Introduction
Optimistic reinforcement is the game of diversity and today’s corporate world is advocating convincing business reasons to make stronger workforce diversity. Away from the apparent need to meet the terms with directions of the Equal Opportunity, many companies are determining that employees from diverse ethnic groups convey helpful perspectives those are effective in functioning with more wider variety of customers. Simultaneously it is a demanding ethic of today’s business world to achieve and maintain diversity although considered as complex. Thus, this essay would go to analyse, is Diversity Management good for business?
Background
Managing employees diversity originated and found its strongest advocates among private corporations in the 1990s. It has continued today as the government’s commitment to affirmative action has waned. Today’s labour force is highly diverse. If effectively managed, this diversity can provide the Organisation with a powerful competitive edge because it stimulates creativity, enhances problem solving by offering broader perspectives, and infuses flexibility into the firm.
To be succeeding as a manager in the 21st century must work with people who are different from each other as well as the manager. Human resource (HR) managers have a vital role to working with backgrounds, ethnic, gender, racial and religious. The managerial challenge is learning how to take advantage of this diversity while fostering cooperation and cohesiveness among dissimilar employees.
Diversity Management
Managing workforce diversity in a way that both respects the employee and promotes a shared sense of corporate identity and vision is one of the greatest challenges facing organisations today. People with different life experiences may interpret reality very differently. By the time people enter an organisation, their cognitive structure the way they perceive and response to the world around them has been largely determined. This cognitive structure is shaped both by unique personal experiences and by the socializing influences of the person’s culture and it operates both at home and in the workplace.
Diversity has been positioned to have moreover an optimistic or pessimistic effect on team’s outcomes. In wide-ranging, diversity in multicultural team has been organised in a unitary approach. This single dimensional focal point led to contradictory consequences about diversity effects.
There is a growing awareness that a key factor in corporate performance is how well nontraditional employees for instance women and minorities can be fully integrated and works effectively with one another. For this reason, many Organisations specify diversity as the ability to effectively use the talents of people from various backgrounds, knowledge and perspectives. In short, management of diversity is the set of activities involved in integrating nontraditional employees-women and minorities-into the workforce and using their diversity to the firm’s competitive advantage.
which all members quickly coverage on a mistaken solution because they share the same mind-set and view the problem through the lens of conformity. In a heterogeneous group with a broader and richer reservoir of experiences and cultural perspectives, the potential for groupthink shrinks.
In today’s rapidly changing business environments, flexibility is an important characteristic of successful firms. If properly managed employee diversity can infuse more flexibility into the firm. The existence of diversity at different levels generates more openness to new ideas in general and greater tolerance for different ways of doing things.
Most successful firms realize that effective management of a diverse workforce can lead to better marketing strategies for a multicultural, multiethnic population. For instance, Verizon has been successful in tapping the Hispanic market. In 2001, Verizon established the Multilingual Call Centre, which has been addressing 310, 000 calls per month in Spanish. Their customer satisfaction ratings are over 95 percent and they are still improving.
Why Diversity is Important
- The shortage ethnic diversity on corporate bodies has been concerned for quite a few business reasons as follows:
- In UK the modern talented faculty would unavoidably shrink due to demographic changes.
- Accessible talents among the ethnic minority groups has not been fully developed.
- Shortage of corporate leaders role from ethnic minorities aimed to future generations leaders.
- Directors from different ethic backgrounds should lead to creativity and innovation when workforce as well as customer lead diversity.
- To face the challenge of Increasing globalisation companies lead to diversity.
- Modern Recruitment is going through global context, where individuals observe the world likewise their workplace.
- Triumphant learning of other cultures as well as awareness of diversity delivers benefits for the Organisations.
- As part of a global village, companies are seeking to expand their available talent to the value diversity as well as to uphold individual differences, at the same time providing an environment of fairly treated. Thus the top UK companies trying to be role models diversity management for other firms.
Why Companies drive for diversity management
Now-a days labour force is highly diverse, if effectively managed this diversity can provide the organisation with a powerful competitive edge because it stimulates creativity, enhances trouble solving by offering broader perspectives, and infuses flexibility into the firm. An organisation confronts significant challenges in making employee diversity work to its advantage.
Genuinely valuing employee diversity
The idea that diversity is good runs to the “melting pot” tradition the notion that individuals should assimilate into the mainstream. The melting pot tradition makes some people uncomfortable with differences. A major barrier to managing diversity is entrenched in one of the concealed system in culture which individuals do not comment on divergence since the differences indicate a deficiency.
Balancing individual needs with group fairness
A universal concept of management which leads to standardized management practices should be replaced by a cultural relativity concept of management, which calls for molding management practices to the workforce’s different sets of values, beliefs, attitudes, and patterns of behaviours, is an extraordinary complex question. The proponents of universalism believe that fitting management practices to a diverse workforce sows the seeds for a permanent culture clash in which perceived inequities lead to intense workplace conflict. Conversely, the proponents of relativity argue that failure to adapt HR practices to the needs of a diverse population may alienate much of the workforce and reduce their potential contributions.
Coping with resistance to change
Although employee diversity is a fact of life, the dominant groups in organisations are still composed of white men. HR managers agreed that women and minorities are straggled to survive flourish in a business background but for well established company it is really difficult to alter it’s culture and that this conflict is a major barrier for women
Promoting group cohesiveness
The Employees diversity would be capable of show the way to better resourcefulness and grater problem solving tools. It also preserves to guide to an open conflict and confusion if there arise any mistrust as well as lack of respect with in the groups. Consequently the organisations turn into more diverse as they feature larger risks those employees would not work in concert effectively. The Interpersonal friction to a certain extent than cooperation possibly will become the norm.
Ensuring open communication
The presence of segmented communication poses three major problems to businesses. The organisation could not fully take advantage of on the viewpoint of diverse employees. When they hang about restrained to their own groups, the divisional communication constructs it more complicated to set up common ground crosswise various groups. The women and minorities are frequently fail to notice the opportunities. By chance penalized for not to being part of the typical communication networks.
Retained valued performers
Affirmative action is now decades old, it means clouded in controversy. Government ensures equal opportunity in job sector in order to remove the difference by various Acts such as Sex Discrimination Act 1975. The response to this forced change was in many cases, grudging compliance.
Managing competition for opportunities
Due to the minorities raise both balanced and extremely in the population, antagonism for jobs and prospects are expectedly to turn much stronger. The Employers are thrown to the tight position to making decision of which the minority groups are most deserving. The Managers should carry on that treat employees as an individuals not at all as an affiliate of a group such as a guide.
Diversity Management in HSBC UK
HSBC UK argued that the diversity of inhabitants with dissimilar thoughts and cultures is a fundamental component for their long-term business success. HSBC’s diversity profile within all levels of its business be supposed to reflect their customers. HSBC believes that diversity produce sound commercial intelligence to engage people with different ethical view on regulations including problem solving, sharing ideas al well as leadership. Diversity generates relationships, believe and respect for all people motivate loyalty with both employees as well as customers.
Conclusion
Most of the Organisation diverse human resources to put on a competitive advantage tend to have top management committed to valuing diversity, solid, ongoing diversity training programs support groups that nurture nontraditional employees and policies that accommodate employees’ family needs. They also have senior mentoring and apprenticeship programs to encourage employees discrimination, celebrate diversity through organized activities, use diversity audits to uncover bias and hold their managers responsible for effectively implementing policies. Thus proper diversity management is fruitful for a business.
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