Managing Diversity
What’s Workplace Diversity?
Workplace diversity is the diversity which takes place in work environment. Diversity has traditionally been considered a term used by human resources departments, associated with fair hiring practices, discrimination, and inequality. But diversity todays considered to be much more than that. Workforce diversity isn’t only about the differences of employees but also the similarities of employees. But it doesn’t mean that those differences are any less important, as managers it’s important to find ways to develop strong relationships and engage entire workforce.
Two Types of Diversity Based on Depth Level
The diversity of age, race, gender, ethnicity, and so on-are just the tip of the iceberg. Those differences reflect surface-level diversity, which includes easily perceived differences that may caused certain stereotypes but don’t necessarily reflect the ways people think or feel. Such surface-level differences can effect the way people perceive others, especially when it comes down to assumptions or stereotyping. But as people get to know one another, these surface-level differences become less important and deep-level diversity differences in values, opinions, personality, experiences, skills, and work preferences becomes more important. These deep-level differences can effect the way people view organizational work rewards, communicate, react to leaders, negotiate, and generally behave at work.
Why is Managing Workforce Diversity So Important?
By managing workforce diversity, it creates a sustainable culture that is accepting of differences, open to new ideas, and able to to create a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The benefits fall into three main categories: people management, organizational performance, and strategic.
People Management
- Better use of employee talent
- Increased quality of team problem-solving efforts
- Ability to attract and retain employees of diverse backgrounds
Organizational Performance
- Reduced costs associated with high turnover, absenteeism, and lawsuits
- Enhanced problem-solving ability
- Improved system flexibility
Strategic
- Increased understanding of the marketplace, which improves ability to better market to diverse consumers
- Potential to improve sales growth and increase market share
- Potential source of competitive advantage because of improved innovation efforts
- Viewed as moral and ethical; the “right” thing to do
The Changing Workplace
In the business world, the once predominantly male managerial workforce has given way to a more gender-balanced. U.S. has quite big impact on global trends in workforce especially diversity in gender. It’s different in each country, but nevertheless the global trends keep changing to the better in this matter. Right now we can see changes of global population trends and global workforce, and it will keep changing. Some of the global population trends are age trends, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability/abilities, race, ethnicity, religion, migration and movement.
Challenges in Managing Diversity
Personal Bias : Tendency or preference toward a particular perspective or ideology. Which can lead to prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination, and create glass-ceiling.
Glass Ceiling : The invisible barrier that separates women and minorities from top management positions.
These are some forms of discrimination; discriminatory policies or practices, sexual harassment, intimidation, mockery and insults, exclusion, incivility. Even though we’re changing to the better, nevertheless things like discrimination still happen in workplace. Other than the company and the managers, we also have a role to help make the environment better by educating ourselves and others about this issue.
Workplace Diversity Initiatives
In fact, federal laws have contributed to some of the social change we’ve seen over the last 50-plus years. It’s important that managers know what they can do and cannot do legally and ensure all employees understand as well. However, effectively workplace diversity needs to be more than understanding and complying with federal laws. Organizations that are successful at managing diversity use additional diversity initiatives and programs. These are four of additional diversity initiatives and programs: top management commitment, mentoring, diversity skills training, and employee resource groups.
To do top management commitment, one of the first things to do is make sure that diversity and inclusion are part of the organization’s purpose, goals, and strategies. The organizational culture needs to be one where diversity and inclusion are valued.
Mentoring is a process whereby an experienced organizational member (a mentor) provides guidance and advice to a less-experienced member.
Diversity skill training is a program to train and educate employees about the importance of diversity and teach them skills for working in a diverse workplace.
Employee resource groups is made up of employees connected by some common dimension of diversity. Such groups typically are formed by the employees themselves and not the organizations. However it’s important for organizations to recognize and support these groups.
The diversity in workplace is not all about differences between employees and not always has a bad impact. It’s more than that, diversity can create something new and even more good impact to organizations. And diversity exists in our everyday life. By managing and educating the people in workplace we can create a better environment not only in a workplace but in our everyday life. In the end it all comes down to individuals, each person takes part of making changes in workforce diversity.
Reference: Robbins, Stephen P and Coulter, Mary A. 2017. Management (Global Edition): Pearson Education.