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Diversity in the workplace is the phenomenon by which we have today, individuals in the
workplace hailing from different countries of origin, of different cultural practices, religious
beliefs, different languages, different communication styles, etc. in addition to the usual
differences of race, age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical abilities or disabilities,
physical appearance, color of skin, etc. between different individuals, all working towards the
same goal under the guidance of the same individual or team. Diversity in workplaces has the
conditions and improve the bottom line of the organization by improving profitability. ( Marquis,
Diversity implementation is today becoming very popular and corporates are increasingly
drafting, freezing and implementing their own diversity policies. However while doing so,
managers at all levels are facing myriads of challenges, a few of which are highlighted below in
Communication is the skill through which one receives information from someone,
process it to whatever extent that it is required and return it or/and forwards the processed
information for the next step. Precision is essential for business communication. The business
communicator should be capable of saying or hearing exactly what he or she wants to say or
hear. In the diverse work-place, all the members may not be equal exponents of the language
used to communicate in the group, say English, and therefore tend to communicate erroneously
with others.
Subconscious Bias
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ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
Very often, people tend to nurture a bias against a foreign culture, albeit subconsciously.
The sub-conscious bias is formed inside people through the many years of social interaction
which people are exposed to during their youth and teenage. Once a person with a sub-conscious
bias is made aware of it, than he or she can become free from its effects, by consciously fighting
to overcome it.
Stereotyping
This has been found to be a common malaise in the workplace which works against
diversity. Here, people often classify all people sharing a common ethnic background as to be
alike in other ways too. For example, many people think after 9/11, that all American Muslims
Different cultural backgrounds foster different attitudes to work speed and working
system. Some cultures start off fast and others are slow to start off but having done so, maintains
consistency. These differenced can foster misunderstandings between different work members,
especially if small portions of ethnocentric prejudice are pre-existent between the two people.
Community Bonding
In a diverse workplace, it is often found that bonding is faster and more frequent with
people from the same background. This is especially true for newcomers to the workplace. While
the goal of diversity is to make people feel at home, here the bonding goes against the meaning
of what is being attempted i.e. diversity. Bonding should with people of other backgrounds too.
Also, bonded pairs of same background should open up to others and not keep to themselves.
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ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
The Diversity Audit.
As per the Iowa College of business, diversity audits are evaluations of the state of
diversity within the organization, based on qualitative and quantitative information collected
from the organization. Diversity Audits entail a procedure by which information can be
processed to arrive at a value which is the prevalent value of diversity within an organization.
First of all, by maximizing the pro-diversity variables, the ideal value of diversity is first
calculated by using this procedure. Next, the prevailing diversity and the difference among the
prevailing and ideal diversity values are calculated as above. This shows how far the
organization has been successful in implementing diversity and what distance still remains for
Diversity Audits being an evaluative process indicate whether the diversity prevalent in
the business organization is nearer to the goal set by the organization or is far away. The higher
the difference between the aimed and the actual organizational diversity value, the more it is
important to correct the organizational strategy so that the diversity gap between the actual and
the ideal is made as lower as possible. This is how positive strategy changes are brought about by
diversity audits in a business organization. On the other hand, if despite the diversity audit result,
the organization does not take any steps to correct the discrepancies between the targeted ideal
diversity and the actual prevalent diversity, (or even takes steps which increases the discrepancy
level instead of lowering it), then this may be referred to as negative shaping of the
organizations strategy.
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ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
Diversity Policy
The organization I used to work in earlier had a detailed diversity policy which I feel was
more or less adequate in fulfilling its purpose. It started off by defining diversity and stated why
diversity police adoption is so important to both staff member wellbeing and organizational
productivity and bottom line too. It defined where the companys definition of diversity may
intersect with that of an individual, and in such a case, what can the individual expect from the
companys diversity enforcement department? It made its point that the company respected each
staff member as an individual and separate entity and the employees to should give the same
courtesy to their colleagues. It then details the companys recruitment process and how the
company recruits keeping the diversity goal in mind. Finally, the policy is summed up and how
diversity leads to a workplace filled with empathy, co-operative atmosphere and a helping
overtone is emphasized.
In hindsight, I now feel that there are three important points which were not mentioned
1. The Policy Scope was not defined which is such a vital part of any policy, be it diversity, quality
of different types and diversity does play a role in each. A short list of the same follows.
(Scribd.com, 2017)
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ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
Traditional systems were earlier thought to be static as they remained indifferent from the
external atmosphere. It was with the advent of management gurus like Peter Drucker, Michael
Porter etc. that we now know that the closed system is actually not true. However, it works in
many cases because the dynamic exchange is very small. But in reality it is only a simplification.
Classification 1 : Flexible and Inflexible organizations. diversity enables the organization to have
Classification 2: Individual and Team Oriented: Here, diversity enables the company to act as
teams all of which are experts at different aspects of the job. Thereby unitedly, the team
Classification 3: Permanent Jobs to Temporary Jobs. The diversity point here is that the diversity
point member can gain a better all-round exposure to the likely employment market in the near
future.
Classification 4: Rule Oriented to Customer Oriented: Here the diversity point is providing
find out new and innovative solutions to problems by feelings brought about by gut feelings due
to continuous involvement.
These are a few of the more important classifications with the feature of diversity of each clearly
marked out.
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ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
References
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ON DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
Harvey, C.P. (2005) Evaluating diversity and in the Real World: Conducting a Diversity Audit.
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Marquis, J. P., Lim, N., & Scott, L. M., Harrell, M.C. and Kavanagh, J. (2007). Managing
Scribd.com ( 2017) comparison between traditional and new organization. Retrieved from
https://www.scribd.com/doc/.../comparison-between-traditional-and-new-organization
Vats, V and Bhatia A. ( September 21, 2005) Workplace Diversity In Modern Organizations
https://insideiim.com/workplace-diversity-in-modern-organizations-benefits-and-
challenges/