by knowledge of local customs, maintaining contacts and customers, and understanding the
local political environment. When, in its second year of business, Edmonton-based Upside Software was thrust into the
international market after scoring a contract with Hewlett Packard—which operates in 90 countries—CEO Ashif Mawji
had to hire new staff. He says it was easy to find first-generation immigrants with experience in different markets and
the right qualifications in Edmonton.
Kenyan-born Mawji says 50% of his current staff were born outside of Canada, a fact visually represented by a 12-by-sixfoot map near the office kitchen where employees mark their birthplace with a push pin. He says most companies
probably don’t use their multicultural staff because they forget about the asset. Thanks to the map, Mawji says, “we
always remember who we have when going into a new area.” Before sending someone to do business in another
country, Mawji circulates a questionnaire about the region to any staff members born there. Upside has clients in
approximately 150 countries, and it’s been helpful to know what to expect. For example, before going to Sweden, a
Swedish staff member described how the business culture is laid-back and private. If the sales team went in with a
typically aggressive North American style, they’d be perceived as boastful or off-putting.
Another advantage to using employees’ multicultural knowledge is the sense of loyalty that builds for the company. “It
gives them a huge sense of pride and motivates them to perform,” says Alagappan. “He or she goes back to their native
country with a badge of honour being part of a management team setting up an office there.”
For her first 10 years spent working at Western, Wong was never asked about customs in Hong Kong. Now she feels like
she’s contributing something back to her birthplace. “I’m not just doing a business transaction,” she says. “It actually
means something for China and me as a Chinese person.”