Recruiting staff from overseas offers significant drawbacks as well as the powerful advantage of a culturally rich workplace.

Australia is renowned for its multicultural society, with cultural and language variety being one of our greatest resources. Approximately 43% of our population was either born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas and over 200 languages are spoken.

Cultural diversity in the workplace offers outstanding benefits if you can manage it effectively.

The benefits of cultural diversity include:

• Introducing fresh ideas, skills and alternative approaches to doing things
• Access to new business contacts and social networks
• Exposure to different cultures and beliefs to encourage tolerance and understanding
• Variety to help create a workplace that is interesting, rewarding and fun.

Specifically, a multicultural workforce ensures you can fulfill the needs of your multicultural clients, particularly if your staff can speak a second language. It can even open the doors to creating or increasing international trade relationships.

Effective communication is a big challenge. Research has shown that cultural issues impact on job satisfaction and being able to communicate well with line managers is a vital consideration for employees from different cultural backgrounds.

For workplace diversity to work, you need an inclusive environment that values and encourages contributions from people of different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. Doing so ensures job satisfaction, which equates to a motivated and productive workforce.