Managing Workforce Diversity in 21st Century

By Dr. Atasi Mohanty Assistant Professor Centre for Educational Technology Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Pin-721302 India

E-mail: atasim@cet.iitkgp.ernet.in atasi0@gmail.com

Workforce Diversity defined as:

Workforce diversity refers to respecting differences which exist between and among us due to our respective inherited qualities and life experience. It refers to the co-existence of employees from various socio-cultural backgrounds within the organization such as race, gender, age, colour, physical ability, ethnicity, nationality, religion, etc. Todays global business economy creates a greater need than ever before to understand and relate to people of every conceivable physical, geographic, language, and paradigm difference. In the 21st century, the business houses need to create products and services for each customer/consumer at the individual or the enterprise level, market and sell to them, maintain healthy customer relationship as well as participate in socio-political and economic activities. Todays labour pool is dramatically different from that in the past. People now overwhelmingly represent the workforce pool from a vast array of backgrounds and life experiences.

Different but Collaborative Workforce

Thus, successful management of todays increasingly diverse workforce is among the most important global challenges faced by corporate leaders, human resource managers, and management consultants. Workplace diversity management practices refer to the organizations effort to provide an inclusive corporate culture that values differences and promotes equal opportunities for all employees. Traditionally, diversity programs were mostly focused on race, gender and other physical dimensions. But todays definition of diversity covers a broad spectrum of individual and group differences ranging from work styles and generational perspectives to political and religious preferences. In recent years, the view of diversity has dramatically changed to a more proactive concept. The organizations need to celebrate the differences and utilize the variety of talents, perspectives, and backgrounds of all employees.

Benefits of Workforce Diversity:

Business leaders are now beginning to believe that diversity has important bottomline benefits. Diversity in the workforce can be a competitive advantage because different viewpoints can facilitate unique and creative approaches to problem solving, thereby increasing creativity and innovation, which in turn leads to better organizational performance (Allen et al., 2004). Organizations with a diverse workforce can provide superior services because they can better understand customers needs (Wentling & Palma-Rivas, 2000). As the economies are shifting from manufacturing to service economies, diverse issues will gain importance because in a service economy effective interactions and communications between people are essential to business success. In the business environment of the next millennium, the time available for innovation and creativity in all aspects of the enterprise is shorter than ever before. Creativity and innovation must now occur as a past of the normal functioning of the enterprise. Business houses are no more capturing the new ideas from their competitions but now must focus on incubating the innovations and creations inside their own organizations by using diversity of perspective and experience. This is only possible from people with diverse backgrounds, paradigms, and social experience that can enable them to interact in a way that will cross-fertilize and create new ideas.

Staffing and organizing with optimum diversity is a challenge. Therefore, significant and focused action must be taken to achieve balanced diversity, which is the key to organizational success and prosperity. Of course it is difficult to maintain balance. For example The young workers are less concerned about retirement benefits and more interested in income, social experience, career prospects, while the middle level workers are struggling to accumulate wealth for retirement and secured job. The senior-level professionals are expected to require more autonomy, independent portfolio and leisure time. Hence, in order to accommodate these the companies will have to expand their relationships with employees to engage this even under diversity of interests. Valuing diversity and managing diversity require organizations to adapt a new way of thinking about differences among people. Valuing diversity strive to recognize the unique contribution every employee can make. For example Companies cannot survive without the wisdom and experience of senior people, nor can they invent entirely new ideas without new college graduates who havent yet been conditioned by experience. Thus, age is one aspect of diversity that must be balanced to achieve success.

In todays global economy, consistently successful organizations have demonstrated the importance of recruiting and retaining skilled workers irrespective of their race, age, gender or other characteristics. Organizations cannot afford to discriminate when it comes to hiring and promoting individuals particularly given the current shortage of Knowledge workers such as engineering professionals and technologists. Moreover, having persons of different cultural background and with additional foreign language capabilities can make the difference in obtaining business opportunities overseas. In the business community workforce diversity will help employers to adapt to the challenges organizations face in todays highly competitive and complex global marketplaces, enabling them to find opportunities to grow new business ideas, identify new markets and keep ahead of competitors. Thus, diversity is now seen as being a desirable attribute in any community, whether a working environment, classroom or extra-curricular club. Rob McInnes of Diversity world notes that Workforce diversity is an immense and complex issue-from what drives companies to be more inclusive to the programs, policies and practices that are needed to make that happen effectively.

Managing Diversity:
Real and successful workplace diversity policies go beyond simply ensuring compliance with employment equity and human rights legislation. Many organizations have policies and programs to support diversity, but there is room for improvement in the strategies used to identify retain and develop a diverse workforce, and in the way these strategies are linked to performance outcomes and success. Successful diversity initiatives require clear communication about intent, strong leadership, commitment, and concrete strategies and objectives linked to organizational needs and goals. A core skill for the manager of the 21st century will be the ability to mediate the natural disagreement and intolerance that come with diversity. With balanced diversity the organization can create a diverse, yet functioning group by taking into account the individual needs of each person in the group while making sure these needs are compatible with the overall organizational mission, goals and principles. Each person brings to the workplace a different perspective and different needs relative to the core needs of security, predictability, and dignity. Todays manager needs professional expertise, new and stronger interpersonal and organizational skills to succeed.

The critical role of the human resources function in assessing, building, maintaining, and changing balanced organizational diversity will become a key business strategy if the enterprise is to achieve organizational excellence. Achieving balanced diversity requires dedication and the constant acquisition of external and internal social knowledge and understanding; a scientific understanding of social systems, individual behaviour and motivation, and group dynamics etc.. Diversity will not be leveraged without the special knowledge, skills and experience of a competent HR practitioner. Diversity creates an organizational strength and promotes better service from workers suppliers and partners. It is the adventure of discovery that keeps people interested; if there is nothing to discover, people and organizations stagnate. Hence, diversity is absolutely necessary to a companys competitive advantage. Leading a diverse group is much harder than either managing or understanding diversity. It requires participation in addition to managing and understanding others. The globalization of the workforce not only forces diversity but also increases geometrically the complexity of successful leadership. As more companies become global more leaders must lead across geographies industries and societies. It is diversity of perspective and experience that will provide a competitive advantage. Good strategy, resources, management, employees, partners, customers and leaders are all necessary for success in the 21st century.

Multicultural Workforce

Recommendations for leveraging diversity:

Research literature has also found that organizations that emphasize collectivism in the work environment see more benefits of workplace diversity than organizations that emphasize individualism (Chatman and Spataro, 2005; Dawyer et al. 2003). Thus, teamwork fosters better relationships within a department and can promote identity within the organization that move beyond surface level differences (Jayne & Dipboye, 2004). Hence, a strong work culture of involvement and ownership is suggested here. The factors most likely to influence diversity in the workplace are demographic changes, global marketplace, economies, comfort with being different, a diverse customer base, equal employment opportunity and affirmative action programs. Hence, actively promote recognition, celebration, and inclusion of diversity within the organization. Make sure inclusion is rewarded and exclusion is discouraged. Human dignity must prevail as the key principle. Ensure senior management commitment and accountability for the successful implementation of diversity policies.

Frame the diversity management initiative as an opportunity for integration and learning. The major reasons why organizations manage diversity are to improve productivity and remain competitive to form better work relationships among employees, to enhance social responsibility and to address legal concerns. Hence, articulate how diversity is important to the overall functioning of the business. Emphasize the value of diversity of all employees which can unite them under one common banner. Demand HR professional, and leaders who value diversity and whose behaviour supports that value. Hire people who augment a balanced diverse workforce. Recruiting new employees through employee referrals work well, can be cost effective and results in higher retention rates. The best strategies for managing diversity are: training and education programs, organizational policies that mandate fairness and equity for all employees, mentoring programs, performance appraisal systems that are nondiscriminatory, outreach programs, and career development programs.

Make diversity an integral of the enterprises goals; to obtain top management support, to create a corporate culture that supports diversity. The major goals of diversity training are to increase organizational effectiveness and personal effectiveness. Capitalize on the existing diversity within your organization by ensuring that you include both senior and line managers on your diversity training courses as well as employees from different departments having different skills. Organize effective diversity training program by incorporating the components like, commitment, organizational specific needs and strategic plans, accountability, inclusive programmes with diversity initiatives, trust, confidentiality etc. Evaluate the effectiveness of diversity management programmes through established metrics. Create a company brand that communicates the diversity as the organization employees, customers, suppliers and stakeholders will like it.

Conclusion:

The extent to which managers recognize diversity and its potential advantages and disadvantages defines an organizations approach to managing the diversity. No organization in this world of globalization would survive without workforce diversity. Thus, it is the duty of the management to critically evaluate the benefits of workforce diversity in their organization. On the other hand, the management should put in place conditions which would enhance the workforce diversity in their organizations more specifically, in their strategies such as creating a post of diversity officer, or diversity manager.

Thank You!