Today’s workforce has many different cultures as a result of its diligent efforts to promote inclusion and diversity. The need to bridge the diversity gap in health care in the United States has emerged as a result of health care changes that enable us to be more effective as individuals or teams. While many companies have made changes to their boards to accommodate and reflect the diversity, healthcare is still lagging. Nevertheless, diversity is a crucial criterion for the organization’s success.
To maintain a good level of inclusion, community relations should be addressed. There are two key competencies to help to improve community relations. The first is the engagement of the community in participatory processes. Decisions to join, donate, and monitor the community are often made in a meeting room away from the community itself. By involving community members in the process, businesses can ensure continuous communication and positive and strong relationships.
Hearing stakeholder positions and priorities, seeking feedback, attending face-to-face meetings that instill trust, and providing a way to express problems and complaints are all important parts of an effective strategy. Throughout the project life cycle, you can contribute to the community and improve your company’s social performance by assessing, prioritizing, and directing the creation of socio-economic impact management solutions.
The second competency is related to the development of relationships with the leaders of the community. Community leaders, well-known social and environmental organizations, health and education leaders, youth leaders, and role models are good starting points for building trust. Consent from both formal and informal leaders facilitates discussions with much larger groups within the community, and involvement and involvement from the wider community is essential. Relationships with executives also help to understand the community culture, dynamics, expectations, and behavior of corporate decision-makers. Organizations need to be prepared and expect long-term participation to have the greatest impact when inequality grows.
Lack of diversity has numerous adverse effects on the community. Increasing health care costs, the need for strong public health workers and the persistent gap between racial / minority and poorly serviced populations are some of the problems facing the population. Despite significant medical improvements, there are still significant public health threats in the United States (Goode & Landefeld, 2018). Future labor shortages, especially in medicine, nursing, experimental science, and environmental health, pose a major threat to individuals, families, and communities, especially those who are most at risk and have the least able to help themselves.
The major challenges associated with the improvement of diversity are communication issues and cultural misunderstanding. Communication problems can occur in different teams for different reasons. There may be communication problems, different communication styles, or preferences within the team or among the hearing impaired. It is important to address these issues before they occur. For example, the generational difference case might be analyzed. The older generation of professionals might be not familiar with the innovative technology and prefer not to use it at work, while the younger generation of professionals strongly prefers to use it.
The guidance on how and when to use new technology at work could benefit two groups of professionals and help to prevent communication issues. Another possible problem associated with the challenge of the communication issue is a difference in the spoken languages of the professionals. For example, English might be one’s second language, and one might experience difficulties in understanding speech. In that case, the leader should suggest speaking clearly and slowly so that everybody could understand the speech, for example, at the meeting.
Cultural misunderstandings are common when people from different cultures come together. For example, raising your thumb, using your left hand, or tapping your back is considered an insult in various cultures. Creating a diverse workplace can help injured team members recognize such misunderstandings. People are more willing to help others when they have doubts if they believe their teammates will accept their differences. When team members say or do something that can be offensive, an inclusive workplace creates an environment that accepts feedback and education. The moments you can teach help each team member expand their cultural knowledge and awareness while contributing to a more comprehensive workplace.
To minimize the impact of lack of diversity, two strategies, which are increasing job satisfaction and creating a pleasant workplace climate, could be suggested as the solutions. Increasing job satisfaction will help to achieve a comfortable workplace climate for both majority and minority groups. Low job satisfaction due to diversity is a problem that needs to be addressed. Studies often compare minority groups with dominant groups, or men and women, with an emphasis on diversity in terms of work satisfaction. It is impossible to please every employee individually, but when the organization focuses on what culture values ​​and what makes it stand out, we feel that individuals are valued. Once employees realize and believe that they are an integral part of the company, the atmosphere in the workplace changes.
Implementing strategic plans that help remove barriers that limit organizational diversity opportunities is one approach to addressing low workplace diversity. Workplace diversity eliminates groupthink and prejudice. In addition, diverse organizations show a higher level of creativity and transparency. Through cross-cultural contact, diversity promotes multiculturalism and, when properly managed, minimizes unconscious and obvious prejudices. Management can increase diversity by setting priorities and providing guidelines to promote and maintain them through strategic planning. Management can work with recruitment partners and develop neutral recruitment criteria for talented people who want to move forward and contribute to the company’s success.
Human resources and internal communication efforts are crucial in implementing the minimizing approaches for low diversity. First, it is important to educate the organization’s employees about the role of diversity and inclusion. Some of the concepts underlying the diversity and inclusion debate may not be familiar to older generations in today’s profession. For most of their career, they have simply been ignored at work. It is important to train these workers.
Communicators help an employee to understand how to make a meaningful contribution to your organization’s inclusive culture. The next effort is to use inclusive language among all the professionals in the workplace. When it comes to internal communication, using comprehensive language means avoiding words, phrases, or tones that represent a particular group of biased views. Diversity-conscious dictionaries are increasing day by day, and it is important to keep them up to date.
Finally, it is essential to examine the work of the HR specialists since they are responsible for the most relevant resource for the diversity term, which is human resources. According to the literature, the adoption of diversity is currently a priority topic in the US healthcare system. According to a Modern Hire (2018) survey, diversity is a top priority for at least 22% of all recruitment managers in the US healthcare sector. Diversity goals are fixed as a component to improve performance. However, considering efforts in other industries, 22% is a significantly lower percentage (Vera, 2020). Some healthcare companies are using Human Resources Development Technology to expand recruitment and selection methods and ultimately improve diversity to eliminate potential ethnic prejudices in the recruitment process. Increase. Patterson et al. (2018) investigated the current selection and recruitment process in the US healthcare system.
Studies show that there are few ways to improve the hiring process, but diversity is becoming more and more important (Patterson, 2018). Human resource management is responsible for recruitment and selection in most US healthcare systems. Vera (2020) shows that hiring more culturally and ethnically diverse workers will be the most effective strategy for creating diversity. The conclusions of the study indicate that the federal government needs to consider affirmative action in the area of ​​diversity, as well as more subtle approaches such as cultural competence and sensitivity training (Vera, 2020). When hiring professionals, there should be no prejudice regarding ethnicity, race, gender, or age.
To improve the diversity gap in leadership, organizational management should be addressed. It is related to human resource management, internal communication, job satisfaction, and the workplace climate. Such factors as inclusive language and cultural differences should be addressed when elaborating on the diversity gap. Diversity and inclusion are crucial for the organization since they affect the success of the organization’s work.
References
Goode, C. A., & Landefeld, T. (2018). The Lack of Diversity in Healthcare. Journal of Best Practices in Health Professions Diversity, 11(2), 73-95. Web.
Modern Hire. (2018). What is the state of diversity recruitment in healthcare? Web.
Patterson, F., Roberts, C., Hanson, M. D., Hampe, W., Eva, K., Ponnamperuma, G., Magzoub, M., Tekian, A., Cleland, J. (2018). 2018 ottawa consensus statement: Selection and recruitment to the healthcare professions. Medical Teacher, 40(11), 1091-1101. Web.
Vera, P. (2020). Diversity Gap in Healthcare Leadership. Walden University. Web.