Positive Impact of Workforce Diversity-Free-Samples for Students

Questions: 1.Discuss about the Positive Impact of Workforce diversity. 2.Provide recommendation to the organisation for situations different scenarios in workforce diversity. Answers: Introduction Google is one of the largest companies which have the maximum diversity in its workforce, and there is no doubt on the success company has achieved in its tenure. Part of the success can be handed out to its huge diversity in work force, where people from different spheres of life, with different experiences, different countries, different race, ethnicities and culture come together and work together for one single purpose making life easier of people around the world (Kundu Mor, 2017) Google is the biggest example of work force diversity, it employees lakhs of people globally in all of its offices, and takes in consideration that it does not favour a local over a deserving candidate. Diversity in the workplace is important, because it manifests itself in building a great reputation for the company, leading to increased profitability and opportunity for its workers. Diversity is really important because when people from different cultures, race, and ethnicities come together, they come into an environment filled with different life experiences, learning experiences and exposure, this in turn helps the employees and companies to think from different perspective and help in the growth of the company. It is no good to hang around with the same set of people, from same culture, especially for a company, which needs to be always on its feet and work towards betterment of life of people around the globe; hence it becomes really important to focus on building a team with diversity at its forefront ( Kang, 2015) Workforce Diversity It can be understood as vastness in differences between the people in an organization. Diversity encompasses race, gender, culture, ethnic groups, age, personality, experiences, education background and many more. In short, the varying differences in the workplace amongst people define the workforce diversity. Workforce diversity fosters mutual respect amongst the team and if developed towards the extent of positive synergies the organisation can do wonders for itself. This is the importance of workforce diversity (Barak, 2016). Company like Google has people from across the globe, because it understands the importance of workforce diversity and imbibes it strongly in its culture. It believes in the ideology of diversity, to the extent that for certain Google offices, it is mandatory to have people from different countries. Google believes there is more to learn from people alone about their culture in comparison to what they can, in their entire lifetime from books or any other sour ce (Sabharwal, 2014) Stereotyping Stereotype can be understood as any thought which is widely adopted about specific individuals or certain ways of behaving, intended to represent the entire group of those individuals, or behaviour as a whole. Stereotype as a concept is inbuilt in a person because of the culture he is raised in and also what he has primarily seen, observed and heard, which might necessarily not be true. But one certainly constructs a perception in his/her head about such specific groups, individuals, on basis of their behaviour, or the culture they are raised in. Stereotyping, thus, in an organisation can make people treat individuals or groups in a certain way based on the perceived notions about the individual or the group. Different factors like race, ethnicity, culture, religion, age etc. are the contributing factor for the stereotyping in the organisation. Such stereotypes can create tension in the workplace and hence its the responsibility of the managers to negate the effect of these stereotyp es and lay the foundation of work force diversity in a contributing manner (Shiu, Hassan Parry, 2015) 2.Diversity in workforce as explained in the above written paragraphs is positive, but if at all, not managed in a positive manner it may lead to negative effects. Due to great difference in age group, caste, culture, race, religion, differences are bound to happen and hence it is really important to manage the workforce diversity in an organisation. Communication Barriers While building Google Singapore, toughest challenge they had to face was hiring people. As most of the employees are of Indian Chinese origin, language was one of the most important barriers in the work place. Chinese having Cantonese tongue and Indians (Mixed of English Regional dialect), the company faced a lot of flak from the board of directors for hiring people from different ethnicity with communication as a challenge. The company resolved the issue by introducing a language round while hiring the employees. In this way they could save on the wasteful expenditure on irrelevant manpower, by just introducing a stage in their selection procedure. The company also hired few language interpreters to reduce this barrier, thus resolving the negative impact of the workforce diversity. Discrimination Few years back, when there were unsteady times in Singapore, Indian were not treated the way they used to be, this created a negative impact within the workforce as well. Subordinates and managers in the organisation were looking down at Indians with hatred (because they were taking jobs of Singaporeans, as perceived by them), this created a very difficult time for Google Singapore. The situation was resolved after senior management came out in the open, spoke about the issues, and empathised with the Indian working in the company. Also managers were strictly asked to report any such matter of discrimination in a stern manner. Time Money Managing workforce diversity is not an easy task at hands of managers, it has a lot of implications and hence good amount of thinking is required before implementing such strategy. In Google, the workforce had to be increased, and it was decided by management to increase the diversity in the company. Therefore a lot of expense resources were hired, recklessly, just to increase the ratio of diversity. The resolution for the following came when HR managers were restricted on a budget rather than the workforce count. Preventive action to negate the effects of workforce diversity: Proper Planning: Any business organisation has to do planning before implementing any strategical changes in the system. Change management is a very important concept of organisation behavioural theory, where in order to not disturb the workplace environment, everybody has to be on the same page, and same has to be ensured. Similarly, the company should plan its strategy for the workforce diversity. A team should be formulated which has to ensure that the entire organisation is on the same page in context of work force diversity and knows the benefits of the same. Proper planning would smoothen the process of change management and the barriers to welcome diversity would be reduced effectively (Ryan Wessel, 2015) Openness In communication: Biggest barrier in success of any company is, the challenges it faces at the hands of its communication process. If there is openness in the system related to communication, employees would feel in a great working environment. The communication has to be from both top to bottom and vice versa, it is very healthy for organisations growth. The existing workforce must be aware of the advantages of having diversification in the environment; they should know how they will benefit from having diversity of people around them, their exposure in terms of learning and their growth. All this can happen only if the management has a culture of communication as its core value (Jones Kelly, 2014) Conclusion: Workforce diversity as explained in the earlier paragraphs has both pros and cons. If, managed well by the managers, it can certainly create magic for any organisation. Some of the benefits that the organisation can reap out after using the corrective and preventive explanation are numerous. Productivity of the organisation would increase manifold, as the employees will be able to think from different perspective and hence provide customers with better and more creative solutions Language skills of the workplace will improve tremendously, and hence the companies who are looking for expanding into other global markets would have a ready resource pool at their disposal, which would in turn save them time in hiring resources that are ready to understand the workflow and the culture of the organisation. Hence, very beneficial for global markets. Potential employees see workforce diversity as strength of the company. They believe that the company is open to different groups, companies pay attention to what an individual can contribute to the organisation, irrespective of his race, culture, caste, creed and so on. This instantly helps him connect with the company and thus the organisation can attract bright employees and in process, builds a reputation for itself. Organisation these days are focussing much on the workforce diversity because they understand that it is a big pillar of taking the company towards the direction of creativity. When there are various people with different life and learning experiences working towards a common problem, the brainstorming sessions becomes highly effective and hence creativity flows in the organisation References: Barak ME. Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage Publications; 2016 Oct 11. Shiu E, Hassan LM, Parry S. The moderating effects of national age stereotyping on the relationships between job satisfaction and its determinants: A study of older workers across 26 countries. British Journal of Management. 2015 Apr 1;26(2):255-72. Jones A, Kelly D. Whistle?blowing and workplace culture in older peoples' care: qualitative insights from the healthcare and social care workforce. Sociology of health illness. 2014 Sep 1;36(7):986-1002. Kang J. Effectiveness of the KLD social ratings as a measure of workforce diversity and corporate governance. Business Society. 2015 Sep;54(5):599-631. Kundu SC, Mor A. Workforce diversity and organizational performance: a study of IT industry in India. Employee Relations. 2017 Feb 13;39(2):160-83. Ryan AM, Wessel JL. Implications of a changing workforce and workplace for justice perceptions and expectations. Human Resource Management Review. 2015 Jun 30;25(2):162-75. Sabharwal M. Is diversity management sufficient? Organizational inclusion to further performance. Public Personnel Management. 2014 Jun;43(2):197-217.