An uncomfortable issue at iHerb is there is no sense of unity in the company culture. iHerb is privately Persian owned and the culture at iHerb is the core Persian group mainly interact with their own group and often speak in Farsi to each other. Perhaps there is a familiarity in speaking in their mother tongue but the facts are: 1) There is a core Persian group, 2) They often speak in their own language, 3) Having a core group in a company speaking in a different language will exclude other members of the team.
Another issue this causes in the culture at iHerb is the obvious allowances that the core Persian group have which other employees do not have. One of the main allowances is in flexibility of work hours. There have been reminders from management that breaks and lunch hours should be carefully watched, and employees are required to be at their desks 8 hours. (iHerb is NOT a "flexible hours, as long as your projects get finished" work culture, which is a common work culture in other companies.) However, the Persian team members aren't held to this same strict standard for work hours.
The culture and perception that these behaviors have created at iHerb is that the Persians are the 'inside group', and everyone else are just employees. What I'm addressing is that the first step to improving a situation is to acknowledge it. Denying that this culture issue exists only hurts the company more by ignoring the cultural gap of those excluded.
