China Cultural Awareness Training

We find that companies acquired by a Chinese parent company want to develop a greater understanding of the key business drivers of their contacts back at the new headquarters. They want to persuade and influence their parent company to allow them to continue developing their business in the way they believe is best for the business – they don’t want to be guided by people they feel might not fully understand their market.

Increasingly, businesses rely heavily on supply chains that are deeply embedded in China. The China relationship, therefore, becomes critical for their operational effectiveness, and people realize that a good understanding of the Chinese approach to business can reap immediate rewards in terms of helping improve communication and interpersonal relations.

There is an active war for talent taking place in China, and this situation is unlikely to improve quickly, given China’s ageing population demographics. Many good potential Chinese candidates are opting to work for local Chinese companies and turning their backs on opportunities with foreign capital companies. Therefore, understanding your current Chinese colleagues and having the cultural fluency to recruit well in China becomes increasingly important. Recruitment and retention are vital in the China context.

The potential of the Chinese market is almost limitless. Make it big in China and it could be a game-changer for your organization. But China is hard – someone once said: ‘In China, everything is possible; but nothing is easy.’ To succeed in China, you must understand the local environment and the Chinese approach to business. Going to China without doing your cultural homework could prove very costly.