Diversity In Workplace: Importance, Challenges And Opportunities

Importance of diversity at workplace

Describe about the Diversity in Workplace for Organizational Posses.

Diversity in workplace means the different attitudes and values that people in organization posses. Diversity in workplace is gaining a lot of importance in today’s world. It is beneficial for the employees as well as advantageous for employers and managers. Diversity in workplace means recruitment of people in the organization from different places, cultures, religions, gender, and origins. Workplace diversity refers to different types of people that work in an organization. It includes diversity encompassing race, gender, age, group, personality, attitude, lifestyle, culture, education and background (Afzal et al., 2013). Managing this diversity in workplace is necessary as diversity in workplace provides many opportunities and challenges that can be mitigated if properly managed.

As per the opinion of Barak, (2013), diversity at workplace is gaining attention due to the process of globalization. The interactions at workplace are rising. People today compete with the global world and do not remain inclusive. Hence, it is essential for the organizations to recognize this and become more diverse in its culture by recruiting people from all over the world. The issue of managing diversity at workplace is gaining importance. Then organizations should become multicultural in its operations, as managing diversity is an important managerial change. Despite of this workforce diversity, career and personal development remains obstacles for many specially females and minority groups. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the importance of workforce diversity and analyze the challenges and opportunities the managers in 21^st century confront. 

Importance of diversity at workplace

Workplace diversity is seeking the attention of the managers and employers because globalization is leading to increase in interaction among people from diverse culture. According to Bhattacharya, (2012), workplace diversity affects all the business and organizations. A team lacking in diversity is a bad sign. The interactions between the individuals and groups are rising with the rise in globalization. People now do not only leave in a secluded environment. They compete with people from worldwide. Diversity at workplaces has more opportunities of increasing competitive advantage and productivity. The needs of 21^st century require citizens to be culturally sensitive and internationally focused.  The orientation of 21^st century has shifted from past to the future (Bond & Haynes, 2014). Hence, in this scenario it is essential for the organizations to hire people and individuals that are creative in their thinking, which is possible by hiring diverse people from different background and culture.

Workforce diversity challenges and opportunities confronting new managers in the 21st century

The term diverse workforce is often misused and misconnected. In 21st century, it is more linked to political ping-pong. The social differences lead the people to view world and society differently. The 21^st century has led to transform employee and employer relationship. A more diverse workforce creates opportunities for creation of demand by providing more innovative products (Djabi & Shimada, 2013). Offering flexible workforce and environment helps in managing the use of technologies efficiently. The diversity at workplace is gaining importance and the perspective has changed. The number of women employed in organizations has increased. Diversity at workplaces is seen more as a source to achieve competitive advantage rather than creating knowledge based economy (Ewoh, 2013).

Diverse workforce helps the organizations fight the challenges that they face at the market place. The responsibility of the managers is to formulate plans and strategies to implement diverse workforce at organization. It is the duty of the human resource manager to manage the employees in an organization effectively. Diversity at workplace is important for the managers as well as employees. Workplace diversity helps in fostering mutual respect among employees. It also helps the employees in conflict resolution, and expanding the social life. Working with diversified workforce helps in bringing respect to the employees increasing and improving the performance of the organization. It also helps in increasing exposure. Employees work from different backgrounds that helps in increasing exposure (Harvey & Allard, 2015).

Workforce diversity has various economic benefits as well. It helps in driving economic growth as human capital substantially grows with incorporation of more women, ethnic minorities and racial people in the organization. It also leads to more qualified workers, as employers tend to hire the best employees while choosing from the diverse workforce. Diversity also leads to creation of employment opportunities. Many corporate today have employed a certain department in the organization for managing the diversity at the workplace. This department is known as human resource department (Jonsen et al., 2013).

According to Kirton & Greene, (2015), many organizations are changing the way they are adopting diverse culture in an organization. In recent time the perspective and definition of diversity, management has changed.  It not only includes inclusion of gender, sex, race and culture but also diversity in thoughts. Maintaining diversity of thoughts is essential for managing the talent by managing techniques and problem solving methods critically. Lack of diversity greatly affects the companies that are future focused. Technology leads to movement from burden to benefit. The discussion of workplace diversity is becoming more open and diverse. Diversity at workplace helps in promoting more tolerant environment.

Workforce diversity challenges and opportunities confronting new managers in the 21st century:

Managing diversity at workplaces is both an important and difficult task. The management of diversity has many challenges and opportunities that the managers in 21^st century face. According to Kumar, (2015), the employees at diverse company come from different backgrounds and culture and hence managing them is a complex task. People have differences in attitude and thinking that often creates conflict at workplace.  The benefits and advantages of diversity in workplace is not without the challenges that is given as follows.

Since people in organization come from different background and culture, hence their way of communication differs. The languages that they use are different. Hence, it is the duty of the human resource department and managers to manage the cultural and language barriers in order to manage the diversity successfully. As opined by Martín Alcázar et al., (2013), the miscommunication and ineffective communication often leads to confusion in workplace that can harm the success of the organization. Ineffective communication also leads to lack of teamwork and lowers the morale. Hence, managing communication and overcoming the language barrier is one of the major challenges that the managers need to manage.

The second challenge of diverse workforce is not acceptance to apply the change or resistance to change. According to Podsiadlowski et al., (2013), the managers come across various types of people in the organization. Diversity means adapting changes. Individuals who are not ready to resist changing are a big challenge to the managers. This leads to the creation of negative attitude that leads to slowing of the positive change and productivity. The managers can overcome this challenge by providing workshops where the employees can know each other so that it becomes easy for them to adapt to change.

The third challenge of diversity at workforce is unorganized diversity management plan. It is essential for the managers to not only provide sufficient training but to create an efficient successful implementation plan. According to Sagar, (2014), managers must take an organized approach so that the diversity can be managed efficiently. The diversity plan should be communicated efficiently with the staff through meetings and conferences so that the organizations are able to manage the diversity at workforce effectively. It is the responsibility of the managers to make the employees understand the importance of diversity at workplace. This is because not all people in organization are ready to accept change and diversity.

Another challenge of managing diversity is capturing opportunities that the diversity provides. According to Schaeffer & Mattis, (2012), diversity leads to generation of new approaches and practices. It is essential for the managers to formulate flexible strategies so that they are able to incorporate these practices. The managers should manage the diverse workforce effectively so that there is no discrimination. Often there is found that women are given less priority in recruiting them in higher position. This may lead to discrimination of employees. People from different cultures meets at one place and work together. The attitude of different people at work may be different, due to which the conflicts at work may arise. Hence, it is the duty of manager to manage and resolve the conflict at workplace to manage the tension.

According to Scott, (2012), discrimination and fairness are the two major challenges that the organization face in managing the workforce diversity. It is essential for the managers to ensure that the workforce diversity is managed fairly so that the plan does not hurt sentiment of any individual or group. Inclusion of all the employees in an organization is often challenging for managers. The responsibility of integrating individuals at work is the duty of the manager. The team should be building in such a way so that it contains peoples from diverse background and culture.

However, despite of having various challenges of managing diversity at workplace it also gives managers an opportunity that if utilized properly can lead to bring success to the organization. According to Urciuoli, (2015), workplace diversity is a key to improve the productivity of the organization. Diversity at workforce helps in combining different talents at an organization that can be utilized to increase the productivity. Different individuals have different set of skills. Combining all the skills together will help in better achievement of goals and targets set by the organization. It not only increases the productivity of the organization but also the loyalty of the employees and their retention power.

As opined by Ewoh, (2013), diversity at workplace also leads to increased creativity and problem solving. Diversity at workplace leads to generation of new ideas that can be beneficial for the firm. Diverse and different minds join towards fulfilling the goals of the company. The people have different ways of thinking, solving problems and making decisions that can be used as an opportunity in an organization.

Diverse workforce also creates an opportunity to increase the market share of the organization as it helps in creating a satisfied customer base due to availability of people from diverse background. The companies in United States were able to capture major market share due to incorporation of diverse workforce in an organization. It helps in stimulating innovation so that the organizations can outperform the competition.  Diversity management leads to expansion of the global market. Diversity at workplace also leads to build a good reputation for the company leading to great opportunities and profitability for the workers. An organization that is known for inclusion, ethics, diversity and fairness will attract more loyal customers that are likely to stay attached to the organization for a long period.

Conclusion

Hence, it can be concluded that diversity at workplace is gaining importance and seeking attention of not only the managers but also the employees. Diversity at workforce has many advantages and challenges for the managers and employees. Managing diversity at organization is seeking attention in 21^st century because of globalization and increase in interactions. Workforce diversity has many challenges because of various reasons that are differences in languages, cultures, communication, resistance to change and conflicts. If the managers properly manage these challenges then various opportunities are available to the organization. Diverse workforce leads to improvement of the productivity of the organization. It helps in managing people effectively increasing their loyalty and making them more enthusiastic to work. Inclusion of the diverse workforce in organization can either break or make the organization. Hence, the strategies and implementation plan should be managed effectively by the managers in order to reap the maximum benefit.

References

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