1.I have migrated from Britain to Australia. My upbringing has been in a family where my parents were separated at an early age and I was brought up by a single mother. I had the company of my grandfather while growing up. Spending time with him shaped my values and cultural biases. My mother got re-married and my step dad had a travelling job because of which I had the opportunity to travel across the globe which made me tolerant and sensitive to people from different cultural backgrounds, gender and sexual orientation. When I migrated to Australia I learnt to overcome my cultural bias towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander who inhabited this country and often face unemployment problems and health issues. I have learnt to be sensitive to the needs of people of this community.
2.Cultural awareness is about respecting others beliefs, values and opinions. It is about being how we treat people in every aspect of life. In this era of globalization people work in multi-cultural teams and cultural awareness impacts different work roles. As a manager or team lead of a multi-cultural team, one has to be aware of the cultural background and values of all the team members, understand and acknowledge these values. While working in a multi-cultural team, one has to be sensitive to the similarities and differences between people. One has to develop a right attitude towards cultural awareness. In order to increase cultural competence, one must attend cultural workshops to learn about specific practices of a particular culture like child rearing habits. Cultural safety creates a protected and safe workplace where a person feels valued, empowered and understood. It is important to ensure that our own interests do not overshadow interests of others. Thus whatever is the job role, a manager, a CEO or a technical lead cultural awareness, safety and competence are crucial factors.
3.Diversity is the co-existence of people from different race, gender, sexual-orientation, family income, religious and political beliefs and socio-economic status. Diversity is about understanding that every individual is unique and being tolerant and sensitive in a diverse society.
In a culturally diverse environment a person’s behavior, knowledge and practices can impact the way others.
In a culturally diverse society, a person should be careful while asking about another person’s personal background as in some cultures asking about sensitive information like discussion about deceased people can be considered offensive. In some cultures it is fine to ask about information like personal health and income while in other cultures this can be too personal information to reveal. Some cultures prefer to maintain an arm’s distance while communicating while others prefer to be within a comfortable physical proximity for communication. One should modify one’s tone of voice, eye-contact level, verbal and non-verbal gestures while communicating in a culturally diverse background.
4.Three ways to reflect on my own perspective of others in regards to diversity would be
1) It is important to develop an anti-bias approach in regards to diversity. For this purpose one has to be aware of one’s own biases and then one has to build one’s ability to develop a sense of social awareness. A person should understand the diversity that exists in his society or workplace. An anti-bias curriculum that includes photos of cultural events or stories that discourage stereotypes should be a part of cultural curriculum.
2) One should adopt the practice of Lifelong learning where a person should be open to new information and educators should adopt curriculum in schools where culture is respected. One should be sensible to other’s needs.
3) Reflective practices like asking questions about what makes a person curious at workplace, what one finds challenging etc are ways to reflect on one’s own perspective. Also, Early Years Learning Framework, the learning journey of cultural competence and reflective cycles are ways to reflect on one’s perspective in regards to diversity.
5.It is important to undertake a structured process of reflection on one’s own perception of diversity.
A structured process like the reflective cycle with 6 stages: description which enables us to reflect on a specific event, reflection on one’s feelings, evaluation – the things that were good and bad about the experience, analysis of alternatives, conclusion about the situation and action about the things to be done in a repetitive situation enables a person to reflect on his perception of diversity in a clear and unambiguous manner.
6.One goal within my current job role as a Human Resource manager that strengthened my understanding and knowledge of diversity is to increase diversity at my workplace. My goal as a human resource manager is to minimize the gender gap in workplace, ensure that key talents from different race and ethnic groups are indentified and recruited, ensure women are promoted to senior positions and responsible roles, develop an anti-bias attitude to people of different sexual orientation at workplace and minimize stereotyping of minor groups at workplace.
7.Three actions that I would take to achieve my goal as described in question 6 are
1) Place advertisements of recruitment in diversity focused journals, to take help of a third party search firm to ensure that headhunters are able to identify key talents from different race and cultural background, employee referrals will also be encouraged in this process.
2) Conduct cultural activities at workplace so that the diverse workforce can co-ordinate in harmony. Cultural activities can be storytelling, performing skits or drama, dress-codes day where people would be encouraged to wear dresses of their own culture.
3) To ensure open communication among team members to remove language barriers, to conduct different activities within the diverse team like to introduce the concept of a team buddy who would together play a game at workplace or perform a task so that stereotyping is minimized and cultural bias is discouraged. It is important that members of the team are well aware of the difference among each other in a culturally diverse team so that one can respect and value his team member (Waddell et al. , 2013).
8.The possible reasons why the Aboriginal mother was not maintain eye-contact kept her head down and was not responding to questions about her children can be as follows
1) The mother of the Aboriginal family has suffered atrocities from British colonization. They feel unprotected in areas which are populated by non-Aboriginal population.
2) Revealing information about the children is often considered personal and intrusive to privacy and the mother was protective about her children.
4) The mother was not comfortable with the staff members as the Aboriginal mother might have faced difficulties from non-indigenous Australians at some point in life regarding taking control of land. This community also faces several problems regarding health and employment which is reflected in the conservative attitude of the woman.
9.Social, political and economic issues that might have influenced the behavior of the mother are as follows:
1This community has faced severe problems like poor health, bad education, low life-expectancy, unemployment related issues. This community lives in remote areas of Australia.
2) The community had to face atrocities from British colonization, land of this community was seized and the Westerners have created fear and confusion and their attitudes have been very difficult to handle for members of this community. Land rights are settled in Australia according to Western Systems and educational methods are often unfamiliar to this community (Garling et al., 2013).
References
Garling, S., Hunt, J., Smith, D., & Sanders, W. (2013). Contested governance: culture, power and institutions in Indigenous Australia (p. 351). ANU Press.
Waddell, D., Creed, A., Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. (2013). Organisational change: Development and transformation. Cengage Learning.
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