What is Workplace Diversity?

Write a briefing document outlining the nature of diversity in organisations today, and the business advantages and disadvantages of having a diverse workforce, and embracing, understanding and managing diversity effectively.

Workplace diversity defines as the variety of the differences among the people in the organization. Diversity could be related to the factors that include age, gender, education, culture, physical appearances, family status, national origin, religion, race and many more. The diversity at the workplace is essential but there are some organizations that are not able to manage and monitor the diversity (Arokiasamy, 2013). The aim of the report is to make the managing director understand the nature of diversity, advantages, and disadvantages of a diverse workforce and how the managers of a company can manage diversity. The Managing director of the company is not able to fully understand issues of diversity and individual differences, this is the reason company is not able to manage the diversity in the workplace.

Nature of workplace diversity

A diversity of Management is a process intended to form and maintain a positive work environment. According to Patrick, 2010, diversity defines not only the belongings of the diversity within an organization but also the level of openness to dissimilarity features between the organisation’s members, work groups, and culture. The managing director of the company has to manage the workforce of different age group and gender mainly.

Gender

According to Brown, 2008, the workforce diversity leftover ineffective if gender issues are not recognize and manage by the company initially. On the other hand author Jayne and Dipboy, 2004, argues that the gender diversity not necessarily brings the positive outcome in the organization which includes the improving talents, motivation, decline conflicts and many others.

Age

It is said by Florian Kunze, Stephen Boehm and Heike Bruch, 2009, the growing age diversity are now becoming an important or essential part of the numerous organizations. There are two theories that explain the relationship that is social identity and the self-categorization.  On the other hand author brown, 2008 contrast about age in nature of diversity, he said that the increased diversity might lead to the many HR challenges.

Education

Some researchers found that the candidates are mostly rejected by the employers due to the lack of the training, experience or the education level. The employees who are not having the good and adequate education background will hardly get the job. According to the study, it is identified that the productivity depends on the education level of the candidate. Most of the organization in the competitive world likes to hire the people who belong to the educational background, as these candidates can manage and work in the diverse situations as well (Daniel, 2009).

Diversity leads to multiple benefits at the workplace; this is the fact that the company having the diverse employees has a better understanding of the global marketplace. There are many companies who get the advantage because their customer speaks in different languages. To deliver the customer service the company hires the candidates from overseas market. The advantage of the workplace diversity needs to be managed effectively by the managers of the company. Diversity management is required to be managed by the organization for that there is need of the skills.

Advantages of Diversity in the Workplace

High level of productivity: – There are many companies who think for the welfare of their employees by providing them proper appraisal, health care facilities, and compensations. According to the Preeti Bedi, 2014, facilities make the employees be loyal and hardworking towards the company irrespective of their cultural background. This loyalty and hardworking nature of the employees leads to the company’s profit and productivity

Exchange of ideas: – The different employees in the team are having different knowledge and experience which works as an advantage for the company. The team members can share their ideas and collectively they can work to enhance the growth and success of the company.

Diverse experience: – The employees who belong to the diverse background come with the unique perceptions and experience. The author Poonam Lakra, 2014, shared her views by saying that the pooling of the diverse skills and knowledge of culturally distinct employees and together these experience helps the company in achieving their objectives.

Learning and growth: – The diverse workforce in the organization generates an opportunity for the employees for the personal learning and growth. When employees of the company share the details and views related to the ideas, perspectives and culture of the place then the employees can insight their place in the global environment. The co-workers in the team get to know about the culture and language of different places which enhance their learning (Bedi, Lakra, and Gupta, 2014).

Overcoming from cross culture challenges: – Many companies face the cross-culture challenges when they expand the business in the international market. The range of the problems faced by the companies includes collecting the information about the local people, customs and their preference that can affect the working. The company can take the details from their employees about the preferences of the local people this is going to be beneficial for the companies.

The diversity at the workplace leads to some of the problems in the organizations. According to the Tatli 2011, diversity can have adverse effects on the numerous aspects of organizations which include group conflict, communication difficulties, and poor racial integration.

Poorer performance: – The greater diversity in the organizational might lead to the poorer performance according to the psychological perspective. Poorer performance lead due to diversity as the members of the organization might feel that adequate commonalities are essential for the cohesion are absent and this might leads to the intragroup conflicts in the team (Daniel, 2009).

Discrimination: – One of the essential disadvantage diverse workforces in the organization is discrimination. The description can be for any employee in the organization, when an employee is being discriminated it can affect the employees to perform well to its full ability. It might lead to the issues of litigation and affects the perception of equity.

Interpersonal conflicts: – An individual’s spirituality is personal and although effects of their spirituality may be seen at the surface level, the source is still a deep-level artifact” said by Gillian Coote Martin, 2014. This basically means that the cultural diversity in the organization or at workplace might leads to the tendency of the personnel in an organisation to indulge in interpersonal conflicts. The reason being in the cultural diversity workers have the different opinions, thoughts, beliefs, customs, trends, and traditions.

Disadvantages of Diversity in the Workplace

Creating a successful and an effective diverse workforce is not an easy task for the company. The managers and the leaders of the company must understand the need for the cultural preference that is beneficial for growth. Managers need to take the make up the mind to change the organizational culture of the company to bring the effective diversity (Employee Resource Groups, 2013).

The company performs the activity to improve the working environment and to take the advantage in the business activities (Martin, 2014). For instance, a Portuguese company who believes in diversity appointed people from different cultures, at the time of the expanding the business the company decided to expand the business in Cameroon. Now, the company can grab the information related to the federal and provincial laws, insurances required, and applicable tax regulations from the employees who are working with the company. The employees can also help the business in making them aware of the place, the needs of the customer along with their demands. The example clearly shows that creating a diverse workforce is an organization is effective for the companies. The organizations adopt different diversity policies and integrate diversity into their corporate culture, by doing so the company can check the reduction in the cost of the worker turn over (Martin, 2014).

Different companies make use of the different tools that help them to manage and promote diversity. For instance- Ford Motors formed numerous meeting and outreach groups with the objective to educate and serve a tool to identify the diversity challenges along with that through meeting the company can guide the employees for the daily activities. Ford is a well known multinational company. It is easy to analyze the reason behind the success and growth of the company. The diversity is one of the reason due to which the company is able to satisfy the needs of the customers across different countries (Employee Resource Groups, 2013)

Conclusion

It can be concluded that diversity is required to be managed in the organization for the growth and success. The report shows that the organizations also face some of the difficulties or challenges with the diverse workforce but comparing it with the advantages that the company in generating the maximum of profit.

References

Arokiasamy, A.R., 2013, Literature Review On Workforce Diversity, Employee Performance And Organizational Goals: A Concept Paper, Journal of Arts, Science & Commerce, 4(4).

Bedi, P., Lakra, P. and Gupta, E., 2014, Workforce Diversity Management: Biggest Challenge Or Opportunity For 21st Century Organizations, IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM), 16(4), pp. 102-107.

Brown, S. L., 2008, Diversity in the Workplace: A Study of Gender, Race, Age, and Salary Level. UMI Number: 3297416 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company

Daniel C.H., 2009, The effects of higher education policy on the location decision of individuals: Evidence from Florida’s Bright Futures Scholarship Program, Regional Science and Urban Economics, 39, 553-562.

Employee Resource Groups, 2013, Diversity Management Tools at Ford, viewed on 28^th December 2017, https://corporate.ford.com/dynamic/metatags/articledetail/ergs-442p

Gillian Coote Martin, 2014, The Effects Of Cultural Diversity in the Workplace, Journal of diversity Management.

Jayne, M.E. and Dipboye, R.L., 2004. Leveraging diversity to improve business performance: Research findings and recommendations for organizations, Human resource management, 43(4), pp.409-424.

Kunze, F., Boehm, S., & Bruch H., 2009, Age Diversity, Age Discrimination, and Performance Consequences – A Cross Organizational Study.

Martin, G.C., 2014, The Effects Of Cultural Diversity In The Workplace, Journal of Diversity Management, 9(2), pp. 89-92.

Patrick, H. A., 2010, Organization culture and its impact on diversity openness in the information technology organizational context, Dimensions, 1(1), 67-72

Tatli, A. (2011). A multi-layered exploration of the diversity management field: Diversity discourse, practices and practitioners in the UK. British Journal of Management, 22(2), 238–253