Purpose

The purpose of the paper is to know the concept of diversity at workplace. Organizational diversity at workplace is said to be total makeup of the employees and the amount of diversity that is included. It is also the differences in the personal traits of person such as race, age, gender, ethnic origin, marital status, education, and various other secondary qualities. There are companies that include diversity training for the new entrant as part of their training and initial orientation.

Concept of diversity in workplace

Diversity in workplace refers to the various differences between all the individuals in the organization. It only include how each person identify themselves but how other recognize them. Diversity take place in various forms in organization such as gender, race, ethnic group, religion, age, citizenship status, sexual orientation, physical and mental condition (Barak, 2016).  Due to the changing business environment, organizations are adapting diversity strategies and policies that will appeal to their clients, employees, suppliers, and vendors. Due to valuing differences, every person contributes their creative experiences in the workplace and give positive contribution in the internal activities (building of good organization culture), and external activities (sharing great experience to customers as well as stakeholders). In every organization, diversity is all about sharing the different background, ideas, skills, thoughts, geography, knowledge, and background. It encourages different thoughts, create unique culture, and embrace the new ideas in the organization. In this regard, worklogy stated that workforce diversity “is the bringing together of a variety of people to one workplace.” In addition to this, companies that serve the global audience and diverse population are able to maintain competitive position among its competitors.

Benefits of diversity in the workplace

Diversity delivers various benefits in the workplace. Firstly, employees from different background provide the innovative and creative ideas at the workplace. Variety of experiences and skills among the team members also states that employees can learn various things form each other. It is true that cultural differences and language barriers are one of the major obstacles for every business who want to expand their business. However, by hiring the employees of various languages make it possible for organization to easily expand their business. When company has good diversified people, people mostly attracts to that. People always want to work in those culture where people value each other irrespective of their caste, religion or culture. It also improves the performance of employees. It is true that employees likely to feel more happy, comfortable and confident in an inclusive environment. Having diversified people, there are chances of more customer satisfaction by doing improvement how employees connect with the various clients and public (Dyson, 2017).

Diversity at workplace also leads to better decision-making in the organization. Research has also stated the direct link between the workplace diversity and decision-making. Whenever the employees from diverse perspective and cultural background come together, they always come up with various innovative solutions that further improve the decision-making process and results (Martic, 2018). Workplace diversity also helps in boosting the company’s brand and reputation. Organizations that are dedicated toward promotion of diversity are seen better and socially responsible. It also makes the company more interesting. It becomes easy for the people to relate with the company and its brand, opens the door to new customers, market and business partners. It is also beneficial for retaining the employee at the workplace. When employee feel valued and accepted, they also like to stay for long time in the company. Because of this, companies with higher diversity at workplace have lower rate of turnover. It also assists the companies in getting higher amount of profit. It is true that whenever the decisions are taking faster, companies tend to get the serious disadvantage over its competitors. Workplace diversity also helps in fostering the mutual respect among the employees (Kinicki & Fugate, 2018).  Whether employees work in teams or groups with different working style, disabilities, an energetic work environment becomes the norm. It is evitable that conflict occurs at the workplace. Employees who acknowledge differences also able to find the similarities when there are some common objective such as quality and production. A diverse workplace also offers the various exposures to employees from different backgrounds and culture. Traditional learning workers also learn the new technologies and process from diversified cultural background.

How to manage the diversity in workplace

Managing diversity is one of the most challenging jobs for nay HR professionals. These challenges can be reduced if organization makes efforts for encouraging the more heterogeneous environment through promotion of open communication, culture of tolerance and creation of conflict management strategies. For a leader to properly manage the diversity in the workplace, it is needed to understand the background and how their beliefs and behaviours affect the decision-making within the diverse environment.

Certain tips for managing diversity in the workplace:

• Prioritize communication – in order to manage the diversity at workplace, it is required by the organization to ensure the effective communication with the employees. Procedures, policies, and safety rules should be designed properly to overcome the cultural barriers and language by translating the materials using symbols and pictures. In order to ensure that every person is on the same page requires there is effective and clear communication among the entire employee. It is also essential to make sure that all employees understand each policy, procedure, safety rules and many more information (Demby, 2015).
• Encourage the employees to work in diverse groups- It is true that diverse work teams let the employee get to know each other by valuing their ideas. It can also help in breaking down of cultural misunderstanding. It is also necessary to encourage the employees to collaborate with the team members who are different from them. The best way of using this method by creating the work, that will reflect the diversity that exists in the workplace. It will not only help the employees know the value of each other but also assist them in expanding their experiences and views of team members.
• Hiring- In order to build the diversified workplace, it is essential to recruit the talent from diversified background. It requires the effective leadership who can make hiring decisions for overcoming the biasness in assessing and interviewing talent. When any organization is successful in breaking the biasness and hire the qualified people with right credentials, education and experience, a diverse workplace will be the better place. It can also achieve it by creating the diverse interview panel that will ensure the candidate selection process free from biasness and prejudice. Fair recruitment is also crucial if diversity will be managed properly.
• Base certain standards on the objective criteria: By setting the one standard of rules for every employee irrespective of their background, it becomes easy to manage the diversity in effective manner. It is also essential to ensure the employment actions, including discipline.
• Treat each employee as an individual: for effective result, it is essential to avoid making assumptions regarding employees from varied cultural background. Instead of this, it is feasible to look at each employee as an individual and judge their failure and success based on the individual merit rather than in the group.
• Provide diversity training: It is seen that many employee behave inventively toward their team members not because they just want to be discriminatory but they do not know anything better. Therefore, by providing the diversity training to employee, especially on the position of leadership, helps people in respecting and understanding the differences in race, religion, ethnicity, gender, thinking style and cultural values. Diversity training also helps he employees to become self-aware by understanding their own prejudices, cultural biases and stereotypes.

Policies and procedures

Companies that embrace the diversity are also required to ensure the procedures and policies in order to protect employee’s right. It is also significant for the organizations to take care of the impact of policies and procedures on the diverse group of employees. For this, it is required by the Companies to create some of the innovative and creative ways for the employees to provide feedback with suggestion and surveys for gaining better understanding about the diversity policies.

Documentation of policies and procedures

Proper documented diversity policies are an effective way of communicating the organization bearings on diversity. Policies on diversity are therefore required to review with each new hire.

Zero tolerance policy: having the diverse workforce means the off-colour jokes related to gender, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. Name-calling, slurs and bullying employees for any of the reason is needed to meet with the zero tolerance. Therefore, policies should be place in such a manner for handling the misconduct and communicate to the employee that such type of behaviour is not tolerated (Dobbin & Kalev, 2016). Organization should also require making sure that employee feel safe while reporting any kind of inappropriate behaviour from any if its co-worker. It can be achieve by keeping a formal complaint policy.

Sensitivity training- employees are also required to aware about how to coexist with diversified range of people in order to achieve the harmony. Therefore, sensitivity training can help the organization in managing the diversity at workplace by becoming more self-aware. Sensitivity training also helps in adjusting and examining the perspective of people from diverse background. By using this, employees also learn to appreciate the views of others in a better way (Llopis, 2017).  It is also required to show what actions are offensive and why they are perceived as offensive. It is also essential for the organizations to regularly review the internal policies especially around the equal opportunity and harassment. For this, it is also necessary to reflect the current rules and regulations that are associated with the company.

Conclusion

In the limelight of above discussion, it can be concluded that the encouragement of diversity is the great way to look forward for the organizations. In the global talent market, organizations who can successfully manage the diversity in the workplace will definitely get the competitive advantage over other firms. In terms of innovation, differentiation and employer branding also, diversified firms get competitive advantage. Through diversity, firms also able to attract the pool of talented employees toward its company. With the help of diversified workforce, firms can also get the wide pool of talented employees so that innovation and creative ideas can be generated.

References

Barak, M. E. M. (2016). Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage Publications.

Demby, G. (2015). ‘Diversity’ Is Rightly Criticized As An Empty Buzzword. Retrieved from npr: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/11/05/453187130/diversity-is-rightly-criticized-as-an-empty-buzzword-so-how-can-we-make-it-work

Dobbin, F., & Kalev, A. (2016). Why Diversity Programs Fail. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail

Dyson, E. (2017). The Shifting Definition of Diversity in the Workplace. Retrieved from peoplescout: https://www.peoplescout.com/getting-right-understanding-managing-diversity-in-workplace/

Kinicki, & Fugate. (2018). Organizational Behavior – A Practical, Problem-Solving Approach. McGrawHill Education.

Llopis, G. (2017). 5 Reasons Diversity And Inclusion Fails. Retrieved from forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2017/01/16/5-reasons-diversity-and-inclusion-fails/#333a972150df

Martic, K. (2018). Top 10 benefits of diversity in the workplace. Retrieved from: https://www.talentlyft.com/en/blog/article/244/top-10-benefits-of-diversity-in-the-workplace-infographic-included