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A critical evaluation of multicultural workforce and overcoming cultural barriers: The experience of Filipino nurses in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Saati, Hedaya
Saati, Hedaya
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Abstract
The main aim of this project was to critically analyse and evaluate how to overcome barriers to workplace multiculturalism. Achieving this aim was important for the purposes of providing a roadmap for contemporary organisations to use towards fostering higher levels of inclusion and diversity amongst their core teams of employees. The findings generated by the research study broadly signify that the main issues undermining workplace multiculturalism at the Jeddah City Hospital are communication siloes, agile decision making structures, culture shocks and age discrimination. Significantly, all of these issues were found to stem from a lack of effective communication and two-way dialogue between frontline nurses and care professionals and senior members of the HR and operations teams. The data results produced by this research project also further intimate that multiculturalism could be greatly improved within the organisation via: encouraging open door policies for diversity and inclusion issues, extending learning and orientation periods for new onboards to provide opportunities for enhanced levels of intra-team integration and togetherness, establishing an inclusion council to help new onboards with out-of-work life adjustment and offering coaching and mentoring programmes to new onboards to instil them with the unique skills and aptitudes needed to excel in their new work environment. The output of the research study highlights that the Jeddah City Hospital is also struggling with a negative organisational climate. This climate is at its most problematic in respect of making employees feel ashamed for making mistakes and/or needing to ask peers and colleagues for help to complete a particular task. It was noted by the study that this climate needs to change if the Jeddah City Hospital is to oversee increased levels of inclusion and diversity across the organisation. The methodology was ostensibly twofold: case study research and semi-structured interviews. The case study element involved analysing the experiences of Filipino nurses in a Jeddah City Hospital. Ten semi-structured interviews were carried out with frontline Filipino nurses and healthcare professionals currently working in the hospital to signpost the main cultural barriers being faced by this cohort in seamlessly integrating within the wider team and organisational setup. The main strength of the methodology used is that it helped to provide practical insights that could be of use in real-life situations faced by contemporary HR managers. By contrast, a possible limitation of the methodology is that there is no guarantee that the comments advanced by the interviewees constitute a fair and representative account of the current state of play within the hospital as regards