This week’s prompt is a tough one for me as I feel I have not been met with many cultural difficulties. Our team is very international. We have one member from Greece, another from Brazil, and one more from a country that is not Ireland (I do not know it since she has not told me). All three of them speak English as a second language and as a result the team is very adaptable to cultural differences. I guess in this way I run into more of American vs. European differences rather than specifically Irish cultural differences to me.
The biggest challenge I face is the slower pace of work. I am a Pennsylvania native, and our work culture is to do tasks well and do them quickly. I am accustomed to and expect to be given strict deadlines for completing tasks. While I have impressed the team with my prompt return of the work I am given, I face the issue with needing extra work or waiting on a team member to respond to my question. It is just very odd to me how relaxed the team is with deadlines and responses as to myself some of the work we do is very urgent. We do make urgent accounts are done on time, but it is completely ok to push unfinished work to the next day or even next week. However, I do not think this is a negative; it is a learning opportunity for me that sometimes it is better to take my tasks one day at a time. In the future, I am sure that I will have a fast-paced career and it may be better to take the European approach to be relaxed and complete what I need to do without stressing. The relaxed work culture is refreshing, but nonetheless difficult for an American to adapt to.
I can give an example for this. I was given the task of reconciling our account with a vendor. I had to check the vendor’s statements against what we had in our system and figure out what was charged and when. I also had to make sure that we had posted every invoice sent by the vendor. This did not take me much time to do, but my supervisor for the project expected it to take longer. She had told me before that it was a priority that needed sorted soon, so I set to work on it quickly. However, I am learning that the Irish version of ‘priority’ can mean within the week or the week afterwards. In any case, I earned my supervisor’s trust and have been given more tasks of the same nature. The team has since adapted to me being able to do things quickly and I was given another reconciliation account that truly was urgent. I was able to help by making sure everything was checked and accounted for that evening.
Another cultural difference I have faced is the directness of communication between the team. This is not necessarily a difficulty. Though, I worry that I may come across as rude or cold since I tend to be most professional until told otherwise. We do not have to use any titles with each other, and the team speaks to the manager freely; they also speak with their higher-ups openly (for the most part). It is ok to use first names, and swearing is allowed in the chat. It certainly shocked me, and I still do not completely feel comfortable addressing my team by their first names, especially our manager. This led to a silly instance where I called my colleague Ms. (insert name) to which she responded “I think I may faint. Ms. (Name)! Am I that old now?!” At first, I was afraid I offended her, but she was only joking. The rest of the team was also calling her old in the chat. We had a laugh about it and now she calls me Ms. Claire as a joke sometimes. I did learn that in Ireland the titles Ms., Mrs., or Mr., are not often used in the workplace. This coworker also happened to be the one from Greece and she told me that it is common to use those titles her country, so all was well. In the end, I learned a lesson in professional culture for two countries and I bonded with the team a bit.
Finally, as a general update. I have been given the responsibility of managing the portals for getting vendors who do not send us invoices directly. I must check these often as well as send over new invoices to our system. It can be an important job as there will be a problem with the vendor and account if we do not pay our bills. With this new responsibility, I feel am being included with my team, and I am learning the processes for payments in multiple countries. I have also written up training documents as a way of learning some procedures that I would have otherwise not be taught as an intern. I appreciate the effort the finance team puts into making this internship valuable and I am excited to find out what else I will learn during my time at Staycity.