Offshoring: Coping with U.S.-India culture clash – CIO news story

SOURCE: CIO
DATE: Feb 2008

MOHIT SOAPBOX:
Dealing with cross cultural issues is always a challenge in outsourcing and offshoring engagements. A # of companies still look at this as a training exercise where the senior management wants the cultural training to be done but is very rarely budgeted for beyond some earlier transition stages.
ORIGINAL SOURCE
Article by Denise Dubie

Sending IT jobs to Indian offshore service providers won’t deliver the cost-saving results North American companies want if U.S.-trained managers ignore inherent cultural differences between the two workforces.

Industry watchers report that many U.S. companies experience a culture shock of sorts when working with Indian employees educated and trained there, and often American businesses don’t immediately enjoy the expected benefits of an offshore engagement. The reason isn’t a lack of motivation, intelligence or effort on behalf of India-based workers. In fact, analysts say Indian workers are extremely ambitious and often job hop for more pay, causing the attrition problems many offshore providers are currently experiencing. Instead U.S companies run into management problems due to a deep cultural divide between North American-based businesses and the Indian talent pool.

“Many North American businesses offshore for cost savings and labor arbitrage, and that can pay off. But there are many challenges meshing how Americans perceive work should get done and how Indians work,” says Mindy Blodgett, a research analyst at Yankee Group. “Americans in particular expect a lot more initiative, independent thinking and pushback from their workers — for instance, everyone should be thinking of better ways to work together — and Indian culture is much more focused on process and procedure and strictly following the established steps along the way.”

For instance, Blodgett explains Americans typically work against deadlines and will change how they approach work when worried they may miss a deadline. An Indian employee might not veer off the set workflow and ultimately miss the deadline because the way work is done is perceived as more important than the time constraints put on the job. “American business culture is results-based, get the work done sooner so we can do more work and raise the bottom line,” she says.

Indian culture also often calls for putting relationships before business, says Amy Tolbert, principal of Concord Multicultural Services, an IT staffing and consultancy firm that specializes in building global teams. Typically, Americans would meet and “get right down to business” and discuss more personal topics when business is finished — which often doesn’t happen because there is another business function that becomes more critical to the U.S. worker. But a traditional Indian gathering of managers and employees or business partners might put more emphasis on the interpersonal relationships upfront and address business as a secondary priority.

“Americans are task-oriented. It’s about getting the work done. You don’t need to like your co-workers or have personal relationships with them as long as you all get the work done on time together,” Tolbert says. “India is a more relationship-based culture, in which they will do business with someone they trust without a contract. That seems appalling to litigious Americans who assume you can’t trust the person, but if they adhere to the contract you can work with them.”

Another pitfall U.S.-trained managers encounter is effective communications with India-based staff. Most American workers don’t fear losing their job for having a different opinion than their boss. Actually the opposite can be true. Many U.S. managers might find fault with an employee that can’t brainstorm or propose new ways of performing jobs that ultimately better serve the business, Yankee’s Blodgett explains. Yet in India speaking out of turn or going over a manager’s head would be considered out of line.

“American businesses tend to be a bit flatter; title and rank aren’t as important and go-getter attitudes are rewarded,” Blodgett says. “But traditionally in an Indian environment, it would be much more frowned upon if an underling proposed a better way to do things than the boss.”

That is not to say that India-educated and -trained employees don’t often think they have better ideas than their managers, but out of respect for the hierarchy, in many cases those opinions would not be voiced in the direct manner American managers expect. In fact, global employment specialists say they have heard U.S. managers report their Indian workforce “sabotaged” projects due to miscommunications. The problem is while the India-based employee may feel they are being respectful by delivering positive news, the American manager wants to hear the truth — good or bad.

“A worker raised and educated in India could think the boss should be told what they want to hear — that things are going well — and not want to point out the error that in fact things aren’t going as the boss thinks they should,” Tolbert says. “Americans would perceive that as being dishonest, but the Indian worker is simply respecting the cultural norm they grew up with and wouldn’t think of bucking that norm.”

Yet U.S-based managers can prevent such misunderstandings from hurting their offshore engagement if they address the cultural difference upfront. When deciding to outsource work to employees from another culture, managers must factor in education and training costs for both America- and India-based employees. Yankee’s Blodgett says cross-cultural training would help American companies train onshore and offshore staff how to better collaborate and work toward common goals.

“They might have to tweak processes early on and reassess the success of the processes or working relationships,” she says. “Don’t assume everything is going well because no one is telling you different.”

Tolbert suggests U.S. managers learn to request information from Indian workers differently. For instance, if an Indian employee finds it disrespectful to call out errors in how things are done, change the dialogue to a more hypothetical one to avoid the worker having to judge management’s approach. One method could be putting a group of workers on a project as a team and having the team present their findings as a job function, rather than calling out an individual to comment on how things could be done better.

“Remove the individual from the equation, prevent them from having to place judgment on the boss, the process or their co-workers. Instead of posing what may seem to be very direct and personal questions, facilitate it differently, make it about the work and workers will respond,” Tolbert says. “American businesses know now more than ever that a productive individual worker benefits the company’s success. Changing how they approach employees onshore or offshore will benefit business profitability.”