Support Diversity

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).

The United States ethnically diverse population continues to grow, and with it comes a strong need for health services. Based on evidence based research, the health care system is shifting to providing culture competence to their staff in order to provide the best services to their patients. Although hospital staff is being trained on becoming culturally sensitive, research continues to demonstrate health disparities and discrimination among minority populations. Furthermore, studies demonstrate that the more education someone has the better health outcome. Therefore, programs that empower minority populations to pursue health professional careers, can help develop a more diverse health care environment. Through providing services to underrepresented

The growing number of culturally diverse populations in the United States presents a significant challenge to health care providers in delivering holistic and culturally congruent care. With continuing disparities in health status of different population from various backgrounds demands health care providers to consider cultural diversity as a priority. From the report Unequal Treament, Smedley, Stith, & Nelson (2003) has called attention to the cultural competence as an important concern in health care delivery. Also, emphasized the need for developing cultural competence among healthcare providers to eliminate racial/ethnic healthcare disparities (Smedley, Stith, & Nelson, 2003). This gap in health care delivery necessitates health care practitioners to be culturally competent in their daily practice, in order to provide optimal care for their patients, especially in today’s multifaceted health care system.

This essay summarizes five articles including a base article that will link workplace diversity to organizational performance and then will compare the agreements and disagreements of the articles. Prieto, Phipps and Osiri’s (2009) has investigated a previous research of how workplace diversity influences on organizational performance and has outlined the potential benefits and problems of diversity. The main objective of the authors is to provide a conceptual framework that would allow practitioners and scholars to design

and Konrad, A.M. (2006) ‘Examining the contours of workplace diversity: Concepts, contexts and challenges’, in Handbook of Workplace Diversity. SAGE Publications, pp. 3.

When organizations actively evaluate their handling of workplace diversity issues, develop and implement diversity plans, several benefits are reported. For example, increased adaptability, variety of viewpoints, and a diverse collection of skills and experiences that allows a company to provide service to customers on a global basis. For this reason, organizations need diversity to become more proactive and welcomed within an organization and its employees.

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)

Wolfson, N., Kraiger, K., & Finkelstein, L. (2011). The Relationship Between Diversity Climate Perceptions And Workplace Attitudes. Psychologist-Manager Journal (Taylor & Francis Ltd), 14(3), 161-176. Doi:10.1080/10887156.2011.546170

The experiences of diversity in my career environment are that (1) Employees sometimes get frustrated and angry when the leaders or business managers always compare employees behavior with their own norms and values. If the behavior makes sense they accept it, but if it doesn't it they reject it. Sometimes that rejection leads to frustration and angry. They should avoid showing frustration and angry towards their employees behavior. So the reason why they get frustration or angry is because they often interpret their behavior incorrectly. (2) Employers and managers don't understand what motivates and satisfies their employees regarding wages or salaries, and that leads to poor performance, disengagement and high turnover rates. Improving employee satisfaction leads to desirable employee behaviors, such as recommending the company to others, supporting its products and satisfying its customers. (3) Some people get failing and refusing

Workplace diversity seems to involve stereotypes that are far more incomplete than untrue. Every time a stereotype is presented as one story to be the only story, people’s dignity seems to get deprived. It is the sense of being different rather than similar that arise a challenging relationship between individuals (Schaefer, 2014).

August 25, 2015 was the first day of class and I did not really know what to expect. I just assumed that we would be discussing how to deal with diversity within the diversity. Instead we took it to a whole new level and went deeper and discussed other aspects of diversity that I never really even though of. I really liked how you showed us the video of the agriculture because it opened my eyes and I started thinking of other aspects of diversity. It was interesting because I had a fixed mindset and thought of one level of diversity. As soon as we started talking and relating everyday issues, I thought of one that I had never really thought of before. I am left handed and throughout the college in a lot of classrooms about 95 percent of the

The impact of diversity programs on job satisfaction from the employee’s perspective: An empirical examination.

From our research, we identified three different perspectives on workforce diversity that people embrace, each with different implications for a work group’s ability to realize the benefits of its cultural diversity. We use these observations here to examine critically some of the themes and basic assumptions of previous research and to propose new directions for both researchers and practitioners interested in diversity (Ely &Thomas, 2001). When organizations have a diverse economy, it makes the company strong. Once our nation has embrace the changes from the demographics that reap the economic benefits of a diverse and inclusive workforce. Burns et al. (2012) stated in their investigation that:

people are the same. Thus, diversity studies would then be reduced to the conclusion that ‘everyone is different’ and, if this conclusion is accepted, the concept of diversity may become “nothing more than a benign, meaningless concept” (Nkomo, 1995). The danger in narrowly defining diversity, however, is that only one dimension of cultural diversity (race, age, ethnicity, or gender) is by and large the subject of research at a time. Since a cultural diversity dimension interacts with other dimensions of diversity narrow concept of diversity would be deficient by failing to recognize these interactions. Scholars, who advocate a broad definition (e.g. Jackson, May & Whitney, 1995) argue that diversity encompasses all the possible ways people can differ. Individuals, according to this school of thought, do not only differ because of their race, gender, age and other demographic categories, but also because of their values, abilities, organizational function, tenure and personality. They contend that an individual has multiple identities and that the manifold dimensions cannot be isolated in an organizational setting. Apart from bringing their race, age, ethnicity, and gender, individuals also come with their particular knowledge, personality, and cognitive style to the work place. Therefore, in order to understand the dynamics of a heterogeneous workforce, the interactive effects of multi-dimensional diversity have to be addressed. In addition, it is argued that a broadening

Advocates of diversity management argue that an inclusive diversity climate increases the performance and productivity level of employees through increased job satisfaction and commitment (Morrison 1992). They also argue that diversity fosters adaptability to environmental change and organisational flexibility and provides a competitive edge by doing so (Cox 1993, Cox and Blake 1991, Fernandez 1991). Additionally, McEnrue (1993) found that embracing diversity leads to decreased levels of frustration among supervisors who gain the skills to understand and manage groups with diverse backgrounds. Similarly, at top management level, several studies