Cultural competence means recognising our own worldview and understanding and valuing cultural and social norms reflected in the diversity of the people we engage with through our daily lives. Culture can broadly include, but is not limited to, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religious or faith affiliation and more.

Creating an environment where your Pasifika workforce feel valued, heard and included will pay dividends in the long run. Pasifika peoples generally are very loyal out of respect, but even more so when they feel highly valued, both for their skills and who they are.

Many school students often share their experience of feeling they had to leave their culture at the door, before they could be accepted in their school environment. This is not a good feeling. We want to be the best employee, contribute meaningfully, and feel that we are highly valued for the language skills, and ways of being as a Pasifika person. We don’t want to be treated as a token, ie only being visible during a language week and being asked to provide a big island meal.

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Cultural Safety, is about having a level of competency to ensure that your practice is safe when engaging with Pasifika peoples. Your safety is determined by the level of competency that you understand and practice.

Cultural competency is about a level of knowledge, information, attitudes and beliefs that help you to understand how best to engage with Pasifika peoples.

In the Pasifika context, cultural competency is demonstrated by an organisations policies, processes and practices that are applied in such a way as to respect and honour the values, beliefs and customs of Pasifika people.

For example, opening a fono (meeting) with a few words of welcome acknowledging guests & VIPs, followed by an opening (and closing) tatalo (prayer)

There are a couple of first steps, ideally through your own internal capacity – from your senior managers and leaders, governance, HR policies & procedures and with endorsement by your Pasifika employee network.

However, if you don’t have a large network of Pasifika peoples that you can draw on, then you can outsource to an organisation such as CPL, who can tailor make workshops to assist you.

We can fully customise the workshop to meet your specific needs – small, medium or large groups; face to face or online; senior management, middle management, whole staff; specific sessions to tackle a very specific topic; can add language specific or pan-pacific; can develop content based on your organisations demographic data etc).

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We can fully customise the workshop to meet your specific needs, get in touch to discuss how we can tailor our courses to your particular requirements.

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We can tailor the workshop and approach to meet your needs. We have run workshops for 3 people, right up to 100.

We will advise on the preferred number based on what you’re trying to achieve.

Yes absolutely.

We can come to you within the greater Auckland region, and if outside of Auckland travel costs may be included in the fee.

Our pre-planned workshop covers a generic introduction into what ‘developing cultural competency’ is, and how to apply it in your organisation.

But we can tailor all the sessions to cover any key information you need, or any issue you’re grappling with.

We also offer ongoing support and mentoring as required.

Call us to discuss how we can tailor a workshop specifically for your needs.

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