Workforce diversity and how it helps you become a Successful Entrepreneur

 Have you ever worked with people from different cultures? Have you tried to know about their cultures and traditions? In this modern world of business, employers employ people irrespective of their nation, religion, culture, race, etc. This makes a company feel proud as its business expands globally. In this competitive world, a workplace with diversity grows quickly as different ideations come into practice. INDIA can be taken as a perfect example of a diverse nation.

Work Place diversity or Work force diversity. Employees. Business. Recruitment. Global. Age. Cultures.

Workplace diversity is defined as, “Office or a company (workplace) with people (workforce) from different races, religions, castes, backgrounds, ages, gender etc.”

Diversity is generally defined as acknowledging, understanding, accepting, valuing, and celebrating differences among people with respect to age, class, ethnicity, gender, physical and mental ability, race, sexual orientation, spiritual practice, and public assistance status[ CITATION Esty \l 16393 ]

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to understand workplace diversity and handle it

Even though diversity is described above in different words, there is no exact definition that explains workplace diversity completely as diversity is of the broad range and goes beyond one’s imagination and thinking. It’s not just limited to race, religion, cultures etc.,

Successful organizations identify the need for diversity of the workplace and are ready to employ people from different cultures and genders. Now a day’s organizations are also ready to employ even LGBT’s respecting their rights. This is making organizations set an example to the world. They treat all people equally and this is a very sensitive thing, the Organization should be able to manage this diversity. The Human Resource department should play an important role in handling this.

Companies need to focus on diversity and look for ways to become totally inclusive organizations because diversity has the potential of yielding greater productivity and competitive advantages[ CITATION DrGoode \l 16393 ]

Teamwork showing workplace diversity

CHALLENGES of having DIVERSITY in the workplace:

Workplace diversity has many challenges for the employers, some of them are,

  • Combating discrimination
  • Promoting inclusiveness
  • Recognizing the values
  • Understanding the language in the case of global expansion
  • Facing legal actions against the company due to bias and discrimination
  • Change institutional practices in order to provide justice to all the employees
  • Allowing leaves based on the case (in the case of pregnancy type of things)
  • A leader must keep in mind everyone while taking a decision as one small mistake may lead to the damage of the workforce i.e., people may quit their jobs if they find that decision insulting them or their values.
  • Each and every occasion must be planned very carefully
  • Organizing traditional rituals/practices may affect the workforce
  • Providing employees leaves may be difficult for Example, Muslims offer prayer (Namaz) every Friday in the afternoon, in this case, the employer must be ready to accept that and grant him permission at the time requested by the employee. This may sometimes not be feasible due to workload
  • Employee may feel discomfort working with all everyone who makes them feel shy, for example, a person with a disability may be criticized by some people at the workplace, in that case, the disabled person may feel like leaving the job.

The best practice by many of the organizations is that they are forming grievance cells with diversity managing policies to take care of things relating to discrimination and addressing all problems employees face. This makes all employees work comfortable and complain to the authorities if they face any problem.



Now apart from drawbacks, there are several benefits of Workplace diversity

BENEFITS of WORKPLACE DIVERSITY:

Having people from diverse backgrounds and Nations help in understanding local languages at their global branches to ensure good customer support. For example, some XYZ company of China wants to launch their business in INDIA, then a person from INDIA working in their company is more useful than a Chinese person.

  • Variety of solutions come up for one problem
  • Managing local wage workers
  • Good experienced people analyse the solutions provided and pick up the best.
  • The younger generation understands the trends in the market.
  • Launching a new product may become easy
  • Achieving targets also may become easy as there may be a very talented workforce at the place
  • New ideations come into force from different people
  • Globally, local growth increases i.e., in different countries local growth increases which contribute to local growth in individual countries and global growth of the whole organization.
  • Workplace productivity increases
  • Changes take place which may increase the revenue of the organization
  • People get chance to be introduced to different cultures
  • Customer service becomes easy as one has people from various regions and can easily communicate with local customers.
  • Recruiting trainees help the company in improving the production and less expenditure than the salaried worker.
  • Increase marketing opportunities
  • Taking up creative ideas.

Diverse workforce meeting
Apart from the above advantages, there are furthermore advantages as well as drawbacks. Some of the drawbacks are gender discrimination, sexual harassment, disability discrimination, colour discrimination, discrimination based on religion, Communication gap, and many more at the workplace.

On the whole an organization is definitely benefited through workplace diversity if well managed.

Analysing the present situation and global competition it is clear that an organization for its success should build a diverse workplace. Either it is a global organization or a national level organization, Workplace diversity plays an important role in the organization's success.

It is of much more important in diverse nations like INDIA. For an organization to withstand in the market it is necessary to employ people of all cultures, traditions, religions and different ages to understand the trend in the present market to improve business and also to provide excellent customer support which reflects the growth of the organization.



Why should workplace diversity be considered? And whom to employ for what?

One Should employ :

YOUTH - To know about the present trends.

AGED – To solve problems pertaining to business with their experience and handling tough situations very effectively for sustainability of the organization.

WOMEN – To know the needs of women to introduce a women product (such as sanitary napkins, etc.,) in the market for a production-based firms, to provide customer support, and to improve sales through tele calling.

DISABLED – takes fewer leaves as he/she may not be interested in attending parties/social functions frequently and work more time with the organization.

TRAINEES – To make use of them to the most extent for small jobs which do not need expertise offering them less salary. This helps the organization in reducing the expenditure

PEOPLE FROM OTHER NATIONS –They are useful in global expansion of an organization as they clearly know about what suits best in their nation and hiring people locally becomes easy. They also assist in fixing the salary of the employees in the country. Also, they assist in setting up more branches in their country

PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT CULTUREs AND TRADITIONs – In starting a new branch; for example, if a firm wants to newly launch a Furniture wing, then a person from a village background will be helpful. Or if an existing company wants to start a television channel, then, these people help in developing ideas having the knowledge of their traditions and cultures and this, in turn, helps in casting or ideation of new shows such as cooking programs, TV serials, etc.,

So, Workplace diversity helps an organization in reducing the cost to company i.e., the expenditure by handing over different jobs to the same employee. This encourages the employees to work with enthusiasm even at critical times.

Workplace diversity makes an organization grow economically as their expenditure goes down and at the same time their productivity is increased. In some cases, the expenditure may not decrease but there will be an increase in productivity for sure.

MANAGING WORKPLACE DIVERSITY:

Social gatherings and business meetings, where every member must listen and have the chance to speak, are good ways to manage diversity effectively as every person is given a chance and things from his/her point of view can be noted and all the other employees can work keeping in mind others perspectives. This also motivates and promotes the employees which reflect the improvement of workplace creativity and production.

It is the role of the leader or the head in managing diversity at a workplace without issues. Grouping (making of teams) of employees should be done in such a way that there are people from all the backgrounds, religions, races, genders, etc., this ensures that more different ideas come up.



The leadership team should ensure that all facilities are available for the employees with disability, women who are pregnant, etc., The leadership team is responsible to bring out the creativity and ideas of all the employees. It is the job of the leadership team to consider everyone’s opinion. This makes the employee feel comfortable and try not to leave the organization as they feel their opinions matter to the organization. It is the role of the leadership team to motivate the workers in improving production and sales. The leadership team has a lot to do in achieving good results by engaging all the employees at the workplace.

The employees must be given a part in all the activities taken up by the organization directly or indirectly.

It is also true that many situations arose where companies took legal action against the employees due to Diversity at the workplace.

There was one case where a Muslim employee was terminated for wearing religious garments on duty and also other employees were also warned regarding the same.[CITATION EEOC \p EEOC \l 16393 ].

This makes clear that the employer must keep in view the religious beliefs of all the employees and go accordingly. The Human resource team should work on such issues and solve them within the company and try to retain the employees as much as possible. In the above-mentioned case, what would happen if the employer allowed its employee to wear the religious garments on the uniform, that would not harm the company and it is not against the company. In fact, more people would show interest in working with them knowing about the employer respecting the employees’ beliefs.

Based on the above-discussed points, facts and analysis one can realize how important it is for an organization to maintain workplace diversity as it is critical to the overall success and sustainability of the organization. The organization should keep in mind the sensitive issues which may arise due to diversity and make necessary plans to handle them effectively without affecting the workplace production and employee strength. This makes the organization achieve great heights and succeed. If the company considers employee comfort, then an employee will work longer with the organization which adds up to the sustainability of the organization.

Thus the statement

Workplace Diversity is critical to the overall success and sustainability of an organization’ is justified. Once  you have a diverse workplace, you will automatically become a successful entrepreneur.

~ Goutham


Work Place diversity or Work force diversity. Employees. Business. Recruitment. Global. Age. Cultures.


Factfile:

EEOC.gov
[Accessed 01 01 2015].

Esty, K. R. G. a. M. S.-H., 1995. Workplace diversity. A managers guide to solving problems and turning diversity into a competitive advantage.. s.l.:Adams Media Corporation.

EDIS 
[Accessed 01 01 2016].

Goode, D. S. J., 2014. Diversity Managers: Angels of Mercy or Barbarians at the Gate. 27/01/2014 ed. United States of America: iUniverse.

University of california
[Accessed 01 01 2016].



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