Managing Workforce Diversity in 21st Century

7/27/2019 Managing Workforce Diversity in 21st Century

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Managing Workforce Diversity in

21st Century

ByDr. Atasi Mohanty

Assistant ProfessorCentre for Educational Technology

Indian Institute of TechnologyKharagpurPin-721302

India

E-mail: [email protected]@gmail.com


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Workforce Diversity defined as:

Workforce diversity refers to respecting differences which exist between and among

us due to our respective inherited qualities and life experience.

It refers to the co-existence of employees from various socio-cultural backgrounds

within the organization such as race, gender, age, colour, physical ability, ethnicity,

nationality, religion, etc.

Todays global business economy creates a greater need than ever before to

understand and relate to people of every conceivable physical, geographic, language,and paradigm difference.

In the 21st century, the business houses need to create products and services for each

customer/consumer at the individual or the enterprise level, market and sell to them,

maintain healthy customer relationship as well as participate in socio-political and

economic activities.

Todays labour pool is dramatically different from that in the past. People now

overwhelmingly represent the workforce pool from a vast array of backgrounds and

life experiences.


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Different but Collaborative Workforce


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Thus, successful management of todays increasingly diverse workforce is amongthe most important global challenges faced by corporate leaders, human resource

managers, and management consultants.

Workplace diversity management practices refer to the organizations effort to

provide an inclusive corporate culture that values differences and promotes equalopportunities for all employees.

Traditionally, diversity programs were mostly focused on race, gender and other

physical dimensions. But todays definition of diversity covers a broad spectrum of

individual and group differences ranging from work styles and generationalperspectives to political and religious preferences. In recent years, the view of

diversity has dramatically changed to a more proactive concept. The organizations

need to celebrate the differences and utilize the variety of talents, perspectives, and

backgrounds of all employees.


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Benefits of Workforce Diversity:

Business leaders are now beginning to believe that diversity has important bottom-

line benefits. Diversity in the workforce can be a competitive advantage because

different viewpoints can facilitate unique and creative approaches to problem

solving, thereby increasing creativity and innovation, which in turn leads to betterorganizational performance (Allen et al., 2004).

Organizations with a diverse workforce can provide superior services because they

can better understand customers needs (Wentling & Palma-Rivas, 2000). As the

economies are shifting from manufacturing to service economies, diverse issues will

gain importance because in a service economy effective interactions and

communications between people are essential to business success.

In the business environment of the next millennium, the time available for

innovation and creativity in all aspects of the enterprise is shorter than ever before.

Creativity and innovation must now occur as a past of the normal functioning of theenterprise. Business houses are no more capturing the new ideas from their

competitions but now must focus on incubating the innovations and creations inside

their own organizations by using diversity of perspective and experience. This is

only possible from people with diverse backgrounds, paradigms, and social

experience that can enable them to interact in a way that will cross-fertilize andcreate new ideas.


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Staffing and organizing with optimum diversity is a challenge. Therefore,

significant and focused action must be taken to achieve balanced diversity, which isthe key to organizational success and prosperity.

Of course it is difficult to maintain balance. For example The young workers are

less concerned about retirement benefits and more interested in income, social

experience, career prospects, while the middle level workers are struggling toaccumulate wealth for retirement and secured job. The senior-level professionals

are expected to require more autonomy, independent portfolio and leisure time.

Hence, in order to accommodate these the companies will have to expand their

relationships with employees to engage this even under diversity of interests.

Valuing diversity and managing diversity require organizations to adapt a new way

of thinking about differences among people. Valuing diversity strive to recognize

the unique contribution every employee can make. For example Companies

cannot survive without the wisdom and experience of senior people, nor can they

invent entirely new ideas without new college graduates who havent yet beenconditioned by experience. Thus, age is one aspect of diversity that must be

balanced to achieve success.


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In todays global economy, consistently successful organizations have demonstrated

the importance of recruiting and retaining skilled workers irrespective of their race,

age, gender or other characteristics. Organizations cannot afford to discriminate

when it comes to hiring and promoting individuals particularly given the current

shortage of Knowledge workers such as engineering professionals and

technologists. Moreover, having persons of different cultural background and with

additional foreign language capabilities can make the difference in obtaining

business opportunities overseas.

In the business community workforce diversity will help employers to adapt to the

challenges organizations face in todays highly competitive and complex globalmarketplaces, enabling them to find opportunities to grow new business ideas,

identify new markets and keep ahead of competitors.

Thus, diversity is now seen as being a desirable attribute in any community,

whether a working environment, classroom or extra-curricular club. Rob McInnesof Diversity world notes that Workforce diversity is an immense and complex

issue-from what drives companies to be more inclusive to the programs, policies and

practices that are needed to make that happen effectively.


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Managing Diversity:

Real and successful workplace diversity policies go beyond simply ensuring compliance

with employment equity and human rights legislation. Many organizations have

policies and programs to support diversity, but there is room for improvement in the

strategies used to identify retain and develop a diverse workforce, and in the way thesestrategies are linked to performance outcomes and success.

Successful diversity initiatives require clear communication about intent, strong

leadership, commitment, and concrete strategies and objectives linked to

organizational needs and goals.

A core skill for the manager of the 21st century will be the ability to mediate the

natural disagreement and intolerance that come with diversity.

With balanced diversity the organization can create a diverse, yet functioning group by

taking into account the individual needs of each person in the group while making sure

these needs are compatible with the overall organizational mission, goals and

principles.

Each person brings to the workplace a different perspective and different needs

relative to the core needs of security, predictability, and dignity. Todays manager

needs professional expertise, new and stronger interpersonal and organizational skillsto succeed.


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The critical role of the human resources function in assessing, building,

maintaining, and changing balanced organizational diversity will become a key

business strategy if the enterprise is to achieve organizational excellence.

Achieving balanced diversity requires dedication and the constant acquisition of

external and internal social knowledge and understanding; a scientific

understanding of social systems, individual behaviour and motivation, and group

dynamics etc.. Diversity will not be leveraged without the special knowledge, skills

and experience of a competent HR practitioner.

Diversity creates an organizational strength and promotes better service from

workers suppliers and partners. It is the adventure of discovery that keeps people

interested; if there is nothing to discover, people and organizations stagnate. Hence,

diversity is absolutely necessary to a companys competitive advantage.Leading a diverse group is much harder than either managing or understanding

diversity. It requires participation in addition to managing and understanding

others. The globalization of the workforce not only forces diversity but also

increases geometrically the complexity of successful leadership. As more companies

become global more leaders must lead across geographies industries and societies.

It is diversity of perspective and experience that will provide a competitive

advantage. Good strategy, resources, management, employees, partners, customers

and leaders are all necessary for success in the 21st century.


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Multicultural Workforce


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Recommendations for leveraging diversity:

Research literature has also found that organizations that emphasize collectivism in the

work environment see more benefits of workplace diversity than organizations that

emphasize individualism (Chatman and Spataro, 2005; Dawyer et al. 2003). Thus,

teamwork fosters better relationships within a department and can promote identity

within the organization that move beyond surface level differences (Jayne & Dipboye,

2004). Hence, a strong work culture of involvement and ownership is suggested here.

The factors most likely to influence diversity in the workplace are demographic

changes, global marketplace, economies, comfort with being different, a diverse

customer base, equal employment opportunity and affirmative action programs.

Hence, actively promote recognition, celebration, and inclusion of diversity within the

organization.

Make sure inclusion is rewarded and exclusion is discouraged. Human dignity must

prevail as the key principle.

Ensure senior management commitment and accountability for the successful

implementation of diversity policies.


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Frame the diversity management initiative as an opportunity for integration

and learning.

The major reasons why organizations manage diversity are to improve

productivity and remain competitive to form better work relationships among

employees, to enhance social responsibility and to address legal concerns. Hence,

articulate how diversity is important to the overall functioning of the business.

Emphasize the value of diversity of all employees which can unite them under one

common banner.

Demand HR professional, and leaders who value diversity and whose behaviour

supports that value.

Hire people who augment a balanced diverse workforce. Recruiting new employees

through employee referrals work well, can be cost effective and results in higher

retention rates.

The best strategies for managing diversity are: training and education programs,

organizational policies that mandate fairness and equity for all employees,

mentoring programs, performance appraisal systems that are nondiscriminatory,

outreach programs, and career development programs.


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Make diversity an integral of the enterprises goals; to obtain top management

support, to create a corporate culture that supports diversity.

The major goals of diversity training are to increase organizational effectiveness

and personal effectiveness.

Capitalize on the existing diversity within your organization by ensuring that youinclude both senior and line managers on your diversity training courses as well as

employees from different departments having different skills.

Organize effective diversity training program by incorporating the components

like, commitment, organizational specific needs and strategic plans, accountability,inclusive programmes with diversity initiatives, trust, confidentiality etc.

Evaluate the effectiveness of diversity management programmes through

established metrics.

Create a company brand that communicates the diversity as the organization

employees, customers, suppliers and stakeholders will like it.


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Conclusion:

The extent to which managers recognize diversity and its potential advantages

and disadvantages defines an organizations approach to managing the

diversity. No organization in this world of globalization would survive without

workforce diversity. Thus, it is the duty of the management to critically

evaluate the benefits of workforce diversity in their organization. On the other

hand, the management should put in place conditions which would enhance the

workforce diversity in their organizations more specifically, in their strategies

such as creating a post of diversity officer, or diversity manager.


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Thank You!

Documents

Managing Workforce Diversity in 21st Century