International Journal of Project Management 20 (2002) 517524 www.elsevier.

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Communication problems with ethnic minorities in the construction industry

Martin Loosemore*, Patrick Lee
Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia Received 2 March 2001; received in revised form 18 May 2001; accepted 13 July 2001

Abstract Multi-culturism is an increasingly prominent feature of the construction industry. The managerial challenge of workforce diversity is enormous, not least, ensuring eective communication between the various cultural groups. This paper investigates the problems of managing employees with limited prociency in the indigenous language of their workplace. It focuses upon the problems experienced in two English-speaking countries (Australia and Singapore) and upon interactions between English-speaking managers and non English-speaking operatives. It is concluded that English is often the minority language on site and conned to managerial level, yet there are few initiatives to alleviate the communication problems that can arise. A series of recommendations are made to help construction companies improve inter-cultural communication in their workforce. # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Culture; Diversity; Communication; Training; Language; Education

1. Introduction Australia has the worlds second largest foreign-born workforce with approximately 30% of its working population having been born in another country [1]. Since 1945, almost 6 million people from over 150 countries have arrived in Australia as new settlers and they have been largely responsible for its population growth from approximately 7 million in 1945 to 18.6 million in 1999. Approximately 70% of these migrants originated from non English-speaking countries and it is estimated that 16% of the Australian work-force speak a language other than English at home [2]. Since the construction industry in Australia employs approximately 7% of the working population and has a relatively large number of unskilled, menial and manual jobs, it tends to absorb a large proportion of migrant workers into its workforce. The situation is the same in many other developed countries. For example, in 1998 foreign workers made up 81.2% of the total construction workforce in Singapore [3]. Furthermore, Eur* Corresponding author. Tel.: +61-2-9385-6723; fax: +61-2-93855613. E-mail address: m.loosemore@unsw.edu.au (M. Loosemore).

opean countries and Middle Eastern countries are experiencing ever greater inuxes of foreign migrants into their construction workforces. For example, in Saudi Arabia, which is also typical of most Arabian Gulf countries, the number of registered foreign labourers employed in the construction industry is approximately 30% of the workforce [4]. Similarly, recent concerns have been raised in the UK construction industry about the inux of illegal immigrant workers from Eastern European countries, a trend which is likely to continue as Europes refugee problem continues to worsen [5]. The consequences of mis-managing cultural diversity are serious and include increase stress among the workforce, confusion, frustration and conict which translates into lower morale, productivity, quality problems and higher accident rates [68]. Conversely, cultural diversity can be a signicant asset to an organisation if it is managed well and many of the worlds most successful companies such as ICI, AT&T, Siemens and Xerox have shown that it can be used to competitive advantage [9]. However, such companies are in the minority and the construction industry has been singled out as having a particularly poor record in this area [10]. It is clear that managing cultural diversity is one of the

0263-7863/02/$22.00 # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved. PII: S0263-7863(01)00055-2

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greatest challenges that will face managers in the future, not least because many countries see immigration as the only practical solution to halting declines in natural population growth [11]. Language problems are the greatest barrier to the smooth integration of migrants into a workforce, at least in the short term [12,13]. Indeed, almost 30 years ago, Mills [14] warned of this problem amongst ethnic groups in the USA construction industry and more recently, Lim and Alum [15] identied communication problems with foreign workers as the fth most important problem to be addressed in improving the productivity of the Singaporean construction industry. Despite these concerns and the prospect of greater problems in the future, there has been no research in this area. Within this context, the purpose of this paper is to focus upon the problems of communication with foreign workers in the construction industry. More specically, its aims are to focus upon the issue of language dierences by exploring the problems of managing employees at operative level who have limited English prociency. This is done within the English-speaking context of the Australian and Singaporean construction industries. The paper also explores how construction organisations resolve language related problems and recommends some strategies to create a successful communication environment in a multi-lingual workforce. The objective is to help construction companies better harness the productive potential of their increasingly multi-cultural workforces.

reference which can, in some circumstances, be very dierent to the intentions of the sender. The more different the communicating cultures, the greater the problem. As Triandis [19] noted, people are generally poor judges of people who are dissimilar to them.

3. Cultural variables which inuence inter-cultural communication The main cultural variables which inuence inter-cultural communication are; attitudes, social organisation, thought patterns, roles, non-verbal behaviour and language [8,12]. Attitudes are a psychological tendency to evaluate a particular object or situation in a favourable or unfavourable manner which predisposes people to behave in certain ways [20]. The damaging attitude which often prevails in an inter-cultural context is one of ethnocentrism, which is a persons tendency to see their own culture as superior to all others [21]. This causes people to stereotype other cultures, selectively perceiving their messages in a predetermined and normally, a negative way. Stereotyping and ethnocentrism are widely considered to be the foundation of racism in society. Social organisation refers to the inuence of a persons reference group which may include others of a similar nationality, race, social class, religion, tribe or sect. Norms develop within such groups to inuence the values and priorities of its members causing them to interpret incoming messages from out-groups in a certain way. Research indicates that it is very dicult for members of a group to resist this pressure, especially when the group has a strong source of identity and cohesion [22]. Thought patterns also vary between cultures meaning that what is considered reasonable, rational, logical and self-evident to one person may be unreasonable, illogical and obscure to another [23]. This ensures that dierent cultures solve problems in dierent ways and that they present their ideas in a dierent sequence. The consequence is that messages can often be mis-interpreted. Another important dierence between cultures which can interfere with cmmunications are the expectations of certain roles in a society such as gender, seniority or a specic profession. Different cultures tend to develop dierent rules concerning how a person in a particular position should act and this determines the way that communications with people holding such positions are interpreted. These communications can be either verbal or non-verbal and dierent cultures have dierent sensitivities to the silent messages contained within a message. Those with high sensitivity to non-verbal content are normally referred to as highcontext cultures and vice versa for low-context cultures [8]. Finally, the most obvious and inuential cultural variable which can interfere with the process of communication is language. Samovar et al. [24] denes

2. Inter-cultural communication Culture refers to a societys shared values, beliefs, traditions, understandings, assumptions and goals that are learned from previous generations and passed to future generations [16]. These shared aspects of life are learnt gradually through life-long socialisation in a culture and constitute a programmed pattern of perceiving and reasoning which inuences the meaning attributed to messages transmitted through media such as words, behaviour or material artefacts [17]. Thus communication and culture are inseparable concepts because culture is both learned and maintained through human interaction. Culture not only determines who talks to who, about what and how the communication proceeds, but it also determines how people encode messages, the mediums they chose to transmit them and the way that the symbols (both verbal and non-verbal) contained in the message are interpreted [18]. Since culture is the foundation of communication, it can represent a major source of noise which can interrupt or distort the meanings intended in a message. Problems can arise when receivers attribute meaning to a message according to their own cultural frame of

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language as the generally agreed upon learned symbol system used to represent the experiences within a geographic or cultural community. Language is the primary means of interaction between people and is the main system by which people convey their thoughts, feelings, intentions and desires to others [25]. Anyone who has attempted to communicate with a person who speaks another language knows how important an element it is in eective communication and numerous studies have demonstrated this [2628]. Since this paper focuses upon language-related problems in inter-cultural communication, more attention is given to this issue later.

4. The role of language in inter-cultural communication Language comprises dierent combinations of verbal and written symbols (called alphabets) which are used by people to label and dene social and physical objects and situations in their environment [29]. Inevitably a cultures language is a function of its environment. For example, the anthropological study of isolated tribes in the Amazonian area reveals that there is no symbol in their language for snow whereas Eskimos have over 90 dierent symbols to describe this important phenomenon in their environment [30]. Inter-cultural communication is made more complicated by the fact that many societies use dierent symbols to label the same phenomenon. For example, to the untrained English speakers eye, the symbols used in the Chinese language are indecipherable, as are the precise inections of tone that can be used to give dierent meanings to identical written words when the language is spoken. It is estimated that there are approximately 2800 dierent languages in the world which means that the variability of physical symbols alone are a major barrier to eective communication across cultures. Even more complicated are the hidden messages that are contained within language when people communicate. For example, it is widely accepted that language plays a strong part in communicating ones social status and role in society. For example, white Americans have been found to perceive Hispanics poor English-speaking abilities as indicating social inferiority. Similarly, those who speak with a black American accent are generally perceived to be less reliable, less intelligent and of lower status than those who speak standard American English [12,31]. There is little doubt that in all societies, certain accents are associated with certain positions of social status and that dialect triggers a subjective evaluation of the speaker. Indeed, this association of status and language is not conned to a persons dialect but also to the vocabulary they use and the emotion with which ideas are expressed. As Chaika [32] points out, the dening characteristic of the middle classes in most societies is

their wish to be identied as educated and this is largely reected in high descriptiveness of symbols used to present ideas and the unemotional manner in which they are expressed. Finally, the process of communication is further complicated by the tendency of each society to adapt its language into non-standard forms such as slang, euphemisms and proverbs [33]. Slang tends to develop for convenience or secretive purposes within groups who consider themselves to be part of a distinct sub-culture within a wider cultural community. Slang is a highly informal usage of vocabulary which is more metaphorical, playful and ephemeral than ordinary language and in extreme circumstances, it can be almost indecipherable to an outsider. Euphemisms are a linguistic mechanism that people use to avoid words which are considered taboo by a society. They normally involve substituting a bland, vague or indirect expression for one which would be considered too direct, harsh or blunt. Without knowledge of the taboos that are driving euphemisms, such phrases are easily misinterpreted. Finally, proverbs are found in all languages and derive from a societys folklore, riddles, fables and myths. They can often dier diametrically depending upon the values of the society from which they come. For example, compare the common English/American proverb of everyman for himself which reects those societys individualistic cultures with the Japanese proverb the nail that stands up will be hammered down which reects its collectivist culture. It is clear that resolving language dierences within an organisation requires much more than simply learning another language. It also requires some degree of cultural assimilation.

5. Method Given the potential for communication diculties to arise from workforce language dierences in the construction industry it is important to understand how construction companies deal with this issue. To this end, two surveys were conducted in parallel in both the Australian and Singaporean construction industries. The aims of the survey were to investigate the problems of managing employees at operative level who have limited English prociency, to explore how construction organisations resolve language related problems and to recommend some strategies to create a successful communication environment in a multi-lingual workforce. The rst part of the survey was designed to investigate the multi-cultural structure of the workplace at operative level and to measure the relative diculties supervisors had in communicating with dierent cultural groups. The second part of the survey was designed to investigate the organisational dimension of multi-culturism in terms of company structures, policies, reasons

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for hiring ethnic minorities and the implications of multi-culturalism in the workplace. The nal part of the survey focused upon the attitudes, knowledge and behaviour of supervisors towards foreign workers. It also sought to explore the methods used by supervisors to communicate with ethnic minorities and to assimilate them into the workplace. The survey was administered to a random sample of 430 English-speaking supervisors in Singapore and 300 supervisors in Australia. Supervisors were chosen because of their direct contact with foreign operatives and the response rates were 20% in Australia and 15% in Singapore (after discarding nonEnglish-speaking supervisors). The low response rate may be attributable to the low priority which supervisors in the construction industry attribute to this issue. Never-the-less, this resulted in a representative sample of 60 Australian supervisors and 73 Singaporean supervisors. The data was analysed by searching for signicant bivariate associations between the variables using the Chi-squared test of independence. This data was supported by focus-group sessions with supervisory sta in Australia and Singapore. Focus groups are carefully planned discussions stimulated within a predened group environment to obtain perceptions about a dened area of interest in a permissive, non-judgemental environment [34]. In eect, they are group-based interviews to promote interaction and selfdisclosure among participants who can share their perspectives about a topic provided by the researcher [35]. In this research project, the ndings from the survey formed the basis of the focus-group discussions. One of the strengths of focus groups is their ability to collect data about similarities and dierences in participants opinions and preferences in a exible environment [36]. They complemented the data produced by the rst phase of this research by providing a richness of data which the survey could not, enabling deeper explanations of any associations discovered. They also allowed the researcher to respond to and explore unexpected leads which emerged during the group discussions, enabling deeper insights to be gained into peoples attitudes, beliefs and feelings about multi-culturalism. However, like any research method, focus groups have their limitations and these largely revolve around the problems associated with group-dynamics which can bias the data obtained. The main danger arises from the emergence of groupthink, whereby a sense of cohesion can develop within a group to stie expressions of individual opinions and force people to conform to group norms [22]. This eect is particularly strong in highly cohesive and homogeneous groups where there is little sense of independent management. For this reason, the eective stewardship of the focus groups was critical to this research as was heterogeneity in group membership. Therefore, the focus-groups consisted of supervisors from dierent sites and none of the

sites surveyed in phase one of the research were represented in the discussions. Five focus group sessions were conducted in each country and typically, the groups typically consisted of eight people and lasted 45 min.

6. Discussion of results It is not possible to present the large volumes of statistical and qualitative data within the space constraints of this paper. So what follows is a descriptive account of the main ndings from a comparative Singaporean and Australian context. 6.1. Australia The research results indicate that 26 dierent nationalities are commonly found on Australian construction sites with Italians, Lebanese and Greeks making up the bulk of the operative workforce. Consequently there are many languages spoken on site and the use of English as the main medium of communication is conned to the relatively small proportion of the population who can speak it uently. These are usually managers and supervisors, who tend to be highly task-orientated and have little time, opportunity or inclination to improve their multi-lingual capabilities. Some supervisors with large spans of control pointed out that it was not unusual to have to communicate with over 10 dierent language groups on any one job and that non-Englishspeaking groups were more reluctant to communicate with managers than English-speaking employees. For managers with low multi-lingual skills, this often meant that early warnings of foreseeable problems would not be forthcoming and that operatives would be more likely to ignore problems or tackle them independently without consulting managers rst. It also meant that instructions would have to be issued repeatedly and that they had to be reinforced by especially close supervision. Consequently, overall, there was a perception by managers that a lack of a common language is a signicant source of frustration which reduces their eectiveness, although once again, this association was weaker for multi-lingual respondents. Furthermore, respondents disagreed that non-English-speaking workers suered higher accident rates that other workers, although there were some concerns expressed that these workers were being passed through safety induction courses by Unions without a full understanding of safety procedures on site. Most managers seemed to appreciate the greater dangers facing such groups and adjust their managerial strategy accordingly. This normally involved closer supervision and the repeated issuing of instructions in a variety of mediums, something which appeared to be accepted by supervisors as an unavoidable consequence of dealing with a multi-cultural workforce.

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The greatest level of communication diculties were experienced with the Asians (in rank order: Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese) and the main reason for hiring such workers was that there was little choice. Each nationality tends to specialise in a particular trade and dominate the market in that area meaning that the selection of a trade automatically implies the selection of a particular ethnic group. The picture which emerged from the data was of a workplace punctuated by a wide array of languages conned to intense pockets of ethnicity associated within certain trades. For example, Italians dominate the concreting industry, with Croatians controlling the formwork and carpentry trades, and the Mauris dominating the scaolding and steel-working workforce. This phenomenon often causes problems when two cultural groups that are in conict in a global context, are dependent upon each other within the project program. For example, during the research, the war in Yugoslavia was raging and one respondent was involved in revising his concreting program to ensure that Croatian carpenters and Serbian formworkers were physically separated on site. Conict between the two groups had resulted in a 30% wastage rate on formwork being re-used from oor-to-oor on a multi-story building. Managers discovered that the formwork was being deliberately sabotaged by Serbian formwork strikers before being passed to the Croatian carpenters for reconstruction on the next oor. Despite the existence of intense pockets of ethnicity on site there was very little evidence that managers were acquiring multi-lingual skills or purposefully managing the boundaries between them, other than in a reactive manner. There were no initiatives to upgrade the English-speaking skills of ethnic minority workforces at operative level and those managers that had developed language skills had done so voluntarily and at a very rudimentary level through informal interactions with dierent ethnic groups. The consequence was that interactions with and between dierent ethnic groups on site were often dicult, repetitive, protracted and frustrating. However, the challenge of dealing with people from dierent cultural backgrounds appeared to be an important part of a supervisors life which gave most, some sense of satisfaction. Most also felt like they were quite good at it and expressed a positive interest in the range of cultures they managed. However, this condence and interest was higher for those who had some multi-lingual skills than for those who didnt and beyond the work context, there was very little social interaction between our respondents and non-Englishspeaking workers. This was with the exception of one site where the project manager had attempted to break down cultural barriers by initiating a system whereby each cultural group would provide entertainment and food for the others on a rotating weekly basis. He had also provided a Mosque on site for Muslim workers

using one of the temporary storage containers. However, this type of initiative was rare and that there is little consistency of policy across dierent sites, even within individual companies. In general, the management of cultural diversity was a low priority issue for the majority of supervisors and construction companies in our survey. Consequently, the common scene on most sites was of dierent cultural groups working, socialising, communicating and even eating in isolation. Beyond some rudimentary training for supervisors in dealing with discrimination in the workplace, there was no evidence of positive strategies for dealing with a multi-lingual workplace. There was also very little information available to our respondents about how to deal with people who speak a dierent language. However, for those respondents who did have access to information, the level of condence in dealing with a multi-lingual workforce was signicantly higher. Most respondents agreed that the Unions played an important intermediary role in facilitating communication with non-English-speaking workers. However, on a dayto-day basis, all of our respondents relied upon the use of cultural gatekeepers to communicate with a particular group. These are individual members of ethnic minority groups who are willing to act as translators for them. This meant that in most instances, direct communications with the majority of site personnel was not possible and that most information was received thirdhand by operatives through untrained interpreters. This often caused rework on site due to the mis-interpretation of instructions. Furthermore, on many occasions the use of cultural gatekeepers did not coincide with the rigid power structures that existed within dierent cultural groups. This meant that managers could inadvertently create conicts within groups by unintentionally overriding cultural protocols. For example, one manager cited an occasion where the only person in a Korean gang of ceramic tilers who could speak reasonable English was the youngest and least culturally acceptable to the group. This meant that any instructions given through that individual had to sanctioned by the groups cultural leader before being communicated to the wider group. 6.2. Singapore The array of nationalities on Singaporean construction sites is less extensive than in Australia, although there appears to be a signicantly higher proportion of non-English speakers within the workforce. In Singapore, there are primarily eight national groups which make up the operative workforce, these being (in order of commonality); Indians, Thais, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Malaysian, Burmese, Philipino and Indonesian. Every group presents signicant communication problems for Singaporean supervisors. The reasons given for the high

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incidence of foreign workers in the industry are dierent to Australia in that it is dicult to attract local workers to the industry because of its low prestige. Furthermore, foreign workers are far cheaper and are perceived to complain less and having much lower expectations of working standards than local labour. Therefore, the reasons for the high incidence of foreign workers are less positive in Singapore than in Australia where the emphasis is primarily upon skills whereas in Singapore it is upon economy, exibility and convenience. Despite the relatively higher proportion of foreign workers in the Singaporean construction industry, supervisors were signicantly less condent in communicating with them. Generally, language dierences were seen as a greater barrier to communication than in the Australian construction industry, possibly because of the lower level of integration of such workers into Singaporean society. Many Singaporean immigrants have temporary residency, typically on a 2-year work permit, and eventually return home. In contrast, most Australian migrants on construction sites have permanent residency status and are more rapidly integrated into Australian society. In terms of inter-cultural training, initiatives were rare as they were on Australian sites, although Singaporean supervisors were happier with the level of material about how to deal with foreign workers than Australian managers. However, this did not necessarily mean that they had access to more information because they also had a signicantly lower level of enthusiasm towards dealing with foreign workers than Australian supervisors. Generally, Singaporean supervisors showed less initiative at a personal level to explore the cultural differences, needs and characteristics of those they managed and the picture which emerged was of a site workforce which was more socially divided than in Australia. The problems facing supervisors in both countries are clearly dierent and it is evident that like Australia, the Singaporean construction industry has a long way to go if it is to break down the signicant communication problems that exists within its multi-lingual workforce. For example, there was very little indication that Singaporean companies were actively promoting the learning of English in ethnic minority groups or that senior managers were given responsibility for multi-cultural issues. Like the Australian context, the main method of communication by supervisors was reliance upon cultural gatekeepers although there was no evidence that either supervisors or cultural gatekeepers received any formal training in being able to perform this function eectively. Like Australia, the process of interpretation was very much an informal one that relied upon the goodwill and capabilities of those concerned. Another similarity with the Australian context was the problem of foreign workers being less willing to communicate

potential problems to supervisors, albeit to a lesser extent. Conicts between dierent cultural groups was also less of a problem than in Australia. This may be because the majority of the operative workforce on Singaporean construction sites is non English-speaking which means that they are not in the minority as they are on Australian sites. Here a broader range of languages are spoken but where levels of English literacy are generally higher. This may also be the reason why non-English-speaking workers were considered to be less persecuted and ridiculed on Singaporean sites, compared with Australian sites.

7. Conclusion The premise of this paper was that there has been insucient examination of inter-cultural communication problems within an increasingly diverse construction workforce. The aims were to focus upon the issue of language dierences by exploring the problems of managing employees at operative level who had limited English prociency, to explore how construction organisations resolve language related problems and to recommend some strategies to create a successful communication environment in a multi-lingual workforce. Research was conducted in the Australian and Singaporean construction industries which are similar in the relatively low level of English literacy that characterise their workforces. The results indicate that there is no one common language of business at operative level, in the construction industries of Australia and Singapore. Although these are English-speaking countries, English can often be the minority language on site which is conned to managerial level. The wide range of languages spoken seem to be focussed into specic functional areas which are both physically and emotionally separated. Since there are few initiatives to alleviate these problems, it is not surprising that language dierences between supervisors and operatives are perceived to be a signicant source of communication problems and potential conict in the construction industry. Cultural diversity seems to have become an accepted characteristic of the construction industry in both Singapore and Australia as have the communication problems that accompany it. Overall, it appears that most companies deal with cultural diversity as a potential problem rather than a potential opportunity. The limited measures to deal with a multi-cultural workforce focus on training people to cope with problems such as discrimination rather than on how to harness the productive potential of different cultures. Although the problems of communicating with dierent language groups are signicant for most supervisors, initiatives for tackling the issue are ad-hoc, individualistic and inconsistently applied from

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site-to-site. Company-wide policies are almost nonexistent. In both Australia and Singapore, communications with dierent language groups appear to be left to chance and the most common strategy used by individuals to overcome problems associated with language dierences in the workplace is to work through cultural gatekeepers with no formal support or training. As Rodrigues [37] warns, the translators job is demanding and without proper training, messages between linguistic groups can be distorted and even lost. Indeed, even with professional translators it is estimated that up to 40% of the intended meaning in a message can be lost. The informal reliance upon cultural gatekeepers in the construction industry is in stark contrast to best practice companies in other industries who provide training and support infrastructures to improve the language skills of those have diculty communicating [9]. For example, AT&T spends over $10m per annum in the USA attempting to improve the communication skills of its employees and has a board level manager responsible for multi-cultural aairs. The aim is to encourage a greater sense of collective responsibility for better intercultural communication in the workplace. However, if construction companies were to move down this path, they would be wise to heed the advice of Migliorino et al. [7]. They found that most training schemes focus upon those who do not speak the indigenous language, ignoring the need to provide indigenous managers with a basic vocabulary in the array of languages they have to deal with. Furthermore, they discovered that language training tends to be too general and not improve technical work-related communications in the workplace. Finally, is it rarely evaluated eectively or tied to rewards. Indeed, many language courses are voluntary, being provided after work hours, making it a relatively low priority that adds to workloads and completes with family responsibilities. Thus, if greater training opportunities are aorded it is important that people have the motivation and learning skills to benet from it and that they are family-friendly. Furthermore, operatives in both Australia and Singapore are likely to need pretraining in basic literacy, numeracy and learning skills before embarking upon any training program. Other insights into eective training programs have been provided Chen and Starosta [38] who found that self-awareness was just as important as cultural awareness in achieving competency in inter-cultural communication. Simply learning a language is not enough and an important part of improving inter-cultural communications is giving people a better understanding of their own culture as well as those with which they interact. This may not be achievable in the classroom environment and may involve providing opportunities for people to socialise with dierent cultures so that they can understand the values, beliefs, rituals, expectations and superstitions which underpin them. Finally, having

trained ones supervisory and operative workforce to be more culturally astute, it is important to nurture and sustain these relationships. For example, supervisors could be encouraged to specialise in a particular culture and their future task responsibilities could reect this. Allocating supervisory responsibilities on construction projects according to culture as well as professional expertise, would certainly be a major innovation in the management of human resources in the construction industry.

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