Challenges & Benefits of

Cultural Diversity

Challenges of Diversity

• Communication Barriers

• Resistance to Change

• Socio-cultural Factors

• Education, age, and gender

• Personality and Background

Communication Barriers• Ineffective communication of key

objectives results in confusion, lack of teamwork and low morale.

• Age, gender and culture influence the messages sent and received.

• Barriers to communication are factors that block or significantly destroy successful communication.

• Communication barriers may be temporary and can be overcome.

• Awareness and recognition are the first steps in formulating ways to overcome the barriers.

Common Communication Barriers• Virtual Work: isolates team members from socialization and face to face interaction, creating a lack of clarity.

• Emotions: can leave some people unable to verbally express themselves clearly and coherently.

• Gender: can be associated to the different styles between men and women on how they explain things.

• Culture: expresses the values and patterns of behavior which can be very confusing, making it difficult to communicate.

Communication Barriers

Resistance to Change• Refusing to accept new policies

• Why change something that works

• We’ve always done it this way

• Scared of failure and not being able to learn/adapt to new things

• Not wanting to spend time and effort changing

• Not understanding what is expected (the fear of the unknown)

Sociocultural Factors

• Race

• Ethnicity

• Culture

• Religion

Education, Age, and Gender

Sociocultural Factors• How one was raised, will give them certain beliefs at a

young age. Their believes may be a slightly different than those that we were brought up to believe.

• In any form, our behavior was established, regardless of your background. Rules and behavior that one models is what they were taught. Beliefs may be different, making it difficult to understand the reason why you may have offended someone, if you are not familiar with their background.

• Beginning to understand and learn about the background of the people you work with will create a united team and making a strong and productive team. Learning about ones background, you will begin to develop a perception of others and you will begin to be sensitive to the perspectives of others.

Education, Age & GenderOne of the challenges faced in today’s diverse world is the level of education. Different education levels can impact effective communication. Complex words and explanations may not be understood by a person less educated, or not educated in a certain field. Imagine a doctor explaining that you have a broken leg in medical terms!

Age is another challenge in today’s workplace. People may not be used to communicating with different age groups . Older people may use old phrases/words to explain things not understood by a younger audience. Younger people may also use words too modern and not understood by an older generation.

Gender can affect communication as men and women often think about things differently. In Islamic culture especially, when a female and male communicate, certain traditions are followed, such as lack of eye contact and shaking hands, affecting perception and communication.

PersonalityPersonality clashes can effect communication. If you do not like a person or the way they present themselves, you may not listen to what they have to say, or believe what they have to say. However, if you like a person’s personality and agree with what they are saying, you may be more likely to listen, respect what they have to say and take-in what they are saying.

A person’s personality can affect communication for example if someone has a bossy and strong personality, they may disregard others. This may create a negative atmosphere and people may not listen to you. However if someone is more relaxed, open-minded and creates a relaxing environment, the audience may take more in and listen more.

Advantages of Diversity

• Increased Adaptability

• Broader service range

• Variety of Viewpoints

• More effective execution

Advantages of Diversity

1. Increased Adaptability: Organizations employing a diverse

workforce can supply a greater variety of solutions to problems in service. Sourcing, and allocation of resources. Employees from diverse backgrounds bring individual talents and experiences in suggesting ideas that are flexible in adapting to fluctuating markets and customer demands.

Advantages of Diversity

2. Broader Service Range : A diverse collection of skills and

experiences (e.g. languages, cultural understanding) allows a company to provide products/service to customers worldwide.

Advantages of Diversity

3. Variety of Viewpoints: A diverse workforce that feels

comfortable communicating varying points of view provides a larger pool of ideas and experiences. The organization can draw from that pool to meet business strategy needs and the needs of customers more effectively.

Advantages of Diversity

4. More Effective Execution: Companies that encourage diversity in

the workplace inspire all their employees to perform to their highest ability. Company-wide strategies can then be executed; resulting in higher productivity, profit, and return on investment.

Advantages of Diversity

An organization’s success and competitiveness depends on its ability to embrace diversity and realize the benefits.

When organizations actively assess their handling of workplace diversity issues, develop and implement diversity plans, multiple benefits are reported.

Conflicts from diversity can be productive when people strive to understand one another, opening up new business opportunities and markets, by widening its customer base and by being able to better address specific consumer’s needs in our multicultural society.

References

• Terrill Lyknis, Shelley Wiedemeier, Vincent Williams, Melanie Gill & Sheri Keefer

• www.multiculturaladvantage.com