The most serious aspects that create obstacles in efficient work with people are biases and intolerance. Gender, race, age, education, ethnicity, culture, disabilities, worldviews and more can cause a lot of conflicts and disagreements on the workplace that will influence the entire organization. However, modern organizations provide strategies to prevent such consequences. One of them is known as Diversity. Human resources term ‘diversity’ refers to the strategy, which offers a new way of thinking and operating. Its main purpose is to maintain and promote positive overview and relations between employees by creating a highly diverse work team. Organization is a small society that just cannot be unvaried. In contemporary times, people face such social issues as mixed race, gay marriage and other society aspects; it is clear that external society has its effect on the organizations.
Diversity is the most essential strategy that might help with the creation of healthy and friendly environment for the local staff. The main purpose of this phenomenon is to prevent discrimination by any aspects that were mentioned above. Also, it is useful for the creation of acceptance, respect, and interesting working environment. Those facts show the great importance of this topic and that it is essential to research it along with providing this strategy on all levels of organizational life. There has to be more women, minorities, and disabled people who are qualified, represented, and incorporated in workforce at all levels. Now it’s clear that Diversity is one of the most efficient strategies. However, it is difficult to provide and incorporate it right. It requires high qualification in psychology and ethical spheres from HR personal. Firstly, there is a hiring process. HR manager might imply three steps in this process: recruiting, interviewing, and hiring processes. It is helpful in the careful selection of candidates. Also, manager must understand how important it is that 70% of people who get hired by the organization are supposed to be familiar with someone within that organization. On the other hand, there is a necessity in continuous improvement of the hiring strategy. HR personnel must find any drawbacks of that strategy and resolve them. As the result, all of these processes will help with the creation of healthy and friendly highly diverse work team.
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How can organizations incorporate diversity into their operations?
Diversity at the workplace is undoubtedly inevitable and; while many organizations focus on profit generation through increased performance and productivity, they will need to consider the potential role of diversity. In order to ensure that an organization includes diversity in its operations, it needs to refrain from any form of bias. According to O’Brien, Scheffer, Nes and Lee (2015), an organization stands the risk of being stuck at low diversity if there is bias in its appointment and departure strategies. An important finding in their research is that employee diversity largely depends on applicant diversity, but is also intertwined with an organization’s approach of appointment. In truth, “… appointment and departure bias can substantially reduce the rate at workforce diversity can increase,” ( O’Brien, Scheffer, Nes & Lee, 2015 ). In this regard, the assumption is that removing bias and in turn promoting acceptance and recognition of diversity in appointment and departure strategies, an organization can establish a culture whereby there is equilibrium in workforce diversity. Thus, an organization that considers such an approach and includes it as part of its organizational culture can experience the numerous benefits that diversity brings to an institution especially in terms of proficiency and production levels. In support Vandenbergh (2015) conducted a mathematical approach towards the impact of diversity of organizational efficiency. They noted that crossmatching- sectors in an organization have diversified individuals- is synonymous with efficiency. Thus, his finding is that a company stands to experience a number of benefits, one of them being efficiency; it promotes diversity among its various sections or departments. This can be partially achieved through ensuring that the organizational culture of a company does not embody bias when in appointment or departure strategies as has been noted above.
It is important to note that a company’s understanding of diversity is important as this determines the extent to which as an idea, diversity will be included or excluded in its organizational culture. For instance, focusing on a particular firm, the managing partner knew that diversity only referred to women (Pringle & Ryan, 2014). This means that other concepts or elements of diversity such as age, ethnicity, religion or even geographical location do not apply. Such kind of thought and approach towards workforce diversity is indeed limiting and an organization that applies or depends on it can reduce its chances of experiences the benefits of having an overtly diverse workforce. Nonetheless, Pringle and Ryan (2014) also noted that inclusion and recognition of culture differences is important for any organization when it comes to conducting company operations and duties. Sue, a subject in their research, works in a diverse environment where the majority of consumers are people of Maori descent. Therefore, in order to promote her company, she had to employ a plan that would create a good image. She acknowledged that being sensitive and recognizing ethnic differences is important in business. She stated that, “Working ethically and with a sense of mana [pride], so you don’t trample on anyone else in the community, you help the community grow and be a better place for our children that are about to come,” (Prinkle & Ryan, 2014, p. 477). Sue acknowledged that recognition of diversity even in service provision is indeed impactful and helps promote success of an organization’s operations. Indeed one could perceive Sue as being representative of the importance of using an inclusionary approach towards diversity not only when dealing with clients, but also at the workplace. In this regard, an organization’s understanding of diversity should not be limited to women only, but instead should also include other elements such as age, religion, sexual orientation, geographical location, among others.
Through establishing trusting and supportive cultures, an organization can place itself at an advantage of experiencing increased performance and productivity. In order to ascertain the positive impact of such an approach towards diversity, Nelson (2014) noted that organizations that have a high percentage of women in senior positions demonstrate high and better financial results. Such a finding leads to the conclusion that developing an inclusionary approach towards diversity, whether in regards to age, gender, religion, sexual orientation among others, is indeed important as it brings about positive outcomes. More evidence demonstrates that companies that are racially diverse are bound to experience greater sales revenue, greater market share as well as greater profits (Nelson, 2014). Thus, organizations should, for instance, include and recognize minority groups in terms of their potential influence especially during intra workgroup interaction (Salomon, 2014). It is important to note that employee interactions or relations play a fundamental role in determining what kind of impact an organization has on the market. For instance, there is potential of having competitive advantage in the event that a company considers, for instance, the role of women in high positions in an organization. However, in order to experience such an outcome, an organization should consider such factors as its needs as well as the environment in which it operates. As has been noted above, Sue was a representative of a company that operated in an ethnically diverse environment, and hence, in order to find favor in the locals, she considered them in her services and other assigned duties (Pringle & Ryan, 2015). It is such manner of approach and thought that puts an organization at an advantage over others in the market.
Provision of training regarding diversity at the workplace has been found to have a positive impact on company operations. All workers should be made to understand that hiring decisions are not based on quotas but rather on finding the best candidate. This can, at least, remove the assumption that an organization is biased in some way. Notably, making the recruiting process more transparent can help make skeptical employees feel at ease about appointment; they would not develop a negative attitude towards a company, which would translate to their performance and productivity levels (Patrick & Kumar, 2012). Managers should be made to understand the role and significance of diversity at the workplace. Since they are mostly involved with employees, they can ensure that there is general understanding of a company’s organizational culture (Alghatani, 2013). This can be achieved through implementation of personnel policies, which are committed to supporting and enforcing diversity at the workplace. Benefits such as onsite daycare, flexible schedules among others can impact employee attitude and behavior towards an organization. Moreover, letting new hires know that an organization is willing to accommodate and recognize their religious and cultural holidays can promote motivation and determination among employees.
In summary, organizations can incorporate diversity at the workplace through a number of processes. However, it is important that they have the correct understand of what diversity means before making any steps towards integrating it. It has been noted above that misconceptions about diversity exist and these could have a negative effect on a company’s status in the market. Therefore, diversity entails age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic differences, income, level of education among other things. Apart from that, an organization should strive to create a supportive and trusting culture. This can ensure that there are no such cases of bias for instance in appointment and departure as noted above.
The main importance of Diversity strategy is its possibility to create a highly diverse team without any discriminations and biases. However, just as high the efficiency of this strategy is, as harsh the requirements for its implementation are. The main objective of HR department is to create careful selection of the candidates with the help of hiring process, and always try to improve it.
References
Algahtani , A. (2013).Diversity in the Corporate Setting. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 4(14): 53-57. Retrieved from http://www.ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol_4_No_14_November_2013/7.pdf
Nelson, A. B. (2014). The Data on Diversity. Communications of the ACM, 54(11), 86-95.
O’Brien , C., Scheffer, K. R., Nes, M., & Lee, R. V. (2015). How to Break the Cycle of Low Workforce Diversity: A Model for Change. PLOS ONE , 10(7), 133-208. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0133208
Patrick, H. & Kumar, V. (2012). Managing Workplace Diversity: Issues and Challenges. SAGE Open , 2 (2). http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2158244012444615
Pringle, D. J., K., & Ryan, I. (2015). Understanding context in diversity management: A multi-level analysis. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal , 34(6), 470-482. doi:10.1108/edi-05-2015-0031
Salomon, B., G. (2014). Workforce Diversity: Assessing the impact of minority integration on intra-workgroup interaction. International Journal of Police Science & Management , 16(3), 205-220. doi:10.1350/ijps.2014.16.3.340
Vandenberghe, E., V. (2016). Is workforce diversity good for efficiency? An approach based on the degree of concavity of the technology. International Journal of Manpower , 37(2), 253-267. doi:10.1108/ijm-01-2015-0010