How Would You Deal With a Negative Attitude Toward Diversity Within the Workplace - Essay Example

The paper "How Would You Deal With a Negative Attitude Toward Diversity Within the Workplace?" is a wonderful example of a management essay. The simplest method to deal with a negative attitude towards diversity is to make individuals within an organization understand why we need diversity. It must be understood that diversity is not a legal requirement anymore since businesses as well as non-profit organizations have understood diversity as a method of gaining competitive advantages (Kirton and Greene, 2005).

Companies like DuPont and GE have gained many benefits from having a diverse workforce and their examples show that diversity can be very useful if correctly utilized even in non-profit sectors like education (Lockwood, 2005). The training program which could help individuals in the education sector would be dependant on what level of hostility is observed and what level of support can be gathered from the various stakeholders. Seminars, educational lectures as well as group discussions can be held in a comfortable setting where people must be shown why they need diversity.

Diversity and the drive for diversity within an organization must not seek to change behaviors but attitudes because as suggested by Butterfield (1996), once the attitude is changed, the behavior will follow in the same direction. Another simple solution would be a program of mentorship and alignments in which individuals from diverse backgrounds are brought together in a comfortable setting where one can act as the mentor to the other with shared communications and common objectives (Kirton and Greene, 2005).

Such measures are just some of the steps that can be taken to improve the perception of diversity within an organization while others such as awareness classes, guest speakers and visits to other organizations can also be used along with the measures mentioned above.