Business: Diversity in Organizations - Essay Example

To ensure these patterns of behavior and performance are in favor of the organization, diversity climate needs to be managed through effective diversity management principles and practices. For this, employees need to be sensitized to various diversity management practices followed by the organization. In spite of practices and policies, diversity climate needs to be assessed in order to check the effectiveness of these practices and policies and eliminate any other potential hindrances to promoting diversity within the organization.

This paper builds a simple model to assess diversity climate and its implementation in diversity management training. Assessment of diversity climate helps in determining whether diversity’s effects are positive, negative or worthless to the organization (Avery & McKay, 2010). Diversity climate can be assessed based on three perspectives namely, presence and extent of biased approaches, beliefs, and practices; secondly, support for various activities, performance, growth and development; and opportunities in terms of pay, growth, supporting policies and procedures.

With this three-fold framework, various organizational practices and procedures can be assessed for their support towards diversity management. . Secondly, equal support and guidance to all employees in terms of performance management, appraisals, motivation, and knowledge sharing and development would be yet another indication of effective diversity management. Thirdly, equality in terms of pay and compensation benefits irrespective of age, gender, group etc, but based on merit and skills along with equal opportunities for all employees in terms of promotion, development etc will foster diversity management (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2009).

This model can be effectively used for diversity training program as it addresses all potential issues under the diversity climate umbrella. The trainees can be asked to list down their experiences and findings under the three corresponding areas of concern, if any. Further, an explanation of their concerns needs to be taken in order to avoid any perception issues, which could be misleading. Lack of information and knowledge about the organizational policies and procedures could also lead to incorrect information.

To address these issues, the trainees should be explained about each identified area in detail. For instance, leadership support can be explained in terms of communication of opportunities, work performance, direction, goal setting, etc. Organizational policies should support diversity through policies such as anti-discrimination policies, anti-harassment policies, etc. In addition, this should also consider pay and compensation policies and HR policies and practices. Knowledge sharing and development is an important sphere for diversity management and hence should include points like equal opportunity for all towards growth through learning, training, promotion, career management etc.

An important point