Celebrating Cultural Heritage Months in the Workplace

Cultural heritage shapes an individual’s as well as community’s identity and helps bridge the gap between the past and the present.

Embracing Cultural Diversity

Through an understanding of one’s own culture and another individual’s culture, one will be able to know and accept the differences between each other. Our workplaces are global melting pots of diverse individuals, and it is time for us to know, understand, imagine, and accept each other’s cultural heritage. A fun way to enjoy each other’s cultural values is to celebrate cultural heritage months in the organizations. Celebrating cultural heritage months helps recognize different cultures and gives visibility to the invisible groups within organizations. Now, let’s learn how to celebrate Heritage Months at organizations.

Creating a Global Workplace

Organizations today have diverse global employees in every country. Hence, celebrating the cultural aspects of different employee community groups is essential. One easy way to celebrate the cultural heritage of diverse groups is to organize a cultural showcase every month, where people are encouraged to wear clothes depicting the cultural heritage and values they believe in. It can be celebrated as an ethnic day within the organization. Just as every organization in India includes holidays and celebrations for famous Indian festivals, why not celebrate milestones for marginalized groups and communities within organizations through a cultural showcase?

Artistic Expressions of Culture

Did you know that art is the mirror of cultural heritage? So, another way to celebrate cultural heritage within organizations is creating a platform for people of different groups, backgrounds, and communities to showcase their art forms creatively in the organizational setup. Events like cultural music performances such as Carnatic, or Hindustani recital Ghazal shows, and dance shows where everyone is asked to bring in their artistic flavor and expression, are playful, fun events that celebrate culture and create a space for belonging, joy, and employee wellness.

Culinary Celebrations

As it’s commonly said that food expresses one’s culture, organizations can also celebrate food to cherish diverse cultural heritage. A potluck lunch or dinner where every employee brings a food item representing their culture can be organized. Otherwise, a three-day or five-day food festival can be set up for employees in the organization, where employees from diverse cultural groups set up food stalls to celebrate their unique cultural happiness, taste, and variety with their colleagues.

Ethnic Celebrations in India

In India, organizations celebrate heritage days as ethnic days during festivals like Diwali, Onam, Ramzan, Christmas, and other prominent festivals. Every festival has its unique cuisine and celebrations associated with it. For instance, during Onam and Diwali, many organizations conduct rangoli competitions. During Christmas, many employee teams play Secret Santa. Also, many organizations may conduct Iftar parties to celebrate Ramzan.

Honoring Language and Literature

The sweetness of every culture lies in its language, so it’s important for organizations to not forget and honor unique languages and dialects within every culture. To acknowledge and celebrate diverse languages like Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, and Assamese, organizations can have many events like enjoying the unique literature embedded within every culture through book readings, setting up poetry and storytelling events like open mics, theatre events, and others.

Recognizing Achievements

Last but not least are the commendable achievements of different people among diverse groups, cultures, and communities. So, while remembering cultural heritage within organizations, it’s quintessential to cherish the unique experiences, achievements, and stories of different people in varied cultures. Conducting skits, puppet shows, improv, or movie screening time of prominent people from diverse cultural groups is a simple but effective way to celebrate diverse cultural heritage within organizations.

Celebrating and accepting the cultural heritage of diverse groups within organizations is necessary to create an environment of diversity, inclusion, acceptance, and equity for the employees. While some ways to celebrate cultural heritage in organizations are listed above, there are many more unique ways to champion the cultural values of different organizations. Every organization is responsible for learning new techniques to achieve cultural compliance and represent cultural heritage authentically.

About Kelp

Kelp was incorporated in 2013 to provide the best HR solutions to organizations, and to improve workplace culture across the board. Over the last 10 years, we have serviced more than 800 clients in India and a few overseas, across various industries in the areas of PoSH (prevention of sexual harassment at workplace), D, E & I (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) and EAP. But the common objective of all of these services is to build safer, happier, inclusive and productive workplaces.

For our services related to Prevention of Sexual Harassment (PoSH), Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (D,E &I) or Employee Assistance programs (EAP) do get in touch with us at info@kelphr.com, call +91-95001-29652 and our advisors will help you with customized offerings suited to your organization.