Diversity in the workplace has been a hot topic around organizations in the United States for several years. Diversity is the state of employing a staff of people that are different within the same organization. It includes but is not limited to age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and even education (Nixon & West, 2000). Many organizations participate in diversity programs to ensure that all employees fell like they are part of the team not discriminated against. Research shows that having a diverse work environment improves profitability, employee performance, and better customer service. However, being a diverse company can cause adversity amongst its employees. According to the data from the 2000 census there was a shift in …show more content…
Diversity within a company will benefit the company’s bottom line and help the company to keep the competitive edge (McCuiston, et. al., 2004). Improving the bottom line can be also be improved by retaining employees and improving customer service (McCuiston, et. al., 2004). So utilizing a diverse work group is very rewarding for the companies who implemented it correctly. The profitability that the company will see may not be seen on the front end but the long term results will yield a better profit for the company by helping to reduce turnover rates, improving employee morale, and the recruitment of new employees.
Diversity drives employees to be more creative and helps to improve their overall performance. Superior business performance is a benefit of commitment to diversity (McCuiston, et. al., 2004). To ensure that companies are attracting the best and the brightest to their company they must ensure that they are aggressively recruit new employees from different multicultural organization and through job fairs at colleges where all kinds of students will have access to the company. (McCuiston, et. al., 2004). Attracting people from different backgrounds to your company, the company has an advantage over the companies that are still employing people of the same background. By employing different people the company ensures that their employees can develop new skills from their co-workers that they didn’t have prior to coming to work with the diverse
Diversity is a wonderful asset to an organization and brings with it many benefits. Employees bring in their own personal experiences and knowledge to the team (Burns & Kerby, 2012). Having diverse teams allows for the possibility to fix a problem or perfect a process by using different employee’s experiences and past knowledge to find solutions. A diverse workforce can drive economic growth and capture a greater share of the consumer market (Burns & Kerby, 2012). With diversity as a core value, the recruitment pool is widened to find the most qualified candidate and reduces employee turnover as a result. An organization can be highly competitive with a diversity initiative by adapting to a changing environment (Burns & Kerby, 2012).
Hiring a diverse workforce is valuable in enhancing effectiveness of any manager or leader for many reasons, as outlined by Kerby and Burns (2012): (1) a diverse workforce drives
Benefits of a high workplace diversity environment is it not being stuck to conformity in group thinking, or being narrow-minded with similar thoughts and having preference to only be around people who think like you do which is known as the “diversity paradox”. According to a quote stated from Friedrich Nietzsche, Hackett (2014) “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently” (p. 415). Instead, it reiterates the importance of having a diverse workplace because it constructs better ideas, coming from different minds, and build upon each other through brainstorming. However, a poor workplace diversity can also adversely affect one’s motivation, which leads to overall job dissatisfaction and demotivation. When there is poor workplace diversity, you can see less communication barriers and cultural resistance, but it also makes it harder for individuals to get used to working with others that aren’t the same as them. This can become a form of adversity for businesses if their employees cannot develop a strong skill set to adapt with not only coworkers but also customers in the environment. Therefore, better communication and interaction skills are essential to promoting a business and making it successful.
Diversity in the organization can affect the employees and their behavior in many ways. The effect can be positive and negative in the same time. The positive effect is, it will wider employee knowledge, skills, and attitude which will allow the organization to become more competitive globally. Higher diversity of employees mean higher diversity of knowledge, skills and abilities. Sharing experience inspires innovative thinking (Claudia Quaiser-Pohls, 2013, p. 41). Today in the modern workplace, most organizations will have
First off, the population of the world isn’t just one type of people therefore having a diverse work group will allow for business to be conducted with a wider segment of the population. Being able to provide a goods or a service to a wider segment of the population directly impacts sales and company profits especially when starting to cut out its own niche’ in a new market. Having a diverse group of people working for you translates into a larger customer base and a larger language ability as well as knowing customs and traditions of other groups of people. Repeat business will increase as ones customer base increases. Being a diverse company is simply good
Organizations who make a commitment to diversity can see a significant impact on business in many ways. Diversity “requires a significant commitment for change to occur” (Delong, 2007, p.9). It is extremely important that leaders understand the commitment and embrace it in order for a positive impact to occur. Employers with diverse cultures and leaders can build positive and successful relationships with customers, suppliers and vendors. They can better attract and retain top talent. All of these equal more financial gain for the company.
Organizations must stop visualizing diversity as an issue and start seeing it as a benefit for the organization. There are several reasons why a diverse workforce will add value to a company. Most businesses, either large or small, work on a global scale; the information age has brought the entire world a lot closer. Having associates that can deal with different cultures around the world is crucial to an expanding business. A diverse workforce will help to build more rounded individuals with experience they will gain from a mixed environment. Customers will benefit from the diverse workforce because a company that makes a choice to be open and flexible with its associates will more than likely be easy to work with in a business relationship. Probably the most important aspect of having a diverse workforce is the vast knowledge gained by pooling the different life lessons, cultures and experience together thereby allowing everyone the chance to learn new and different business practices (Sappal, Pepi, 2002).
The concept of diversity has broadened in scope in the recent past, evolving from the concept of mandated quotas and affirmative action, to the reality of a diverse workforce being capable of providing quantifiable business value. A variety of external factors have influenced the conceptual evolution of diversity within the workplace. For example, globalization of markets has provided the concept of diversity with an opportunity to demonstrate a clear competitive advantage. A native understanding of the cultural values, norms and business practices of a foreign market can give an organization a clear advantage over their competition. Another area where diversity offers advantages is in the
Diversity is what makes people different, not just culturally but in human differences. Having a multitude of differences in the workforce gives an organization the ability to use many ideas to reach a common goal. A person could say that a diverse group of people together in one room can accomplish greater achievements than a room filled with the same types of individuals. Managers understand the concept of diversity, and how important diversity is to the success of a company’s ability to implement programs that continue to develop a harmonious and diverse workplace. The recognition that diversity is a reality in the workforce has generated an enormous amount of activity over the years among leaders in business, government, and civil
The general line of reasoning is that if we learn to incorporate each other’s diverse traits and characteristics in the workplace, we can then use these differences to foster an innovative environment, which will give the company a competitive advantage over the competitors that do not accept workforce diversity. According to the Allied Academies International Conference, “Diversity is rapidly becoming a common practice among companies due to the increasing number of minorities entering the job market today. As these groups become more prevalent throughout companies, upper-level employees are facing numerous challenges when determining what changes must take place to create a positive working environment for everyone. Management is responsible for the development and implementation of effective policies directly relating to diversity to ensure the acceptance of minorities into the workplace and to aid in minorities’ success through equal opportunities and treatment.” (Marcia L. James, 2001, Academy for Studies in International Business Proceedings)
Diversity is important to companies because with a diverse environment people can benefit and learn from others' ideas. Other reasons for the importance of diversity to many organizations are the recognition of differences as prerequisites for high performance and continuous improvement, enhancing the effectiveness and creativity of the organization, and valuing conflicts as opportunities for more effective decision-making and problem solving. Diversity has a major impact on our behaviors in the work place.
As companies become more diverse in the work field employees are getting harder to manage and understand. One issue in the global market today is workplace diversity. Workplace diversity is defined as all characteristics and experiences that defined each employee as individuals, but it can also be misunderstood as discrimination against employees. Diversity can include race, ethnicity, sex, religion, disability and sexual orientation discrimination. One reason why workplace diversity is important is because when you respect your employees productivity rate rises and many companies do not know that. A diverse workplace targets to create an inclusive culture that values and uses the talents of all employees.
With the changing demographics of the U.S. workforce (Ng & Burke, 2005) and the need for organizations to continually innovate their products and services to remain competitive, embracing diversity and the benefits its brings is going to be key to driving a successful organization
Diversity in workforce “include, but are not limited to: age, ethnicity, ancestry, gender, physical abilities/qualities, race, sexual orientation, educational background, geographic location, income, marital status, military experience, religious beliefs, parental status, and work experience”(Thomas 1992). Diversity in the workforce is initially perceived as a response toward the increasing diversity of the consumers in the market (Agocs & Burr, 1996). From there, it has been observed that capitalizing on existing differences among the employees provide benefits to the organization. Diversity in workforce fosters and encourages
Businesses are recognizing the need and importance of investing in diversity and addition as part of their inclusive talent management practices and to frequently challenge their organizations to make the connection between those values and their group performance.. Diversity is especially fundamental in today’s global marketplace, as businesses cooperate with