奶酪和巧克力之地中的澳大利亚

搬到另一个城市，国家或半球（就像我所做的那样）总是一个挑战，但最肯定的是，积极挑战和消极挑战都融合在一起。除了在语言，气候，货币以及您行驶的道路上存在明显的差异之外，隐藏在地面下的东西将使您或打破您。

将时钟倒回4年...我是在澳大利亚布里斯班家乡的Leica Geosystems办事处的。我喜欢为公司工作，但是当有机会搬到瑞士的海尔布鲁格时，我正在寻找改变，一个新的挑战。我抓住了机会！毕竟，我爱奶酪，我喜欢巧克力，最重要的是我爱雪。

当然，我已经从事这项业务已有5年了，并曾多次前往Heerbrugg参加会议。因此，我对在瑞士的生活和工作有些了解。正确的？...

打包我的生活（以及一间两居室的公寓），出售我心爱的汽车，向家人，朋友和同事说再见，然后搬到世界的另一侧 - 所有这些绝对是品格建造。这一切都发生了很快（就像新工作是催化剂时一样），在我不知不觉中，我正乘飞机去苏黎世。节省的恩典是我在熟悉的环境中，我已经认识了我们办公室的一些人。

Nothing could prepare me for moving into my new apartment however. When I viewed the property with the real estate agent, I was certain there were light fittings in the ceiling, but when I entered the apartment during handover, I thought there had been a burglary. Not one single light fitting, blind or curtain in the whole apartment, just several wires dangling from the ceiling. The bonus was I had a refrigerator hidden away behind some panelling in the kitchen, so I didn't have to buy a new one.
People still find it amusing that I survived my first month in my new (and very empty) apartment using the iPhone Torch app as my only source of light. Recycling and placing garbage in special green bags and placing them on the street kerb also became my new "normal".

除了生活方式的差异外，澳大利亚和瑞士之间的工作文化差异很大 - 与其他一些国家相比，差距并不那么巨大，但仍然很大。尽管瑞士人倾向于是“早鸟”，但澳大利亚人倾向于在当天晚些时候工作，这可能与全年两国可用的日光和阳光有关。瑞士努力工作，但他们也为家庭和花时间在自然界或从事某些体育锻炼或其他活动的时间里腾出时间。虽然澳大利亚人的自然环境美丽，但它们确实倾向于将它们视为理所当然，而高质量的家庭时间会减少到周末。

Aussies tend to be rather direct, open and task-oriented, and are more familiar when addressing colleagues or business stakeholders. Meanwhile, the Swiss are more relationship-oriented, less direct and more private - getting to know the Swiss can be quite difficult. As a land-locked country, I can understand some of the reasoning for wanting privacy. Australia is essentially a big island tucked away from the rest of the world; we're also a much younger country with very little history of our own, so perhaps this is a reason why we're more open and interact more easily with strangers. Neither population is wrong, they're just different. Learning how to navigate effectively around these differences is a skill in itself, and one that I am still trying to master.

我参加ed one of our Intercultural Awareness training sessions recently, and it was still enlightening to see the difference in perspectives between mine and those of the local and international colleagues in the class. This is one area that our People Development department is focusing on in terms of providing our people with the skills and knowledge about these differences. Quite often conflict can arise out of a very simple misunderstanding or miscommunication. What is visible in terms of a country's culture is quite often just the "tip of the iceberg". We are part of a global company and with the introduction of social media, web and teleconferencing solutions, and team collaboration tools and portals; the globe is becoming more accessible to all.
I've met some wonderful people and visited a lot of amazing places since moving to this country. I'm glad to say these experiences will stay with me for the rest of my life, and are now part of what has shaped me as a person. I'm not the same person who left Brisbane four years ago. I've learnt an enormous amount about life, people, different cultures, and my profession, but none of this is visible from the outside - you need to dig below the surface to understand what a person is really about.

Yasmin Sethi
人发育局长
Hexagon Geosystems

TalentED - Talent-focused editorial articles from Hexagon Geosystems