By DAVID KOEPPEL

　　Precision, skill and a tendency toward perfection are what earned the Swiss watchmaker Vincent Roberts a customer service job with the luxury jeweler Harry Winston in New York.

　　So it came as something of a shock to Mr. Roberts, a French-speaking 28-year-old, when his craftsmanship was overshadowed by an inability to communicate effectively with his boss and colleagues. He was unprepared for the industry’s jargon. “I was thrown in here by myself, and it was difficult to make myself clear,” he recalled.

　　Such language barriers and cultural chasms both large and small are more predominant as the workplace becomes increasingly multicultural and a global economy requires increased interaction with foreign-born bosses, subordinates and co-workers.

　　Mr. Roberts says he was “forced to adjust” or risk losing his job. His command of English improved in the first year, and he admitted to letting go of his “Swiss behavior.” To Mr. Roberts, that meant becoming less obsessive about “tiny scratches” while still upholding the company’s high standards.

　　While Mr. Roberts said he felt alone in his job, some new immigrants find comfort by working alongside others from their home country, or even family members. At an upscale Brooklyn restaurant, Maricarmen Lopez, 25, born in Mexico, cleans tables alongside her husband, brother-in-law and stepfather, who have kitchen and delivery job.

　　Suzanne Stillenger, the restaurant manager who hired Ms. Lopez, is not fluent in Spanish but said there had always been enough bilingual workers to maintain functional communications. Still, two well-regarded Mexican chefs found it difficult to accept Ms. Stillenger as their supervisor, and what they regarded as playful banter she considered unwanted verbal harassment. The chefs were eventually fired.

　　Just such confrontations are what diversity consultants and organizational experts want to avoid. Consultants for MeridianEaton Global, a consulting company based in San Francisco that specializes in diversity training, say that in recent years clients have started hiring them before a multicultural team or workplace becomes dysfunctional.

　　“In earlier interactions, it was about how to fix foreigners to fit us,” said Pamela L. Leri, the company’s New York-based director of global outsourcing.

　　Ms. Leri has discovered that foreign-born executives are often baffled by American expressions often used when a project is started, like “Let’s hit the ground running” or “Let’s wing it.” Europeans, Latin Americans and Asians, she said, often perceive such phrases as “unnecessarily risk-oriented.”

　　Benjamin Dattner, the principal of Dattner Consulting, an organizational and research firm based in New York, says foreign-born workers who are “culturally reluctant to share” often irritate American employers, who may misinterpret the silence as lack of interest or belligerence.

　　Belen Lopez-Garrido, 32, a Spanish-born television producer, enjoys New York’s professional corporate culture but at first was taken aback by the city’s fast pace and her blunt-speaking colleagues.

　　“American workers are totally wired, 100 percent of the day,” she said. “I don’t think wired translates into being more effective. I think Americans see Europeans as being lazier, not taking their work as seriously. Just because there’s a different attitude doesn’t mean we’re not as serious.”