The Manager Conducts Team Building Activities

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 positive impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can contribute creativity to a high-performance team. Membership diversity offers a rich pool of information, talent, and varied perspectives that can help improve team problem solving and increase creativity (Hunt, J., Osborn, R., Schermerhorn, J., 2005). Cultural diversity contributes various group input and group dynamics to the team. These two factors are essential in the high performance of a team. Cultural diversity can develop a high-performance team by allowing the diverse potentials of a team to operate. The negative impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can develop numerous of conflicts between team members. Conflicting interaction can limit or decrease the effectiveness and efficiency of productivity. There should be an awareness of the diverse culture values in order to prevent these conflicts.

The purpose of this paper is designed to introduce, educate, and promote diversity within your company. Your company will be shown the merits of diversity and how diversity within your organization can be a benefit. This paper will be broken down into three main areas: Benefits of Diversity, Challenges of Diversity, and Recommendations for an effective diversity within your organization..

The way in which an organization tackles diversity determines its negative or positive outcome. All the 5 companies agreed that diversity has contributed to their success. Some barriers were identified in managing diversity like the difficulties faced by women in managing the work and family, fear of discrimination, resistance to change, diversity is not seen as an organizational priority, resistance to change and unsupportive working environment for diverse employees. Diversity contributes to more productivity but if not properly managed could hinder success.

Managers promote poor communication when it is not planned out correctly, which can cause chaos and friction within the department. Emotions can cause a barrier and result in a communication breakdown. Poor communication is not always at the fault of the manager, poor listening on the staff’s part can

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

One of the objectives that the team discussed was diversity in the workplace. Major corporations have encountered issues concerning diversity in the work place. Our team can directly relate to this subject in the workplace since all of us are diverse minorities in our individual work place. It was discussed in the group that diversity in the workplace is the manager’s responsibility to insure that the workplace is a diverse environment. Managers in most companies are required to hire a diverse staff. Managers have the ability to use race, religion, and tenure as qualities to inspire success and

Mentoring and on-the-job training of less skilled workers through courses, assistant programs, and continuing education programs may even the gap between different employees. However, it is important to recognize potential and use the skills already at hand to create a more efficient team environment where each member’s contribution carries some value and contributes to the organization’s goals. Economic status is as important an issue as is education. Various employees come from different economic background. Their views and manners may differ, along with their expectations and motivations in daily routine and overall purpose. Nevertheless, they have to work together. There are potential problems and differences of conduct, motivation, and initiative. Managers have to get to know their people and develop ways of using their differences for the benefit of the organization. The focus should be on the positive aspects of individuals, and on merging the best qualities people have to form effective teams. Managing conflict is also very important. One thing managers should recognize is that there will always be a potential for conflict and their job is to intervene and resolve diversity issues early and quickly. Statistics show the extent of diversity in the workplace. “Eighty-five percent of those currently entering the American workforce are minorities and

has a hard time communicating effectively with each of the area/team leaders and this can make it hard for them to know expectations and informational components in general. She said that sometimes the higher management has restricted views of goals and they tend to put too much focus on that rather than on the employees. They are working on this by trying to establish more of a connection between the management staff and the team leaders and making sure that communication is always open between the two so that employees don’t feel unappreciated or lack motivation. Although I did not suggest this to her because I am not in a position to do so, I thought that a good strategy for this issue might be to create weekly newsletters for all of the staff members in which higher management would indicate how the staff is doing, things they need to work on, etc., just to keep the communication open. I realize that it is not always easy nor does a daily schedule allow for one of the area leaders to have a lengthy conversation with higher management, so this would be an easy way of providing feedback and fostering collaboration efforts. She told me that along with some organization weaknesses the Y is trying to work on and resolve, there are also a few different issues currently being faced by the organization.

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)

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).

Diversity in culture and demographic characteristics can be a negative impact or be one of the team's greatest strengths, depending on how the team as a whole functions and applies these different “routes to success”. A group can become a high performing team by understanding how cultural and demographic differences influence group behavior. The groups must realize that they can benefit from their diversity to their advantage and into a high performance team.

As a manager working in a diverse organisation, this learning area will help me to recognise the differences between team members and to effectively manage these differences by encouraging participation in diverse training, establishing benefit programs such bonuses, flexi-time to accommodate the different needs of different employees. It’s important to communicate to staff about goals and objectives, corporate culture and common practice. This can be done by developing employee handbooks with detailed guidelines that can be handed out at orientation days.

Organizations have been becoming increasingly diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. This diversity brings substantial potential benefits such as better decision making, greater creativity and innovation, and more successful marketing to different types of customers. But, increasing cultural differences within a workforce also bring potential costs in higher turnovers, interpersonal conflicts, and communicational breakdowns. The utilities of diversity training and the essential managerial skills required for effectively managing diversity will also be discussed.

The managers were also not trained properly and maintained a centralized management approach. An HMSI manager was quoted in the statement saying, “The Japanese do not understand the workers’ language.” Management failed to understand the ideas brought to them by workers, “could not understand the organizational working from the employees’ point of view.” It was said that the Japanese failed to give Indian managers enough power to solve problems. The Indian managers were production specialists, who had very little understanding of industrial relations issues.