Managing Diversity in the Workplace Essay

As we enter the new millenium, diversity in the workforce is rapidly increasing. Businesses and organizations are living up to the great melting pot image the United States has always been popular for. Employees now reflect a diversity of cultural perspectives, ethnic backgrounds, ages, genders, physical abilities, and levels of education. This wave of multiculturalism is here to stay and cannot be ignored. It is in need of attention in order to uphold the well-being and success of businesses and organizations all over the country.

When America was founded, it was established on freedom and equality for all people. At first it was just religious freedom, but eventually freedom of speech, press, petition, and more. In time, America began to be known as a “melting pot” of cultures as more and more people came because they wanted this freedom; the more people who came though, the more problems America had. There were too many cultural discrepancies between people, and ultimately America, the country based on freedom and equality, faced challenges concerning diversity.

Diversity can be shown through many different aspects such as ethnicity, environments we were raised or things we have experienced. For me, I bring diversity through experiences with the various people that I have worked with. Every summer of middle school and high school I would go on mission trips with my youth group. For these trips instead of going to other countries like a lot of people do, we would go to various cities in the United States to help the people there. My youth group has gone to cities like Newark, Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, and Nashville. In these cities, we worked with the boys and girls club, assisted in the homeless shelters, worked at the food banks and fixed up homes for the people that needed it in those areas.

From Hollywood to the the social sector, diversity, rather the lack thereof, has been a topic of conversation. Although many organizations have begun to advocate for diversity, more work must be done. Across the social sector,women and people of color remain severely underrepresented in leadership positions. Organizations must become intentional about creating a diverse workforce and implementing inclusive policies that foster positive work environments. When employees feel represented and included they are happier and more likely to contribute to fulfilling the organization's mission.

And this solution led to liberal immigration laws that admit 200,000 new immigrants to Canada each year. About 70 percent of recent immigrants to urban Canada are visible minorities; people of color make up nearly 50 percent of populations in Vancouver and Toronto and are the fastest growing communities in Canada’s eight largest cities (J. Y. Yee and G. C. Dumbrill, “Whiteout: looking for race in Canadian social work practice,” inMulticultural Social Work in Canada: Working With Diverse Ethno-Racial Communities, A. Al-Krenaw and J. R. Graham, Eds., pp. 98–121, Oxford University Press, Don Mills, Canada, 2003.) For instance, RBC Financial Group has ensured that 22% of their workforce is comprised of visible minorities (V. Dugale, “The changing color of Canada,” Our Times, vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 24–28, 2006.) Similarly, FedEx has a high proportion of visible minorities (almost 7%) in senior management positions. Its staff represents about 19 nationalities at its Mississauga, Ontario headquarters (R. Robin, “Delivering diversity,” Canadian Business, vol. 77, no. 7, p. 38, 2004.)

About 28 million individuals moved to the United States between the years 1880 and the late 1920 's. "The newcomers living in different nations all through the world chose to leave there foundation of source and move to the United States for different reasons, some of which included flexibility from political and religious mistreatment, starvation, or to experience the American Dream of perceived economic opportunity. Once settled; immigrants were often stereotyped and discriminated against because they were “distinctive”. Social Justice was nonexistent as Employers often took advantage of immigrants, men were paid less than other workers and women were paid less than men. (Library of Congress, 1990) The numbers of newcomers dropped dramatically in 1924, when Congress passed highly restrictive immigration legislation. (Bankston, Carl L., 1999). As time has passed the United States Immigration laws have made it increasing more desirable for individuals to seek illegal entry as opposed to the legal process. High control and subject to numerical confinements and qualification prerequisites comprising of essential family or work relationship and absence of access to compassionate security, for example, shelter or refugee status have played a noteworthy role.(American Immigration Council, March 2012)

Diversity in the workplace is a subject that has gained increased attention in the workplace over the past few years. After all, the impact of affirmative action and equal employment opportunity programs on the nation's work force is undeniable. Women and minorities were the first to dramatically alter the face of the economic mainstream, while gays, persons with disabilities and senior citizens followed not far behind. The result is a diverse American labor force representing a microcosm of our society - yet one that continues to struggle with its identity. Diversity as a social condition is not new to America. We were founded as a nation of Diversity. “America has always been a merger of cultures and, as such, has undergone periods of

Many organizations are beginning to view diversity as an organizational change. This could possibly mean changes in the power dynamics and organizational structure, the way decisions are made, and the way an

This diversity audit begins with a background about the company, as well as some important information about key Diversity executives. What will be addressed in the audit are what efforts Johnson & Johnson made to foster diversity competence and understand, what efforts were made in furthering the knowledge or awareness about diversity, what strategies were used to address the challenges of diversity and how will you ensure that your leaders and managers will be committed to the diversity initiative. The audit concludes with a quote from the vice president of recruiting at Johnson and Johnson, as well as

“Demographics of the US population have changed dramatically in the last three decades. These changes directly impact the healthcare industry in regard to the patients we serve and our workforce” (Borkowski, 2012). In fact, Voutsas (2011) argues that the U.S workforce is the most demographically heterogeneous workforce in the world and he believes that this is due to major changes and diversity .Borkowski (2012) also states that the significant changes in the US populations has been seen greatly in regards to gender, age ,and race and ethnicity .

This research paper addresses the importance of diversity training in the workplace. Having realized how pertinent workplace discrimination is globally, this paper will give a broad look into the various ways that diversity is displayed in the workplace. The diversity issues involving gender, sexuality, race, age, culture and religion will be explored,

Today's workplace is more diverse than it has ever been in history. While the workforce has made strides in the direction of equality, it is still far from attaining total equality in the workplace. A company must value diversity. The main objectives of valuing diversity include awareness, education, and positive recognition of the differences among people in the workforce. Organizations are increasingly emphasizing group work or teamwork as a source of competitive advantage in a diverse workforce. It has been suggested that such organizations must target their recruitment efforts at applicants who are both diverse and amenable to working in teams ( Rau, Hyland 2003).

This paper is aimed at providing a framework for discussion of diversity and how it pairs with demographic characteristics. It is divided into four parts. Part I represents diversity in the workforce, which reflects the rational of organizations and how they handle diversity in the occupations of their workers. Parts II characterize diversity and age, as it responds to the fact that older people have the skill set to keep them working well past retirement age. Part III denotes religion, where as more employers are beginning to recognize the need to allow employees to take time to pray. Part IV symbolizes the personality traits in diversity and how “different” is not always viewed as wrong but can be an incentive to other

Most people assume that workplace diversity is about increasing racial, national, gender, or class representation -- in other words, recruiting and retaining more people from traditionally underrepresented "identity groups." Taking this commonly held assumption as a starting point, we set out six years ago to investigate its link to organizational effectiveness. We soon found that thinking of diversity simply in terms of identity-group representation inhibited effectiveness. Organizations usually take one of two paths in managing diversity. In the name of equality and fairness, they encourage (and expect) women and people of color to blend in. Or they set them apart in jobs that relate specifically to their backgrounds, assigning them, for example, to areas that require them to interface with clients or customers of the same identity group. African American M.B.A. 's often find themselves marketing products to innercity communities; Hispanics frequently market to Hispanics or work for Latin American subsidiaries. In those kinds of cases, companies are operating on the assumption that the main virtue identity groups have to offer is a knowledge of their own people. This assumption is limited -- and limiting -- and detrimental to diversity efforts. What we suggest here is that diversity goes beyond increasing the number of different identity-group affiliations on the payroll to recognizing that such an effort is merely the first step in managing a diverse workforce for the

With today's workforce becoming increasingly diverse and organizations doing more to maximize the benefits of the differences in employees, organizations are relying on managers to get the people who get the job done. People have always been the central to organizations, but there strategic importance is growing in today's knowledge-based business world. An organization's success increasingly depends on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of its employees excluding there gender, age, ethnicity, and the differences in skill and abilities. When employees' talents are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate and organize, an organization can achieve an advantage. Having managers or human resource departments that are superb for