What I Have Learned About Diversity Management

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 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..

For many years, Americans have held certain opinions concerning gender, sex, women, and sexual orientation. A definition of both gender and sex will be provided. The roles of women throughout American history will be discussed. When people think about masculinity and femininity, they have certain preconceived ideas. How these ideas contribute to the understanding gender, sex, and sexual orientation will be examined. Finally, the status of GLBT individuals will be explored. An increased understanding will be gained concerning these issues.

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

“Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without” _William Sloane Coffin Jr_ Over the last decade there has been massive rise in level of workplace diversity within all the organizations. As a result of it majority companies achieved higher performance and according to all the researchers, it shows heterogeneous groups are more inventive than homogenous groups. It is not only about those heterogeneous people bring various type of figures their different type of thinking benefit organizations to bring out their best outcomes throughout the process

I moved to California around one year and a half ago with my family. My parents decided to move here to give their daughters a better education and better opportunities. My parents are my biggest influence because they have helped me understand how important it is to work hard to achieve my goals. I learned that if I work for what I want, I can be very successful. My parents left their own house, land, jobs, and family just to give their daughters a chance to be successful in life. I think that seeing them give everything away just so that my sister and I can study and get our degrees is incredible. They have not only shown me to be independent and a hard working person, but they have taught me how to be considerate and selfless. I lived in

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.

The two core competencies that have decide to write about are individual differences and leadership. These are two competencies that are extremely important on a daily basis, especially in the workplace. Individual differences are the variations from different individuals, such as culture, personality, perception, demographic factors, skills, and attitudes. It is important for individual differences to be recognized and taken into consideration when it comes to managing any organization. Leadership is just as critical because it is the influence within an organization that has a meaningful impact. Leadership maximizes individuals’ efforts so key goals can be achieved. It is important to note that just because you manage an organization, that does not mean that you are leading the organization. In a way, leadership is also the ability to turn a vision into a reality. I chose these two diversity management core competencies because individual differences are something you see everywhere, whether it’s in an organization, group or team, and leadership is something that no organization or group can have success without. I also chose leadership because my supervisor at work is a great leader and she is constantly leading by example, so I can relate to it personally and it is something I really respect and appreciate.

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)

America's past should teach America's today that success lies within diversity. In order to achieve ultimate success, diversity is a necessity. Workforce diversity is a fact of organizational life. It is also a key concern for theory and practice in organizational behavior ( van-Knippenberg, De-Dreu, Homan, 2004).

The first thing to acknowledge about diversity is that it can be difficult. In the U.S., where the dialogue of inclusion is relatively advanced, even the mention of the word “diversity” can lead to anxiety and conflict. Supreme Court justices disagree on the virtues of diversity and the means for achieving it. Corporations spend billions of dollars to attract and manage diversity both internally and externally, yet they still face discrimination lawsuits, and the leadership ranks of the business world remain predominantly white and male.

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

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.

As explained by John (2011) IBM is the one of the biggest multinational company they are hires more than 400,000 employees over 200 countries. They recruit scientists, sales professionals, consultants and engineers. Even in the department level there are various background peoples working together for achieve common goal. So the managing several background employees are very important to increase productivity and team cohesiveness. . There are several measures that have been taken by IBM relate to diversity management. Others are,