Blog 3- Workforce Diversity

Managing Workforce Diversity

Managing workforce diversity is a key concept to be concerned about in the globalized business world. With globalization, domestic business organizations have received the opportunity to deal with the international market & spread their business all over the world. When conducting business in a highly competitive & advanced environment, identifying the concept of workforce diversity & its impact on human resource management within the organization is very important to reach success. Workforce diversity means, the similarities & differences among employees based on the factors age, cultural & social background, physical status, Psychological characteristics, capabilities, race, religion, gender & sexual orientation (Saxena, 2014).

Figure 01: Factors affecting workforce diversity (Source- Internet, Fire & EMS Leader Pro)

It generates many advantages as well as sometimes challenges to the organization. According to (Mariappan & Raghavan, 2020), diversity management is access applied in the management tasks like functions such as planning, organizing, direction & coordinating. Further, emphasized that diversity management is a critical part of human resource management as it recognizes, executes, harmonizes individual entities. The combination of the workforce will continue to a paradigm change in the future (Dessler, 1998). Diversity can be effectively directed by inclusion and inclusion conducts for higher results, a good organizational environment, employee empowerment, encouraging leadership, fair & equitable treatment from management (Sabharwal, 2014). Managing workforce diversity is not an easy task. Diversity management is not only about giving equal employment opportunities or fair treatment (Losyk, 1996). It is a wider concept & strategic process, that the management of the organization should be carefully practiced. Managing diversity is an extensive process for creating a victorious diverse workforce, a talented manager should consider personal consciousness. Moreover, both manger & related parties need to be informed of their prejudices (Roosevelt, 2001).

Benefits of workforce diversity

· Increases creativity & causes higher innovations.

· Increase the quality of product or service.

· A variety of different perspectives creates values for the organization.

· Faster problem-solving & effective decision making.

· Better company reputation & increased profits.

· Increase employee satisfaction, higher employee engagement & reduced employee turnover.

 (Source: Internet- Benefits of the workplace diversity)

If the workforce diversity is not effectively managed, it causes challenges & makes negatives within the organization. Globalization & new technological advancements have been influenced on the workplace environment & its’ practices and it has been focused on longer working time (Losyk, 1996).

References

Dessler, G., 1998. Human Resource Management. 7th ed. Prentice-Hall- New Delhi: s.n.

Losyk, B., 1996. Managing a changing workforce: Achieving outstanding service with today's employees. Issue Davie, FL: Workplace Trends Publishing.

Mariappan, J. & Raghavan, J. E., 2020. A Theoretical View on Diversity & Management of Workforce.

Roosevelt, T. R., 2001. Elements of a successful diversity process. Issue The American Institute for Managing Diversity.

Sabharwal, M., 2014. Is Diversity Management Sufficient? Organizational Inclusion to Further Performance.

Saxena, A., 2014. Workforce Diversity: A Key to Improve Productivity. Procedia Economics and Finance, Volume 11, pp. 76-85.