CHCDIV001 Work With Diverse People

Introduction:

Diversity in the workplace means communication among employers, hiring of managers, and recruitment of professionals. This paper will focus on the main types of diversity associated with an organization. The importance of diversity in the workplace related to gender, race, language, religion, ethnicity, age, disability, and sexuality. Diversity is considered the puzzle pieces, and with the help of those puzzles, it makes a whole person (Oad, 2020). The following paragraph of the paper will elaborate on how to demonstrate respect for differences in the team with the tone of voice of a person, their nonverbal communication, and their address. The paper also describes the strategies for being proactive and addressing potential issues related to diversity, language, cultural behaviours, and risks associated with an organization ((Hentschke et al., 2017). The benefits of being a diverse workforce for the business in the future. Additionally, the paper will discuss the recommendations to make to the business to promote a culturally safe and more inclusive workforce in an organization.

Diversity Types:

Nowadays, diversity has become an important issue that is top of mind for employers and employees. Figure-1 shows the types of diversity commonplace in an organization.

Workplace Gender Diversity: There is always a part of the women in the workforce. Some sexism is associated with them, as they passed over for promotions, specifically for the position of managerial. Also, women were the victim of sexual harassment regularly, reaching from improper jokes to sexual harassment (Georgiadou, Gonzalez-Perez & Olivas-Lujan, 2019). The 1963 Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act have a similar objective to save women from discrimination and harassment in the workplace.

Race, Ethnicity and National Region: Race is considered as skin colour, and it is crucial in part of national origin where racism considered as an actual genetic makeup of a person, which is similar to racism and discrimination of someone and their appearance. This is a serious problem in the workforce based on race.

Religious Diversity: This part of the diversity covers under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1974. The act elaborated on protecting employees from discrimination in the workplace (Reicher et al., 2017). It is needed to build proper accommodations for employees based on employers’ belief and their requirement to practice their religions.

Age Diversity in the Workplace: An Employment Act of 1967 has been introduced to protect employees who are over 40. It saves the employee from early retirement forced by the company with a mistaken belief that they can get injured or have decreased productivity similar to other younger workers.

Disability Diversity: The law has been introduced to protect employees from discrimination of disability (Oad, 2020). The law saves employees from physical disabilities and also from mental disabilities, which includes problems regarding substance abuse.

Identification of Sexual Orientation and Gender: Though it is not safe at a federal level, most states protect against discrimination and also against employees who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

Respect for Differences:

Respect is an important thing in the workplace. It can be determined from the tone of voice of a person, their silent communication, and how they behave. The way it can be demonstrated for differences in the team are:

• Behaving people with proper courtesy, respect, and kindness.
• Inspire co-workers to show their innovative opinions and concepts.
• Properly listen to the viewpoint of other employees without interrupting other people (Vertovec, 2021).
• Use emerging ideas defined by employees to improve work and give the employees an idea that their idea is being implemented.
• Never insult, use name-calling, or belittle employees or their concepts.
• Never criticize, judge, and humiliate a worker constantly (Herring & Spangaro, 2019). A series of trivial actions that can seemingly be added up over time constitutes bullying.
• It is important to maintain proper body language, voice tone, and behaviour and expression while interacting at the workplace.
• Improve the interaction with co-workers and supervisors based on the gained awareness while handling several employees and emotional intelligence. The process helps to connect with empathy and a proper understanding of people.
• Fair and equal behaviour to employees is necessary. Differently treating people can build the situation of harassment, discrimination, and an unfriendly work environment.
• Each co-worker's involvement in every meeting, effective discussions, training, and in every event is important (Rogers & Ashforth, 2017). Also, give a proper and equal opportunity to employees in committees' participation and constant team improvement.
• Praise offers more frequently. It is important for the employees to encourage praise and recognition, and also from supervisors.
  
  

Moreover, respect is important in the workplace to necessary for an effective and healthy and professional workplace where employees feel valuable while working as a part of the organization.

Proactive Strategies And Addressing Potential Issues:

It is important to be proactive and address potential issues regarding diversity, addressing language and cultural barriers in an organization.

The way diversity strategies can be maintained and can deal with potential issues are:

• By redefining and recognizing several diversity types
• Discrimination redefining and clamp down on all its forms
• Celebration of diversity in all possible ways
• Reaching out to all the employees (Orton et al., 2019).
• Do not accept people to understand the jokes.
  
  

The effective strategies to deal with language and potential issues are:

• Translation of all the relevant documents
• Use an interpreter
• Prepare language classes for the employees.
• Use the training methods of telling and showing.
• Use visual communication methods rather than using audio.
• Use repetition
• Never raise the voice or over-enunciate the words (Solaiman et al., 2019).
• Use related words
• Basic learning of the employees’ languages
• Make sure to check and demonstrate the understanding of employees.
  
  

The strategies to deal with cultural barrier and potential issues are:

• Determine the requirements of specific behaviour or attribute of the job
• Determine the best and proper way to accommodate differences in culture
• Learning of several cultures (Collier‐Meek, Sanetti & Boyle, 2019).
• Ask employees for insight into the best way to manage them.
  
  

The strategies to deal with the risk and potential issues are:

• Avoid the risk if it cannot be prevented.
• Mitigate the risk if avoidance is not possible
• Transfer the risk by paying some money to accept it (Hentschke et al., 2017).
• Accept the risk is the last stage when it cannot be avoided, mitigated, or transferred.
  
  

Advantages of a Diverse Workforce:

A diverse workforce and multicultural workplace consist of several advantages. The top five advantages of workplace diversity for the business in the future are:

Increased Productivity: A diverse workplace can introduce innovative ideas and process. Talent diversity means a large range of skills among employees, experiences, and perspectives, which increase productivity.

Increased Creativity: When different cultures and backgrounds work together, creativity among employees can increase (Howard, Peterson & Ulferts, 2017). This can happen only when different people work together with several perspectives.

Improved Cultural Awareness: A diverse workforce culture helps companies handle several nuances within a global marketplace.

A Positive Reputation: Diverse workplace companies can recognize better employers (Sims, 2018). Generally, employees want an employer who can deal with all the backgrounds and treats their employees properly.

Increase in Marketing Opportunities: A company's diverse workplace can make an image to their customer and employees to relate to the company more.

Diversity achievement means the company is bringing out its employees' best service and encouraging them to reach their full potential shortly. This helps to create a more varied and innovative talent pool.

Recommendations to Promote an Effective Workforce:

The recommendations made for the business to promote a culturally safe and more inclusive workforce are:

• Proper education of the managers about inclusion at the workplace
• Creation of inclusive workplace culture with the help of proper rethinking the policies of workforce
• Communication of inclusion objectives and progress measurement
• Celebrate every difference to make everyone feel included
• Create diverse opportunities for engagement of employees
• Introduction to inclusion at the first step
• Make pronouns matter
• Make diversity and inclusion channel of communication (Madrigano et al., 2017).
• Create a committee of diversity and inclusion
• “Round Robin” meetings
• Give efforts to diversity and inclusion in everyday conversations.
  
  

Conclusion:

Therefore from the above discussion, it can be concluded that a diverse workforce is needed for changing the organization and marketplace. The work teams related to the diverse bring high value to organizations. The paper discussed the types of diversity that are helpful for both employers and employees; it is also helpful for a company's welfare. A diverse place of work can make every employee more open-minded. The paper discussed the importance of respect in the workplace to maintain a healthy and well-maintained work environment that can increase employee retention and help boost the reputation of an organization and make an effective workplace. The paper also elaborated on the proactive strategies and dealing with potential issues regarding diversity, language, cultural behaviour, and risk to build an effective diverse workforce in an organization. The advantages of using a diverse workforce to increase productivity, increase creativity, improve cultural awareness, a positive reputation, and increase marketing opportunities. According to the above discussion, the key strategies that need to consider regarding diversity are:

• First, measure the diversity in a business in a proper way.
• Second consider the diversity more than a race regarding several religious backgrounds, several genders, several nationalities, and several physical abilities.
• Third, to recruit over a larger geographic area.
• Fourth, focus on retention more.
• Fifth, to pay attention to the culture of an organization
• Sixth, consider providing diversity training.
• Seventh, Do not forget to foster diversity at every level, not only in hiring.
• Lastly, consider providing a flexible work schedule, which can attract a larger pool of candidates.
  
  

References:

Collier‐Meek, M. A., Sanetti, L. M., & Boyle, A. M. (2019). Barriers to implementing classroom management and behavior support plans: An exploratory investigation. Psychology in the Schools, 56(1), 5-17.

Georgiadou, A., Gonzalez-Perez, M. A., & Olivas-Lujan, M. R. (Eds.). (2019). Diversity Within Diversity Management: Types of Diversity in Organizations. Emerald Group Publishing.

Hentschke, G. C., Parthenon-EY, E., Young, L. L. P., Jacobs, B. C., Jacobs, L. A., & Ladd, H. (2017). Mergers in higher education: A proactive strategy to a better future.

Herring, S., & Spangaro, J. (2019). Invisible from the start: Australian Aboriginal people’s experiences of difference and Aboriginal community controlled organizations. Working Across Difference: Social Work, Social Policy and Social Justice, 13-23.

Howard, T. L., Peterson, E. A., & Ulferts, G. W. (2017). A note on the value of diversity in organisations. International Journal of Management and Decision Making, 16(3), 187-195.

Madrigano, J., Chandra, A., Costigan, T., & Acosta, J. D. (2017). Beyond disaster preparedness: Building a resilience-oriented workforce for the future. International journal of environmental research and public health, 14(12), 1563.

Oad, S. (2020). Group Diversity, Information Elaboration, and Individual Creativity. International Management Review, 16(1), 78-112.

Orton, M., Green, A., Atfield, G., & Barnes, S. A. (2019). Employer participation in active labour market policy: from reactive gatekeepers to proactive strategic partners. Journal of Social Policy, 48(3), 511-528.

Reicher, S. D., Nyúl, B., Lindholm, T., & Lantos, N. A. (2017). The EASP Diversity Report: Round Table Discussion. In The 18th General Meeting of The European Association of Social Psychology, Granada, Spain, July 5-8, 2017.

Rogers, K. M., & Ashforth, B. E. (2017). Respect in organizations: Feeling valued as “we” and “me”. Journal of Management, 43(5), 1578-1608.

Sims, C. M. (2018). The diversity intelligent servant leader: Developing leaders to meet the needs of a diverse workforce. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 20(3), 313-330.

Solaiman, I., Brundage, M., Clark, J., Askell, A., Herbert-Voss, A., Wu, J., ... & Wang, J. (2019). Release strategies and the social impacts of language models. arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.09203.

Vertovec, S. (2021). The social organization of difference. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1-23.