Diversity Management in the UK - Research Paper Example

DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN THE UK Discuss why line-managers might not have an enthusiastic attitude towards equality and diversity policies. To what extent might diversity practitioners help overcome this problem? Table of Contents Discuss why line-managers might not have an enthusiastic attitude towards equality and diversity policies. To what extent might diversity practitioners help overcome this problem? 1 1. Introduction 2 2. Why line-managers might not have an enthusiastic attitude towards equality and diversity policies 4 3. Extent to which diversity practitioners help overcomes the problem 8 4. Conclusion and Recommendations 9 References 11 1. Introduction With globalisation and employees coming from various cultures and ethnic minorities, diversity management has become a key business issue. The term diversity management is a pre-emptive move by organisations to ensure equality among the policies for all employees. By using diversity management policies, organisations hope that accusations of discrimination would be avoided. Diversity management is more about providing equality and implementing diversity opportunities policies. These concepts and principles are the avowed tenets that any self-respecting firm has to publicly say it adopts. Organisations have to adopt this attitude, whether it makes business sense or no, whether such a move would yield profits or force a loss. The HR managers and other relevant managers usually frame the policies. Implementation of the diversity management policies at the field level becomes the responsibility of line managers who is the first point of contact for employees. The Line manager is usually where 'the buck stops' and she has to get the work done as per the budget and time. However, the line manager may or may not be very much inclined to implement the policies on diversity management (Foster, et all, 2005). This paper makes the latter assumption that the line manager would not be interested in implementing the policies in the spirit in which they are made. The paper first gives a quick overview of diversity management and its importance and then discusses two issues related to line managers and diversity management policies, the first discussion would be about why the line-managers might not have an enthusiastic attitude towards equality and diversity policies. The second issues would be to examine the extent that diversity practitioners would help to overcome this problem. Where possible, case studies and examples are provided to illustrate certain points. 1.1. Quick Overview and critique of Diversity Management Diversity management is about treating co-workers and employees equitably without discriminating against race, religion, gender, colour or sexual orientation. With organisations becoming increasingly open, the workforce in a team can comprise of males and females, people from different ethnic origins such as Indian, Chinese, UK white, Africans and others. These people may practice religions other than Christianity and they may be Gay, straight or Lesbians. Diversity management requires that each of the these employees should be given equal distribution of work, rewards, promotions, work and learning opportunities, depending on the qualifications and experiences. Foster (et all, 2005) notes that organisations have felt the need to adopt and enforce diversity management programs. The threat of litigation by wronged and discriminated employees is always a goad. However, organisations have realised that even their customers are from cross-cultural background and therefore maintaining a culturally diverse team offers some type of a competitive advantage. As pointed out by the author, chronic labour shortages mean that non-UK workers and migrant workers have to be recruited. It is also a fact that these migrant workers are often paid less and made to work longer hours, thus making them more valuable and diversity management a necessity. The author of this paper comments that this concept of diversity management includes various other movements against racial discrimination, gender discrimination and other such degenerative policies that have been practiced overtly and subtly since the past few centuries. Many laws and rules were brought in that were supposed to put down discrimination against women ensure that black men and women got equal wages for equal pay and so on. However, discrimination does occur in many areas, either overtly or subtly and women, even white women and people from other ethnic backgrounds have not been able to break the glass ceiling. The lack of achievements is not because laws and policies are weak but rather that they are not administered in the spirit in which they were framed. 2. Why line-managers might not have an enthusiastic attitude towards equality and diversity policies It is important to understand as to how and when policies and rules become a part of the organisation culture and when people accept these rules as part of the organisation behaviour. Scotts (2004) notes that ‘organisations are shaped by the environment that surrounds them’. The common thread among the different institutional theories is that organizations are social systems that interact with the environment in which they operate and strive for legitimacy. By legitimacy, we mean being accepted by the environmental forces, social and professional bodies. When it comes to framing policies and guidelines for organisational culture and attitude, these policies should be ‘institutionalised’. When we say that something is institutionalised, it is accorded some legitimacy and has become the accepted way of thinking. Legitimacy is the big concept behind institutional theory. The legitimating process is helped by bodies such as the government and professional groups that enable these organizations and make them go in a certain direction and help to shape them. An organization is essentially made up of individuals who have their own set of values such as norms, beliefs and logic. These values are imbued in individuals through the professional training in college; family, social circle and the environment and they bring these values into an organization when they join it. In other words, the institution has been infused with values and in some cases, these values are beyond the technical requirements of the tasks that it originally set out to do. Therefore, when a line manager does not practice cultural diversity, it would be safe to assume that the society in which he has grown, where he lives and takes up recreational activities subtly practice discrimination. For any cultural diversity principles to be fully accepted, these norms have to be ‘institutionalised’ by practice from senior management. Else, they will remain empty gestures that racist managements subtly use to ‘put down’ other people. Kirton (et all, 2007) calls line managers and other people who practice diversity management as ‘diversity professionals’. According to the author, these diversity professionals are change agents and depending on how they operate, they can be classified as radicals, tempered radicals or liberal reformers. The author conducted research on 39 diversity professionals to gather attitudinal data and examples of diversity initiatives and allow participants to record details of their role and the activities of their organization from their own perspective. The diversity professionals belonged to two categories, organizational diversity specialists who formulate policies and coordinate with other departments and organizational diversity champions who implement these policies and this group is made of line managers and senior managers. From the findings, it has emerged that most of the people had volunteered to join as diversity professionals and they had sufficient experience as operational managers in various functions and departments. Their attitude and passion was in line with the job requirements and all of them had a deep personal commitment for their work. They also reported that they had indeed experienced unfair organisational practices that had shaped their views and influenced their motivation to become diversity professionals. Kirton (et all, 2006) has written about the clear role of involving line managers in diversity management practice when the business case is strong. The author has also discussed the manner in which there have been changes to a diversity discourse that evolves from HRM initiatives. Line managers then become the central conduit and messengers in deciding how and where diversity management is to be implemented. However, vilifying line manager and blaming them when diversity management initiatives do not bring in the desired goals does not help. Factors such as conflicting priorities, heavy workloads, requirement to meet short-term deadlines tend to push the diversity management to the sidelines. At the end of the day, the line manager is asked about the total products manufactured or shipped and not about the diversity management initiatives that were implemented. Noon (2001) has pointed out certain dilemmas that line managers face when faced with culturally diverse employees. On the one hand, policies require the line managers to treat all employees equally and not discriminate between them. On the other hand, the line manager is also expected to accept the diversity and difference among employees and further honour and accept them. When faced with such confusions, line managers would prefer to adopt the most expedient means available to tackle the diversity management issue and carry on with their work. The author of this paper would like to comments that while the work of Kirton is commendable, it only reflects the malaise and stereotyping that effects diversity management. Some important facts have emerged: diversity professionals are moved by their conscience and that there is no discernable move in organisations to make job roles and definitions gender neutral or independent of the employees race and sexual orientation. There is a strenuous superficial effort to change work profiles so that discrimination is reduced but very little is done in the form of changing the organisational culture and tying it to the commercial business goals. The feeling that a line manager would get is that diversity management is just a passing rhetoric and fad that some senior HR manager has thought of. Traditionally, HR managers are rather lower in the pecking order of organisation power structures and would come behind production, sales or finance managers. Any efforts to make diversity management practice more effective among line managers need to be institutionalised and become a part of the organisation culture. Enforcing adherence and compliance through coercion would not have the desired effect and linking diversity management with competitive advantage and a business case would help. In the next section, practices of diversity management from the field would be examined and steps taken by various organisations to implement diversity management would be examined. 3. Extent to which diversity practitioners help overcomes the problem The previous section has examined how line managers would find ways to remove themselves from the burden of administering diversity management programs. Foster (et all, 2005) has researched diversity management in a large retailer chain with hundreds of stores across UK. Rather than use survey instruments, a series of in-depth interviews of managers and line were conducted to assess the diversity management implementation methods. The research revealed a number of possibilities for more effective implementation. To make the paper more effective and useful, the findings are presented as practices that can be used by diversity practitioners. there are different understandings that line managers can have about the meaning of diversity management. Managers are also worried about the legal compliance and potential litigation. There is also some confusion since managers are required to practice equality and accept that employees are diverse. When policies that are framed are not inclusive and do not consider the practical problems then line managers cannot implement them and they get further vilified and blamed. Diversity practitioners include the ones defined by Kirton (et all, 2007) as organizational diversity specialists and organizational diversity champions An interesting observation from the diversity practices of Microsoft is to be mentioned. In this firm recruits from developing countries such as India, China, Vietnam, South America and other places are given an intensive induction program that grooms the recruits to fit into multi cultural teams. Attempts are not made to make, for example, an Indian forget that he is an Indian but rather, make the Indian employee understand the organisation work culture, expectations, customer profile and job requirements along with personal grooming and along with dress code. Such an approach gives the employee the chance to make efforts to fit in with the organisation and meet the business needs better (Donaldson, 2005). A common fallacy that diversity professionals in UK fall a victim is that they tend to adopt a fawning and patronising attitude and attempt to change their own method of speaking so that the presumably ‘dumb’ Asian would understand them. This habit can even be seen when someone raises his voice so that a hearing challenged person, who is wearing a hearing aid, can hear. This habit can also be seen when people rush forward to open the door for a physically challenged person on crutches, thereby embarrassing her all the more and reminding her again of her disability. To make an extreme comment, UK diversity professionals have to stop being ‘kind’ and ‘considerate’ for a handicapped person or an Asian and behave with them, as they would with a white Briton. Diversity professionals should also not practice reverse discrimination where deserving local white employees are treated unfairly by denying them promotion or job opportunities, simply because there is a certain ‘quota’ to be filled for minority groups. Such practices can only increase resentment and drive the diversity wedge deeper and make the rift wider (Noon, 2005). 4. Conclusion and Recommendations The paper has examined the meaning and importance of diversity management in modern organisations. The diversity management is actually implemented by two categories of employees, organizational diversity specialists and organizational diversity champions. The first category frames the rules and policies while the second group implements them. A number of reasons have emerged that show why there is a gap between policy framing and actual implementations. The main reason is that line managers are very busy with heavy work schedules that they do not have to practice diversity management. Other reasons are that there is some confusion about the need to recognise diversity and the mandate to practice equality and line managers often find it difficult to understand what has to be done. However, diversity management has been practiced with vigour in many firms since it adds to the competitive advantage, increases the positive public image and reduces the threat of litigation. The following recommendations are suggested to ensure uniform diversity management practices are implemented. Principles of diversity management have to be based on realistic and practical issues. Rather than force-feed the practices on unwilling employees, it is best to make these principles a part of the organisation culture. Native white Briton employees and line managers have to be taught about these practices and the need to observe them. The principles would gradually become a part of the organisation culture and would become institutionalised just as it has happened in Microsoft and other firms. Depending on the number of cross-cultural employees hired by a firm, training should be provided to as many employees of all cultures. Much can be achieved when off the office meets, picnics and other such get-togethers are conducted and such outings increases the bonding. It must also be understood that each organisation type would have a different set of problems. The ground situation in retail stores would be different from that in the hospitality and tourism sector. The background of employees. Their educational background, the type of work being done by the employee, etc. have to be considered while framing and implementing the diversity management policies. Simply copying the practices from one industry to another would not be very helpful. Diversity management would be more helpful when the policy include the dominant white employees also and not just the other groups. Threats and coercion would have short term gains since the offending employees would seem to be repentant but not for a very long time. References Donaldson. Les, (2005), 'American anti-management theories of organization: A critique of paradigm proliferation, 2nd Edition' Cambridge: University Press. Foster, c. & Harris, L. (2005) 'Easy to say, difficult to do: diversity management in retail.', Human Resource Management Journal 15(3): 4-17 Kirton, G. & Greene, A. M. (2006)'The Dynamics of Managing Diversity, 2nd Edition', Butterworth Heinemann Kirton, G. & Greene, A. M., Dean, D. (2007) 'British Diversity Professionals as Change Agents: radicals, tempered radicals or liberal reformers?', International Journal of Human Resource Management. Noon, M. & Ogbonna, E. (2001) 'Equality, Diversity and Disadvantage in Employment'. Palgrave Scott Richard, (2004). ‘Reflections on a Half Century of Organizational Sociology’. Annual Review of Sociology. 30: 1-21. p.p. 1-21 Read More