The Concept of the Policy of Diversity Management - Essay Example

Running Head: Managing Diversity The contributions that ‘Managing Diversity’ policies can make to the promotion of equality in organizations s Name] [Institution’s Name] The contributions that ‘Managing Diversity’ policies can make to the promotion of equality in organizations The concept of diversity management simply means to respect and understand that every individual has its own importance and is unique. Generally diversity is the recognition of individual’s differences. It can be along different dimensions like gender, culture, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, age, physical abilities, political beliefs, socio-economic status and other different ideologies. But this is not comprehensive in any way because practically the diversity among people is limitless and it constantly changes with the global environment and time. Major differences like race, age, culture and gender are obvious but some difference (perceived differences) like personality and lifestyle, which change frequently on experiences and relationships, can be complicated to make out. The examination of these differences has to be done in a positive, nurturing and safe atmosphere. [1] According to John Wrench, “Diversity management is the latest development in a sequence of strategies which have aimed to get excluded minorities better represented in employment.” [2] “Diversity goes beyond employment equity to nurturing an environment that values the differences and maximizes the potential of all employees, one that stimulates employee creativity and innovativeness.” (U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (U.S. MSPB), 1993) The term diversity management in business can be defined as a firm which employs heterogeneous workforce (like different generations, gender, race, age etc) and creates such an atmosphere that works for all employees. In order to manage the diversity successfully, an organization must commit to maintain and create such a working environment that respects all the employees, acknowledging the perspective and the diverse talents of individuals. Organizations gain competitive advantages through low turnover, high motivation, less internal conflict and more job satisfaction if their workforce diversity is well managed. A diverse workforce enables an organization to better meet the requirements of their customers. Different new ideas are brought to the organizations by diverse employees, which help them in solving various complicated problems. “Managing diversity is a process of creating and maintaining an environment that naturally encourages all individuals to reach their full potential in pursuit of organizational objectives.” (Jenner, 1994; Thomas, 1994 in Dagher & DNetto, 1997) Workforce diversity is becoming a major issue which is faced by the managers of the twenty first century. Few of these issues are differences in ethnicity and languages which caused breakdown in communication, increasing number of women in workforce and the ageing population holding the job market. For these reasons, many tools and techniques of management has to be used in order to overcome such problems. [3] “The needs and expectations of a diverse workforce can vary by organizational and functional levels, location, ethnicity, and gender.” (Baytos and Delatte, 1993) The diversity is getting important increasingly because many major organizations are globalizing and holding the world markets. Many challenges incur in the diversity of the markets and these challenges of managing diversity are not only difficult but must also begin from within. Many organizations changed their vision on managing the diversity of their workforce just because to remain competitive in the global markets. In order to remain competitive in today’s world, the organizations must have to tap into the competitive markets of talent along with the diversification of the workforce. In past years, the diversity of workforce of any organization was mainly due to legal compliances as in many countries there are laws in opposition to discrimination. During the Second World War, the women in armaments factories started a feminist movement from the 1960’s until the legislation was introduced in the 1980’s, in which they insisted that women should not be treated in a different way and they should not be expelled because of gender, there was nothing that women cannot do. They wanted the same opportunities as men and wanted to be treated the same like men. They demanded equality in men and women. Therefore the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the Affirmative Action Act 1986 were introduced which made discrimination and harassment illegal and gave the right to women for equal employment opportunity. On the same hand, severe penalties were also introduced for the non-compliance. A remarkable change has occurred in the way businesses are run because of the globalization of the world markets including the employment market. In globalization, an organization enters into new open markets with new customers and it requires the best suited services and products for these markets, which also brings up an extremely diverse employment market. Nowadays, the technology has become so advanced that it makes the geographic factor in globalization less an issue. The advancement in communication and travelling has made the world highly accessible. If we take the example of American Express, Xerox and Barclays, they changed their multinational strategy to global strategy. It must have impacted their marketing functions (for instance communication) that facilitate developments in relationship. In order to successfully adapt these changes an organization must go for diversity as it is highly unavoidable for the organizations these days. “Organizational goals of diversity today include creation of positive organizational culture and deriving economic value from diversity.” (Hellriegel, 1999) Across the world, diversity in the workplace has become a demographic reality. Any managing diversity program will succeed only when the supervisors and managers will communicate with all of their employees throughout the organization about the benefits, relevance and importance of such programs and will display their commitment to the program. Mentoring and managing personal growth are the two strategies which help in creating good supervisor-subordinate communication. And improved communication leads towards three different approaches: valuing diversity, affirmative action and managing diversity. Valuing diversity is an approach which has an aim to improve the quality of relationships among peoples. It focuses on similarities and differences of different cultures within an organization and understands them completely. It makes the people realize the importance and significance of diversity and open up the people’s mind and emotions about diversity. It plays a very vital role in establishing mutual respect among the peoples. Affirmative action is an approach which has an aim to improve the mobility for women and ethnic minorities and expand representation. Political and legal considerations motivate the affirmative action. It focuses on implementing different efforts for different underutilized targeted groups within an organization. It establishes the base for diversity in an organization. Managing diversity is an approach which has an aim to fully utilize all human resources in an organization. Organization’s pledge to attain increased productivity and to provide quality service is the main motivator of managing diversity. It creates a friendly management system which promotes and prospers diversity. Managing diversity is the most suitable strategy. Taking the example of DOW Chemical USA, it chooses the strategy of managing personal growth to effectively open a communication line between their supervisors and employees. It benefited specific target groups and focused on creating such an environment in which every employee feels accepted and valued. If we take the organizations of America then we can see that the number of minorities and women are increasing. Therefore these companies have to put their old ways of thinking aside in order to make a friendly and respectful environment. Companies must have to train their employees and retain them in the workplace. The managers of these companies must have to learn how to value diversity. They must have to manage the company in such a way that it can benefit from the differences of the employees. Managers must have to go beyond Equal Opportunity and Affirmative action. They must have to be aware of the feelings of different employees that every person feels differently about his or her role at work and different employees are motivated in different manners. For instance, an employee who doesn’t like to be touched will find it awkward that his boss is rewarding him by patting on the back. Or a worker who is Asian and works hard but he is very quite, so the boss may assume that he lacks management skills when considering him for a promotion. It is imperative for the leaders or managers to learn new ways to recognize abilities in order to effectively manage a diverse workforce. [4] “By evaluation I am referring to measuring the outcomes of diversity efforts and change. Results can be measured through increased employee retention, improved accountability and increased alignment with the organizations mission.” (Black and Prudente, 1998) Within an organization, the successful implementation of diversity can result in improved employee morale, increased effectiveness of managers, reduced conflicts among diverse groups of employees, reduced absenteeism, improved client or customers relations, retention and promotional policies, enhances team work, improvements in recruitment, equality among employees and increased cooperation inside the organization. For example Pepsi Co. and Intel have executed a successful diversity programs in their organizations. They settled up a clear business rationale for the diversity program because if the company fails to provide the clear reason for the new program, then the employees or managers will not recognize their meaning. It helped both the companies to develop a positive environment for the employees, which was based on respect. Benefits and importance of the diversity management to the business must be comprehensively explained by the organization. They conducted a survey in which they determined the issues and attitudes surrounded in diversity. It is very important for the organizations to understand the feelings of different employees in order to make the diversity program successful. If the organization fails to assess the values and opinions of their workforce then their diversity programs will lack in strength and will not be successful. They observed and seek out the needs and priorities of employees which ensured them to design a diversity program which is appropriate. Then they converted these ideas and views of both the employees and managers into action plans in which the ideas and views of employees are given more importance. They develop a code of conduct and expectations which has to be followed in their organization and differentiated the behaviours that are acceptable and that are not acceptable. They set up rules for communication within the organization and disallowed to crack any offensive jokes on anyone’s religion, casts, culture, race, gender etc. Pepsi Co. and Intel equipped themselves to create and maintain this environment over an extended period of time because the management of diversity is not one time event and is very difficult to attain as well as maintain such an environment because many challenges takes place while attaining or maintaining such environment. Management of diversity is not a child’s play that can be accomplished overnight. It requires long term planning and perspective in order to be accomplished successfully. After all the implementations and attaining of the diversity has done the organization must have to follow an evaluation process to find out that whether the diversity program has effectively succeeded or not. Like any other program, the evaluation of the diversity program is also very critical and it takes a lot of time to measure the initial effectiveness of the program. Both the managers and employees must be involved with this evaluation process. Long term commitment and Top level support both are the foundations of a successful diversity program and they must not be overstated. Therefore, the diversity management is the formation of national and international environments within which the diverse approaches, perspectives and sensitivities in respect of religion, personal attributes, mental and physical abilities, gender, culture, attitude and the transfer in emphasis from affirmative action to diversity management are explained and inspected. Strategies for dynamic diversity management must be applied in order to apply the diversity within an organization. The research shows that the Intel and Pepsi Co. both have benefited from the development of diversity in their organizations. Like any new program, the leaders must get the support of their subordinates in order to make the diversity program successful. Another example is of Teleplan Corporation. This firm initially mismanaged the diversity of its employees which might have leaded them towards the long term effects of employee satisfaction and output. The valued employees of this firm are more conscious, innovative and involved in their tasks. But unluckily the minority group members of this firm experience less valued and respected than the majority group members. The minority group members faced prejudice, ethnocentrism, discrimination and stereotyping. The unfavourable treatment to the minority group members or denied access can lead towards the mismanagement of the diversity and it can have negative workplace consequences for instance reducing workers motivation and abilities. Hence, it leads towards the reduced job performance. A review of the Teleplan’s mission statement shows that the organization is focused mainly to the economic benefit and there was no sign of any issue regarding workforce diversity in it. But when an interview was conducted of the human resource manager it was found that the Teleplan’s code of conduct, which was released on the July 8, 2008, incorporated the issues for workforce diversity. In Section 3, sub section 1, it clearly states that “Teleplan policy prohibits discrimination or harassment of any kind based on employee’s, officer’s, or director’s race, colour, religion, national origin, age, sex, disability status, or sexual orientation.” Teleplan’s mission statement must be improved to construct and maintain a diverse environment, and managers must reflect a sense of commitment. Teleplan used SWOT analysis and its managers found that some strategic functions were lacking that can be very useful and beneficial for the organization. The diversity researchers found a strong rationale for prediction making about how diversity is likely to control social procedures within organizations and teams by simply extending the logic of theories that explain individual behaviours and attitudes. Teleplan came up with a diversity research after using the SWOT analysis. Under this research various points on outcomes and attributes were studied which were based on different factors for instance educational level, personality, tenure, age, sex, ethnicity and nationality. And their results were used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s labour force as well as the efficiency of the assets which were used. Teleplan addressed the issue of workforce diversity by using a strategy “Workforce Diversity Action Plan”. This plan identified the areas where the issues of diversity are, and listed the different ways through which these problems can be countered. The organization’s aim was to reach the equality and parity among the workforce by promoting the current employees and selecting applicants who are diverse. The huge diversity in Teleplan contributed towards its success but initially they faced certain specific problems and challenges. Due to huge diversity in Teleplan some communication troubles took place which includes the misunderstandings between managers and employees as well as they had to translate verbal and written clauses in numerous different languages. Therefore, in order to solve these problems the Teleplan started a training program in which they trained their employees in basic skills for instance problem solving and writing. Teleplan used empowerment technique i.e... It showed a high level of confidence in the skills of its employees, whether they are in minority group or in majority group. This empowerment boosted its employees to perform at high levels. The Teleplan’s organizational design shows the characteristics of a learning organization. This organization supports the capacity to adapt and modify constantly and its diverse workforce played a very vital role in it. Due to the diversity in Teleplan’s workforce, knowledge management was carried out by its employees, because they continuously started to share and acquire new knowledge from their colleagues and they applied that knowledge to their work and in decision making that enhanced the company’s output. The Teleplan’s manager had designed the organization in such a way that the several dissimilarities in the largely diverse workforce are used for the benefits, rather than causing obstacles in daily procedures. The Teleplan after facing so many hurdles and challenges succeeded to manage its workforce diversity which resulted in its great success. The Teleplan is now a very successful organization because it quickly learned to extract benefits from its diverse workforce. [5] “The advantage of internal trainers is that they understand the organizations culture and can manage the training process.” (Caudron, 1993) Organizations nowadays are using functional tools to achieve their strategic objectives by increasingly using work teams. These teams are also bound to become more and more diverse as the workforce is also becoming increasingly diverse. For different organizations these diverse teams are beneficial if these teams are performing complex tasks and decision making. These diverse teams lead the organization towards the sophisticated understandings of different complicated problems and high quality solutions of these problems because the diverse members of these teams have high capability to judge and see problems from many different viewpoints. But these teams or diverse workforce may create some conflicts. These conflicts can be caused by misinterpretation and dysfunctional group processes. The diversity of workforce or teams may promote different types of conflicts such as relationship or emotional conflict can be caused by the social and value diversity, and task conflict can be caused by the functional background diversity. Well according to the arguments of Pelled, Eisenhardt et at (1999), that the task conflict facilitate constructive criticism which naturally improves the performance of the workforce. He further argued that the task conflicts in cross functional teams are very constructive and can create a series of opinions for problem solving and it also boost the quality of decision making. But the main barriers between information sharing are the social categorization and attraction. These points made it clear that the conflicts which are caused by the diversity are positive and improve the performance of the teams. Different researchers show that diversity in teams brings up different challenges but the constructive attainment of the diversity benefits results in great rewards. In diverse teams the conflict which mainly arises is Interpersonal conflict. In order to gain from these conflicts the organizations must have to recognize the reasons for the conflicts and must relate these conflicts to the organizational outcomes. The task conflict which is related to the functional diversity promotes the improved and creative ways of solving any problem, and it must be managed and encouraged constructively. Whether the effects of the conflicts are negative or positive, it all depends on the quality of diversity management. The managers must need to recognize that what group structures and what types of diversity leads towards the different types of conflicts and how these different conflicts can be managed effectively to improve team’s performance and to gain positive outcomes from it. From the above discussion we can conclude that diversity although creates initial costs from interpersonal diversity. But when these challenges are attained and the diversity is managed effectively then this diversity can return many sources of competitive advantages. The potential hazards of ineffective management of diversity have been demonstrated in some researches. Those organizations who tries to avoid the outcomes of diversity by employing a homogenous workforce can lead them towards the lost of opportunities for increasing competitive edge and high costs. A diverse workforce has many potential advantages; some of these advantages have been discussed in this paper. The major ability of the diverse workforce is that they come up with different effective solutions to complex tasks and effective management of diversity creates and maintains an environment of equality and builds good relationships among employees of an organization. It all depends upon the effective and constructive management of the diversity. References [1] (John Wrench, Diversity Management and Discrimination, Page 3) [2] (U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. (1993, September). The Changing Face of the Federal Workplace) [3] (Baytos, L., & Delatte, A. P. (1993). 8 guidelines for successful diversity training. Training, 30(1), 55-60) [4] (Black, N. J., & Prudente, D. (1998). Developing a Diversity Action Plan) [5] (Caudron, S. (1993). Training can damage diversity efforts. Personnel Journal, 72(4), 50-60) [6] Legge K. (2005). Human Resource Management: Rhetorics and realities. London: Macmillan Business. [7] Redman T. and Wilkinson A. (2005) Contemporary Human Resource Management: Text and cases. Harlow: Prentice hall. Read More