A Project Work for Managing Workplace Diversity and Inclusion

Course Title: Managing Workplace Diversity and Inclusion (IBM, Autumn 2022)

Submitted To: Ausrine Silenskyte

Submitted by: Abdul Rahman

Master of Business Administration, International Business Management (IBM 2022)

Seinajoki University of Applied Sciences - SeAMK

Introduction:
This project work is made for Managing workplace diversity and inclusion course, and it is deals
with most important factors involved with diversity and inclusion in our society and as well as
organization level. The writer is an MBA student and originally from Pakistan, he has been
working with Rak Bank in Dubai, UAE for last 5 years. The writer has possessed more than 12
years of banking experience in different positions and in different countries, the writer himself
has retained great knowledge about the diversity and inclusion, since working in UAE has been
providing opportunity to work with diverse people from different background and nationalities.
Now writer wants to learn innovative approaches for the benefit of his career and for the same
reason, he wants to learn about Managing workplace diversity and inclusion with additional
knowledge and concepts, this course enables the writer to expand his expertise to manage the
people at workplace. In this project work writer wants to explain his findings and approaches
toward diversity and inclusion at workplace and identified the best skills required to manage the
cross-culture workplace without any conflict.

1: What diversity and diversity management means, why diversity

management and inclusion matters?
Diversity represents the full spectrum of human demographic differences- race, religion, gender,
sexual orientation, age, socio-economic status, or physical disability. A lot of companies
consider different demographics as well lifestyle, personality characteristics, perspectives,
opinions, family composition, education level or tenure elements of diversity, too.

Diversity management means taking steps to consciously create a workplace environment

wherein all employees feel comfortable and treating with respect. They also feel valued for their
unique perspectives and contributions. In short word, all team members believe that they can and
will progress if they work hard and having necessary skill to achieve their desired goals.
Diversity management, as part of HR management which organization actions are to promote the
greater inclusion in employee’s strength across a variety of background. Its overall goals are to
promote equality and diversity in workplace through the social context, cultural and ethnic
diversity of employees by employing policies and strategies that are responsive to it.

Of course, to obtain the advantages of a diversity and inclusion in workforce, leaders of an

organization needs to first define what diversity means for their unique culture and how they
expect inclusion to manifest on their teams. Next, they must have objective data to indicate if
they are wanting diversity and inclusion in their organization.

My employer which is UAE based organization previously not followed the diversity and
inclusion in workplace management policy, for the same reason within organization HR & hiring
Manager always preferred to recruit the employees mostly from their own country people. Since
UAE 80% workforce consist of foreign people and mostly hiring from one country created great
imbalance in employee’s diversity and inclusion within my organization which had impacted
overall growth of my organization. Recently new CEO joined the organization, who has come
from European culture and implemented the new diversity and inclusion management policy
within organization, which has opened the door for all other countries people for employment.
Within one year, my organization culture has been totally changed and employees from other
countries also feel proud and working with their full potential. Now employees from other
country in my organization believing that their hard work will be recognize which previously did
not recognize due to some certain group of people.
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2: Diversity dimensions: what are they, how do they manifest themselves in

our personal lives, and when working in organizations?
Originally diversity management was primarily about avoiding discrimination in recruitment and
promoting tolerance within the company. But over the time and with multiple factors, things
have evolved to where companies recognize the importance of diversity in the workplace as a
key competitive advantage. The diverse world in which we live is a composite of many culture,
values, and ways of interacting with one another. Diversity dimensions emerge with all the
factors involved while it considering in any organization included age, race, skills, background,
beliefs, marital status, education, mental ability, sexual orientation, and other differences that
make someone unique. Understanding the dimension of diversity and world of culture in
extension audience will help ensure the development of instructional competencies that will
connect with groups and individuals interacted with. While working in any organization one can
use the different competence for managing the dimension of diversity like interculture skills,
understanding how you view the world, etiquette, and Manners in other culture.

While using different type of skill one can understand the other person perspectives, since we all
can observe the person with visibility which is like color, age, sexual orientation etc. but other
factor such as strength and weakness like education background, marital status, beliefs always
hidden objectives to completely understand any person. When we hire people from diverse
backgrounds, nationalities, and culture, we are bringing a fresh array of perspectives to the table.
This can lead to benefit like better problem solving and increase productivity in any
organization.

Dimension of diversity are the steppingstones to achieving a world-class and inclusive

environment in any organization. It ensures diversity blooms and all employees freely express
and contribute to the company. Different mind and perspectives are the ingredients of a long-
term successful business and profitability of any organization. There is no match for DEI in
being an all-round for making the workplace haven for employers and boosting the overall
productivity and of course the revenue for shareholders which is the key element of success.

My organization Rak Bank which was men dominant workplace culture in past and very few
women were working for the bank. But management of the organization decided to enhance the
diversity and inclusion in workplace through more women impower and increase the women
workforce at least 30%. This crucial step increases the productivity of the bank since survey
found that the women are playing very important role in customer services and back-office
department. Bank overall customer service improved drastically after more women joined the
customer services department.

3: Individual level of diversity management. Our own prejudices, stereotypes,

and biases, and their influence on organizational decision-making.
Individual level of diversity management is one of the most important concept of organization
behavior. We can witness and experience diversity in individuals across various platform, this
diversity management can either be a huge satisfaction or a grave issue.

There are set of 4 broad categorization and classification of individual diversity in an

organization.

1. Value and Attitude:

Value is broadly based on some of the background culture that a family, peer group or
close social group inculcates within a person. These value form a major basis of
segregating sets of people apart from the others. Moreover, in simple words, value and
attitudes is one of the strongest distinguishing factor to establish individual diversity.

2. Skill and Ability:

Everybody is different when it comes to their skills and abilities. Personal diversity is
highly depend any person skill and ability to perform any given task. Personal diversity
in an organization is promote the person in the basis of his/her skill and ability and
further distinguishing from peer group. Therefore, these are also one of the best factor of
measuring individual diversity.

3. Personality Traits:
A person humility, kindness, helping nature, calm and vibe refer to their personality
traits. Often people tend to associate themselves with their personality traits. This is
because everyone has a special trait that they can personally refer to for themselves.

4. Demographic Factors:
Like age, gender, cast, creed, nationality, marital status, income, qualification, occupation
etc. are the critical factors of individual diversity.

Every person has it own prejudices, stereotype, and biases which reflected through action of the
person. While working in an organization we can see this type of behavior all corner of the
organization. Like I am working in UAE with big organization, and I have seen people biases
toward other people which only due to lack of diversity and inclusion awareness among the
organization employees. UAE itself a country where people hardly raise their voices against the
biases for the same reason managers and team leader taking benefit of this system. If while
making decision about the promotion of the staff, managers use the biases and prejudices toward
their subordinate which will effect the overall organization structure and in long run people can
quite the organization due to this type of treatment. HR of any organization must act toward
individual biases and prejudices behavior and properly make a system wherein employees of the
organization can raise their voices against the systemic biases of any individual.

4: Team level of diversity management. Diversity management in teams

Team level of diversity management refers to the difference between member of a team than can
exist on various dimensions like age, nationality, religious background, functional background or
task skills, sexual orientation, and political preferences, among others. Difference types of
diversity include demographic, personality and functional diversity can have positive as well as
negative effects on team outcomes. Team level diversity management can impact performance,
team member satisfaction or the innovation capacity of the team. Team level diversity
management is considered an input factor that has effects on the processes as well as on the team
outputs of teamwork.

The demographic diversity of member of a team describes differences in observable attributes

like gender, age, or ethnicity. There is fact that individuals who are different from their work
team in demographic characteristic are less psychological committed to their organization, less
satisfied and therefore more absent from work. Gender and culturally mixed team teams tend to
face intense interpersonal conflict in the beginning of their working process which diminishes
team performance. However, as teams learn to integrate their differences in background and idea
over time, they show improve team performance, creativity and enhance innovation thinking
relative to homogenous teams.

The team leader in team diversity management plays critical role since he is the responsible
about task which assigned by senior management of the organization to his /her team. The team
leader has possessed knowledge about cross-cultural diversity and personally motivation skills.
The team leader must play instrumental role while making decision and all decision should be
bias less. The team leader has the capability to make right decision while any conflict arise
within team and shows his leadership skill in difficult time.

5: Organizational level of diversity management. Design organizational

policies, practices, and systems to support diversity and inclusion in
organizations.
Organization level diversity management including department, seniority, job function,
responsibility, and work location. Ongoing management and tracking of diversity can help build
an organization brand. This in turn increase a company desirability as a potential employer and
place of business. As a result, these organization become more attractive and interesting. The
inclusive nature of diverse workplace also helps forge strong connection among employees.
Furthermore, today society is reliant and influenced by social media, and social media allows
companies to promote themselves and attract customer and high-level employees.

What is Organization Diversity and inclusion Policy, practices, and support system?

Many organizations have implemented diversity and inclusion policy as part of organization
strategic objective and made comprehensive structural policy for the same. It often discussed the
important of workplace diversity and inclusion, and how organizations will seek to live in their
policies, programs, and actions. Of course, the most important part of a policy documents is to
ensure that organization diversity and inclusion action match the policy structure.

As a rule, diversity management is integrated into an organization HR or people function.

However, some global organizations have whole teams or department dedicated to it. These
teams or employees typically help with some of the core tasks related to diversity management at
workplace which are including but not limited.

1. Developing inclusive hiring plans and processes

2. Overall working polices that expand beyond simply hiring
3. Providing diversity training and learning opportunities for all employees
4. Playing the role of facilitator when it comes to communications
5. Encouraging interaction that help promote workplace diversity
6. Identify stereotypes and biases among all departments
7. Make sure that workplace environment is accessible for every employee

Given the range of tasks, it is understanding why diversity management often requires a team
approach. For such a company wide initiative, it is crucial that diversity management is
implemented at right on every level of the business. A great diverse and inclusion organization
can retain the employees for longer time than other wherein diversity culture still not defined.

I am working in Rak Bank UAE since Jan 2018 and here diversity and inclusion in organization
level is very new concept. Before hiring manager and business managers did not care about the
diversity and inclusion at organizational level for the same reason my organization was lagging
with their peer bank in term of innovation and creating new leadership for organization. It has
been seen in recent time wherein organization level diversity is now recognized, and people are
more think about workplace diversity and inclusion.

6: Managing cross-cultural diversity at individual, team, and organizational

levels.
Today world is more global than before and every day companies are spreading their footprint
cross the boarders to get competitive advantages and financial benefits. This crossing of
geographical boundaries by the organizations gives the birth of multiculture organization where
employees from more than one country working together for the growth of the organization. Due
to cross culture presence of the organization required the effective knowledge to use for cross-
culture diversity which provide a source of experience and innovation thinking to enhance the
competitive position of the organization. However, cultural differences can interfere with
successful completion of organization goals in today multicultural global business community.
To avoid cultural misunderstanding, managers should be aware of cross-cultural experience and
promote creativity and motivation through flexible leadership skills.

Alder ( 2008) defined cross-culture management as the people behavior in organization

worldwide that reflects how people or employees with different culture background work in an
organization and the service they will extend to clientele. There is an urgent concern to manage
the employees with different culture cultural orientations as an important ingredients of
achieving a successful organization. Accordingly, managing cross-cultural workforce is very
important that, companies from different parts of the globe should take into consideration
because it is a known reality that cultural conflicts may arise for failure of companies to address
the many issues that contribute to such conflict.

Effective handling of cross cultural interface is critical source of organization competitive

advantage. Managers need to develop not only empathy and tolerance toward cultural difference
but also acquire a sufficient degree of factual knowledge about the beliefs and value of foreign
counterparts. When employees from two or more culture interact with each other on regular
basis, it results into multiculturalism. The employees entering to another nation needs to adjust
their leadership styles, communication patterns and various other practices to fit with the style of
the host nation. Global managers are often confronted with many issues in managing global
workforce. This is since, employees across borders have their own cultures that many affect the
business operation and performance.

Individualism approach also affected the organization long term goals and objectives. Many
workers become using the individualistic approach rather than collective approach while
working in cross-cultural environment. So the idea of teamwork seems difficult to attain because
the employee do not aspire to be a team builder but the attitude is more inclined on self-interest
and self-gratification. Hence, they are guided by the saying that self-first before others.

Building a team in cross-cultural environment is also very important task for the business growth
of any organization. Since multicultural organization mainly working in teams and here team-
leaders play critical role to run a successful multicultural team. The team leader should
understand the cross-culture diversity dimensions and provides the support to all team member
without prejudices, stereotype, and biases. A team which has great diversity and inclusion can
perform better and generate new ideas and innovation for the success of any organization.
Specially when working in cross-cultural team wherein people are from different background
and culture can impact adverse effect on overall organization growth if conflict arise due to
misunderstanding among team member,
Conclusion:
Diversity management involves organization leaders’ commitment and approach to fostering a
diverse and inclusion workplace culture within organization. Across today global market,
business leaders that embrace and implement deep-level workplace diversity and inclusion in
company plans, processes and operation will generate better results. A company must welcome
and appreciate all forms of differences, both apparent and hidden, to be truly diverse
organization. Finding people who question you, your way of thinking and your preconceptions
are crucial to create a genuinely diversity and inclusion in workplace environment.

Reference:

1. Adler, N. (2008). International dimensions of organizational behavior. (5thed.).

Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western.
2. https://www.professionalleadershipinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/TOP-5-
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