In the last 3 weeks I have spent close to 12 days down south in the manufacturing hub of Senai, Johor. During my programs there, I got to know many managers and supervisors alike. Apart from the usual issues that were discussed, they also touched on the issues relating to managing workers from other countries. As I have also come across this issue in other parts of the country, I thought it will be a good idea to look into this in this entry.
Foreign labour is already part of the Malaysian economic tapestry. The pros and cons of this, we will leave it to the politicians and the policy makers. For us, it is enough to know that they are here and we need to manage them to achieve our organization's objectives. But how different or similar is managing foreign workers compared to managing our own?
Take the case, of a group of foreign manufacturing line-operators who had such a 'bad' body odour that their Malaysian supervisor had to buy body deodorants for them or the example of a Malaysian manager who had to deal with requests for dangdut songs at part of the company's piped-music in the cafeteria.
But I think, the differences run deeper than that. If we take for example an Indian national who is a IT programmer, his social and psychological self will be very much different from us Malaysians. And, he will be more acutely aware of his socio-psychological differences when he is away from his home just as we do when we are in a foreign land. Similarly a Nepalese guard or a Vietnamese line worker will also feel these differences. A Malaysian Chinese will be entirely understanding if told not to bring pork from home into the cafeteria but for a Vietnamese worker from a village 300 km away from Hanoi, she would have no clue as to why she is being forbidden from eating something that is staple to her diet all these years. And, when this instruction is delivered with a certain sense of disdain and venom,it makes future positive relationship with her that much more difficult.
In my experience, most managers learn to deal with these differences on a trial and error basis. The ones who are failing miserably or are still unable to handle this diversity are those who:
1. view all foreign workers as homogeneous and they have one homogeneous characteristic and that is 'they are not Malaysians'.
2. has a superiority complex over these foreign workers.
3. feel that they are already burdened enough with their work without having to accept and handle cultural differences of and between foreign workers.
4. refuse to accept that these foreigners are not here merely for the money and that they also expect respect, trust, self development, a balanced work-life equation and social well being.
5. too much stereotyping of the country of origin.
6. a general lack of understanding and appreciation of the globalized nature of today's economic structure.
7. a racist and a bigot ( I have come across a few of this).
I am troubled when I sometimes hear Malaysian managers speak of these foreign workers as a temporary passing phenomena or as a necessary evil. The future of every nation in the coming years will depend on local AND much more on foreign talents that it is able to attract. Increasingly, these talents are coming from less sexier countries. My advise : Get used to it.
