Cultural Awareness:
Why is it Important for Human Service Organizations and Employees?
Accrediting bodies, professional licensing organizations, and educational systems are now requiring a level of cultural competence among accredited organizations, licensed professionals, and students completing degree programs. With this national trend, the importance of cultural competency cannot be minimized or disregarded. It is one of the foundational issues consistent with providing quality care and best practices in the human service field.
Human service organizations can significantly increase their effectiveness in serving clients through an increase in the cultural competency of the organization’s employees. A lack of awareness about cultural differences among persons served can make it difficult for providers to achieve an optimal level of care.
Fundamental differences of culture exist among various nationalities, ethnicities, and group affiliations. Differences also exist within specific nationalities, ethnicities, and group affiliations. With culture defined as “the shared values, norms, traditions, customs, mores, arts, history, and folklore of people within a defined group”, then cultural competence is “a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals that enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in situations that involve differences of culture among the participants”. Without first having an awareness of the cultural differences among persons affiliated with specifically defined groups, and within sub-groups of defined group affiliations, a competency-based approach cannot be undertaken by an organization or persons within the organization.
Why might there be a lack of awareness of cultural differences in organizations?
- Fear of the Unknown: Our comfort zones usually self-regulate, meaning people tend to be comfortable with what they know and tend to be somewhat intimidated by what they don’t know, especially within interpersonal relationships. It can be both challenging and intimidating to explore differences among our fellow employees and those we serve.
- Denial of Differences: We may want to believe that our common realities transcend our differences, which can lead to an attitude that our differences are not really significant.
- Lack of Knowledge: We may lack information, training, and/or awareness which can result in an inability to recognize the cultural differences of people around us.
- Lack of Recognition by Leadership: For cultural awareness to exist within an organization, the leadership must acknowledge its importance, communicate its value to employees, and provide the resources to facilitate increased awareness of the importance of culture in providing appropriate services.
- Time and Work Constraints: Pressure to meet deadlines and workloads can often lead to feeling rushed and feeling unable to look at an individual’s needs and differences in any depth.
A lack of cultural awareness can result in many negative outcomes within an organization. One of the most common results is that the basic provider-person served relationship can be severely compromised when the understanding of each other’s expectations is missing. Expectations are most commonly based on how each views the world, which is developed through one’s culture. For instance, a provider may not understand why the person’s family, rather than the individual has a greater influence in the important decisions about the individual’s care. Or why a person served may reject the provider due to the type of clothes the person is wearing, the type of language used, or the nature of a piece of art hanging in their office. These are basic examples of areas where miscommunication may result due to a lack of awareness of the cultural characteristics of various groups of persons served.
Cultural Competence
How is it Achieved?
To be culturally competent, several processes must be present within the overall operations of an organization. First, the organization must define its values and principles concerning the importance that culture has in the delivery of services. Once defined, values and principles must be communicated in a manner that translates into behaviors, attitudes, and structures which enable the values to be carried out in everyday practices.
Second, the organization must conduct self-assessments to determine current realities, manage the dynamics of cultural differences once assessed, acquire cultural knowledge, and adapt to the diversity and the cultural contexts of the communities they serve.
Third, organizations must incorporate all aspects of culture into policymaking, administrative practices, service delivery, and involve consumers, key stakeholders, and communities in the process.
When Competency Exists, What Does it Look Like?
When an organization has developed a level of cultural competency that results in a measurable increase in outcomes, the organization will generally exhibit the following characteristics:
- The organization’s attitudes and policies will recognize and acknowledge culture as a predominant force in shaping behaviors, values, and institutions.
- The organization will acknowledge that cultural differences exist and have an impact on service delivery.
- The organization’s employees will believe that diversity within cultures is as important as diversity between cultures.
- The organization’s practices will be driven by culturally preferred choices.
- The organization will respect the unique culturally defined needs of various client populations.
- The organization will recognize that concepts such as “family” and “community” are different among various cultures and sometimes even subgroups within cultures.
- The organization will understand that people from different racial and ethnic groups and other cultural subgroups are usually best served by persons who are a part of those groups or are in tune with cultural differences through extensive cultural competency training.
- The organization will recognize that honoring individual differences honors us all.
Questions Worth Asking
Employees of organizations may want to determine their status in the continuum of cultural competency in order to assess areas that may need strengthening. Here are some questions to consider in terms of your level of awareness or competence.
- How do you typically react when confronted with a situation or person that does not fit your expectations? Are you anxious or uncomfortable? Are you able to assess and be aware of the feelings you are having and how they may be affecting the person you are working with?
- Do you have strategies to use to gain clarification of something you don’t understand about a person, such as noticeable differences?
- Are you able to help people understand how they may be impacted by some of the same factors as you regarding cultural differences in beliefs, expectations, and behaviors?
These are just a few of the questions to ask yourself in terms of what you consider your level of competence to be in dealing with differences in culture among the people you work with and those you serve.
Cultural competency is a long-term developmental process that evolves over an extended period of time. Both individuals and organizations function at various levels of awareness, knowledge, and skills along the competency continuum. The foundation of cultural competency is that differences are valued and an awareness of those differences in human service settings is ultimately one of the most important aspects of the therapeutic relationship and service outcomes.