Forming an Argument: Diversity issues faced by organizations

Introduction

Workplace diversity in terms of ethnicity, race, religion, gender and class have become a key concern within contemporary firms. Moreover, globalization of businesses has made a diversified workforce necessary to fulfil organizational needs like increased abilities, knowledge and skills ( Brink, Benschop, Wahl, & Holgersson, 2015). This paper argues that although workplace diversity is been encouraged and applied in many organizations, most of the firms still face issues related to it.

Discussion

International Labour organization revealed that transgendered employees are the most impacted individuals who face discrimination at the workplace and never find suitable opportunities to live a preferable life (Ozturk & Tatli, 2016). People with disability, on the other hand clearly show reduced employment rates in the research made by Schur (2016) where the author documents that even though individuals with a disability are given employment opportunity, they face wage gaps and under-employment outcomes.

Another issue related to workforce diversity includes workplace bullying faced mostly by men. Although many men try to survive bullies, efforts and consequences while managing bully add to the pressure created in the workplace which consequently impacts their psychological and physical health ( O’Donnell & MacIntosh, 2015). Hunt, Layton, & Prince (2015) found that unequal performance made in companies within similar industry implies that workplace diversity is a major issue that shifts profitability ratio in them.

Conclusion

The above argument and annotated bibliography state that diversity is one of the key issues facing contemporary organizations which implies firms to implement diversity management related strategies. Since globalization and organizational expansion have become apparent these days, this paper suggests organizations with the diversified workforce to recruit and promote people based on performance made rather than considering diversity-related factors.

References

Brink, M. C., Benschop, Y., Wahl, A., & Holgersson, C. (2015). Future Challenges for Practices of Diversity Management in Organizations. In Handbook for Diversity in Organizations (pp. 553-574). Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299044294_Future_Challenges_for_Practices_of_Diversity_Management_in_Organizations

Hunt, V., Layton, D., & Prince, S. (2015). Why diversity matters. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters

O’Donnell, S. M., & MacIntosh, J. A. (2015). Gender and Workplace Bullying: Men’s Experiences of Surviving Bullying at Work. Qualitative Health Research, 26(3). Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09585192.2016.1177294

Ozturk, M. B., & Tatli, A. (2016). Gender identity inclusion in the workplace: broadening diversity management research and practice through the case of transgender employees in the UK. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(8), 781-802. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09585192.2015.1042902?needAccess=true

Schur, L. (2016). Introduction to special issue on people with disabilities in the workplace. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(14), 1471-1476. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09585192.2016.1177294

Description

The University of Houston has a luxury resident hall that serves honor students. The residence has 8 floors with the first floor having an open lobby and an office area. Floor 2 contains meeting rooms while floors 3 to 8 contain 162 apartments. The first and second floors are smaller than the other floors since they are surrounded by a parking garage all around. The first floor has a server room and offices operated by the residence’s management. The residence requires a local area network that will provide certain services such as internet access to the residents.

Scope

The main aim of this project is to design local area networks for each floor and connect them to one. The first floor should have a wired network, Wifi access for visitors and also separate Wifi access for employees and residents. It will have 3 several offices for the residence administration and a server room. Only the network administrator will have unlimited access to the server room. All the rooms on the first floor will have wired network to allow users to connect to the network via Ethernet cables plugging them to the data points that will be set on the walls. In addition to wired networks, the wireless network will be provided to the employees and visitors via wireless access points.

The second floors’ LAN will provide both wired and wireless network access to all the users. The wired network will mainly benefit the users using the meeting rooms and the wireless network access will benefit both the residents and the employees. All users will connect to the network within its set network range. LANS for the other floors, 3 to 8 will also provide both wireless and wired network access. Each LAN for each floor will extend a wired network to each apartment on the floor by setting up data points in each apartment. This will allow residents with Ethernet cables to connect their devices to the network. The LANS will also contain wireless access points at strategic points on the floor with a set bandwidth to reach every apartment.

Network design

The network architecture of the whole building

The above screenshot indicates the network design for the university’s resident hall. The Local area network (LAN) is a combination of 8 LANs from each floor. The LAN has utilized star network topology having a layer 3 switch as its network source which then extends the network to all the 8 floors. Each LAN for each floor has a layer 2 switch extending the network to the various wireless access points and data points. At the distribution layer is the source layer 3 switch, a router to provide internet access to the whole network and server serving the various floors. The switch at the distribution layer connects to a layer 3 switch that connects the residence’s network to the campus network via the campus core layer backbone.

Design for the First Floor

Design for the second floor

The west wing network design

The East wing physical diagram

DHCP and network security

The two servers are active directories that allow DHCP services to the user devices. Each user device that connects to the network is automatically assigned an IP address via DHCP. The server room on the first floor has a server that assigns an IP address to all the network devices that connect to the network on floors 1 and 2. Wireless network security has been implemented through authentication which requires a user to enter a security key before connecting to the network. It verifies user identity and prevents unauthorized parties from accessing the network. Floor one’s LAN is separated from the rest of the network via a firewall that will block IPs from accessing the network and also blocks traffic from the internet.

Hardware components

Implementing the network will require certain hardware network components. These components include:

• Router – A router in this design will connect the network to the cloud to provide internet access.
• Switches – The network has used both layer 2 and layer 3 switches in designing the various LANs.
• Data points – Data points are required to provide wired connectivity to the user devices.
• Servers – Servers will provide data storage and DHCP services.
• User devices – The user devices will include printers and computers for the employees in the administration offices on floor 1.
• Cables – Category 6 cables will be used to connect all the network devices together creating the entire network.

The table below indicates the specific hardware components discussed above.

Device	Brand	specifications	Quantity	Unit Price	Total price
Layer 3 switch	Cisco Catalyst C3850-48T	48 Ports, 4 SFP Ports, Stackable, 10G Uplink	2	$5,590.0	$11,180.0
Layer 2 switch	Cisco Catalyst Switch 2960-24TT	24 Ports 1G Uplink	8	$231.0	$1,848.0
Router	Cisco Router ISR 4451	VSEC Bundle, PVDM4-64 w/ UC.	1	$7,004.0	$7,004.0
Wireless router	Cisco	WEP, WPA, WPS, WPA2-Enterprise security	16	$499.99	$7,999.84
server	Lenovo	CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v6 | RAM: Up to 64GB | Storage: Up to 40TB HDD |	3	$994.99	$2,984.97
Ethernet cables		Cat 6	2000f	$270.0	$270.0
Data points	cisco		200	$20.0	$4000.0
Total price					$35,286.81

References

Dvir, D., Raz, T. and Shenhar, A.J.  An empirical analysis of the relationship between project planning and project success. International journal of project management, 21(2), pp.89-95.2009

Garcia-Luna-Aceves, J.J. and Vutukury, S., Adara Networks Inc. System and method for directing clients to optimal servers in computer networks. U.S. Patent 7,664,876. 2010.