What is Workplace Diversity?

Discuss About The Harnessing Demographic Differences In Organizations.

Workplace Diversity is the acceptance of the fact that every individual is unique, and respecting that their uniqueness could be because of their race, gender, age, class, and physical ability, and religious inclination (Guillaume et al., 2017). It is also the recognition that these unique people have many common characteristics that help them in collaborating with others while performing a common task (Dinesen & Thuesen, 2015). The concept of diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. It means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognizing their personal difference. The differences can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity gender, sexual orientation, social-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies (Al-Jenaibi, 2017). Workplace is the exploration of these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment. Workplace diversity is also about understanding each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to embrace and celebrate the rich cultural diversity within every person. The workplace diversity has the benefits that are discussed below.

Individuals from diverse backgrounds can offer a selection of different talents, skills and experiences that may be of benefit to the organization and their work performance (Al-Jenaibi, 2017). Though some crossover of skills can be beneficial when it comes to assisting each other, it’s important to hire people with the appropriate skills to fit each of the roles within the company. A variety of skills and experiences among the team also means that employees can learn from each other (Dinesen & Thuesen, 2015).

By working alongside people of different backgrounds, experiences and working styles, creative concepts can be born from bouncing ideas off of each other and offering feedback and suggestions (Dinesen & Thuesen, 2015). Whereas one person may be great at generating exciting, out of the box ideas, another individual may have the necessary experience to execute it; so it is essential to play on each individual’s strengths and collaborate with others in the team.

Language barriers and cultural differences can often act as a bit of an obstacle for a company who want to expand their business over shores; however by hiring employees who speak different languages it can make it possible for a company to work on a global basis and interact with a broader client-base. Representing a number of nationalities within your company can also help to make it more relatable

A company who embraces diversity will attract a wider range of candidates to their vacancies, as it will be viewed as more progressive Organization and will appeal to individuals from all walks of life. Naturally, as the number of applicants for each vacancy rises, the chances of finding an exceptional candidate increase too! It can also help with employee retention, as people want to work in an environment that are accepting of all backgrounds and promote equality.

1. Age Discrimination Act 2004
2. Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986
3. Racial Discrimination Act 1975
4. Sex Discrimination Act 1984
5. Workplace gender equality Act 2012
6. Disability Discrimination Act 1992
7. Work Health and safety Act 2011

Benefits of Workplace Diversity

     Attributes Of discrimination “AGE”

     Disability

     Gender Discrimination

     Marriage and civil Partnership

     Pregnancy and maternity

     Race discrimination

     Sex Based

     Religion Based discrimination

     Sexual orientation                                           

Kingfisher garden having a wide coverage policy in order to remove mostly areas where discrimination and bias can took place with the staff in the work place.

Most of the areas being covered in the policy .Policy not only aim is to cease discrimination it includes motivating program  for woman which boost them elevate them in the front of Man . But more things about to kingfisher policy not making policy is sufficient but proper implementation of the policy is also necessary not only by management but also by staff members they also should raise their voice against the person who is wrong and took undue advantages of position.

Direct discrimination is when you’re treated differently and worse than someone else for certain reasons. The Equality Act says you’ve been treated less favorably. Direct discrimination can be because of: age

Indirect discrimination happens when a workplace policy, practice or behaviour seems to treat all workers the same way, but it actually unfairly disadvantages someone because of a personal characteristic protected by law. … If the requirement is not reasonable, this is indirect discrimination

The is action taken by a person or industrial association that is deemed unlawful under the General Protections provisions of the Fair Work Act, including dismissing or refusing to employ a person, and discriminating against the person or otherwise injuring the person in their employment. For example, take an employee who files a lawsuit against his or her employer.

Sometime employer can put condition or restriction on a job that would otherwise viewed as discrimination, But these condition are lawful, this is because the restriction are as per job requirement with genuine cause or exist to encourage under- represented groups into a job role. Example, Rani would like to have hired roger, but roger is visually disability that mean he is unable to drive van, driving work van was part of the job role hence that is a allowable discrimination.

 At Kingfisher, age related discrimination is prevented as much as possible to ensure that all the employees are paid with equal amounts of wages. The senior employees sometimes were paid higher wages than the junior employees, which clearly explains that discrimination is experienced within the organization. To deal with these kinds of problems, the organization’s higher management must make the employers abide by the organizational policies, rules and regulations and make sure that the wages should be paid based on the performances of the employees and not according to their ages.

Preventing Discriminatory Practices

Tips to resolve age based diversity in the workplace include first, train the employees to understand the benefits of having an age based diversity in workplace. Second, encourage the entire employee to keep up to date with technology teach them to use Social media for this purpose. Third, conducting diversity audit and fourth, recognizing stereotypes. The older people can learn from younger people about technology and young individuals can learn work experience from older employees.

Gender diversity is equitable or fair representation between genders. Gender diversity most commonly refers to an equitable ratio of men and women. Gender equality is achieved when people are able to access and enjoy the same reward, resources and opportunity regardless of whether there sex. As the kingfisher intranet policy Company have two scholarship policies one for young ladies in leadership roles and one for those at career start level aboriginal. Torres Strait islander people scholarship Company on the other hand has a clear cut flexible policy regardless man and women steps. They train the woman to negotiation skill, particularly in how to better represent them in pay negotiation and establish in house mentoring and leadership programs as the kingfisher intranet have. The companies should improve the gender diversity by giving both men and women equal rights. The kingfisher intranet Policy Company only offers scholarships for young ladies they do not provide the same to young men. To improve gender equality, the company should provide the same services to young men. Gender diversity is giving both men and women equal chances in the society.

Parental support allows both men and to take leave off and take care of the new born baby. As per kingfisher intranet policy, parents who are responsible for child care who are returning to work after birth of child or adoption may specifically request part time work arrangements. Mostly women are the ones who take parental support leave while men are always shy to take the leave and care for the new born baby. Kingfisher intranet policy should educate men on the importance of the parental support service and encourage the male employees to take the leave.  Kingfisher intranet policy should improve the service by educating the male employees about benefit parenting support service. If both male and female employees make good use of the service then they will be promoting gender equality.

Work life balance means continuing with the good work at the organization and at the same time, maintaining the health and safety of own self at Kingfisher Garden. To maintain good work life balance, it would be essential for setting clearly defined goals and objectives and establish good communication to discuss about certain matters with ease. Understanding the things that really matter is important to manage the work responsibilities and remain healthy at the same time. Kingfisher intranet provides support term as well future development programs of employee to focus on career at next level.

Achieving Work-Life Balance in the Workplace

Strategy can be adopted by organization to support work life balance

Along the same lines is giving the option to work from home. The strategy is super important for employees who have children or other responsibilities and it could be hard to juggle with a full workload. If they’re given the freedom to work from home a couple times a week, it could lift a huge amount of stress – which could mean healthier and happier staff.

Staff work from the office, don’t try to be firm on specific lunch break hours. For some individuals, this may be the only point during a hectic day when they’re able to run errands, eat a decent meal, or just take some time for themselves.

LGBTI Stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and intersex. Kingfisher garden is member of Australian human resources institute and other approved training provider. Garden follows all the legislative regarding managing diversity in Australia and regularly updates himself with legislative keep on providing information to its entire employee regarding its policy. Garden has broad policy to manage its diversity of LGBTI. In august 2013 Sex discrimination act 1984 amended to make it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, and identity and intersex status. The management of diversity is important for establishing a good culture within the organization and allows people from different backgrounds and cultures to work together. Emphasizing communication process and viewing the employees as individuals can assist in monitoring the performances and determine the rate of success or failure. Encouraging the employees to work in diverse groups would be effective while enabling transparency and openness could facilitate the process of decision making and create a diversified workforce at Kingfisher Garden. LGBTI community’s regulations can be improved by conducting education to the individuals affected and assuring them that they are loved. By educating LGBTI community they will feel loved hence encouraging workplace diversity.

Disability is condition which restrict a person mental, sensory or mobility function. It could be caused by accident, trauma, genetics, and disease. It may be temporary or permanent, total or partial, lifelong or acquired Visible or invisible. As there most of Australian have disability of any kind government have disability discriminate act 1992 ,it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of disability and the organization must make reasonable accommodation or adjustment to support the person having disability. Garden having flexible policy and follows the act not to discriminate on the basis of disability and also provides support to person whether disable older or young. Employer should provide reasonable accommodation to disable employee

The institution can develop culturally inclusive program by placing some poster and the Aboriginal and Torees Straits Islander flags in the main entrance of Kingfisher so that parents and families will notice thesis and enquire about enrolling their children. Second, by introducing a Koorie perspective into music and movements, therefore, children can learn how animals are represented in music and movements by strengthening the workplace culture at Kingfisher Garden. It will improve the communication of everybody in the institution making them learn the workplace diversity in the organization hence harmonizing working conditions. Third the company should treat the employees in a way they will feel comfortable and with respect. The mentioned activities would improve the workplace diversity and improve the production output in the industry.

Torres Strait Islanders are of Melanesian origin with their own distinct identity, history and cultural traditions. Many Torres Strait Islanders live on mainland Australia. The term ‘Indigenous’ is used to refer to both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Kingfisher garden centre have two scholarship programs which aim to address two groups who have been traditionally underrepresented in the workplace include young women in leadership programs  and aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Scholarship.

Through Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander scholarship Garden put their efforts to uplift the standard of living, quality of life social status, workplace reputation. Garden policy is to enhance their steps in favor of indigenous culture peoples.

Reconciliation Australia encourages Australian business to develop reconciliation action plan that documents an organization progress toward reconciliation. Hundreds of the businesses in Australia have developed RAP. RAP helps the business to create a fairer society and improve economic and social outcome. Reconciliation means different things for different peoples. It is concern with building better relationship about Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples of Australia

Kingfisher garden centre aims to recruit the employee from a broad social and cultural Background. This means policy gives equal chance to all the candidates or peoples without any discrimination of any kind. Even kingfisher garden provides scholarship to woman and indigenous peoples. Kingfisher garden aims to recruit all kind of people who are eligible for job, whether he/she belongs to any race, age or any background. Garden policy provides suitable base and promote diversity in workplace without any bias. Recruitment is a section where there is strong possibility of discrimination that why garden have a policy to recruit eligible peoples not discriminators.

Policy to be adopts to finish discrimination in selection process:

Kingfisher garden adopt fair selection process with equal opportunity to the entire candidate. Policy is developed to minimize at the bottom level of discrimination. Policy provides many kinds of scholarship incentive to those who are willing to continue to their study for getting higher position in the company. A straight forward interview process are adopted to recruitment employee with vision to finish discrimination

The interview is an important and first process of selection it provides opportunity for applicants to talk about their suitability for the position. Employers and recruitment professionals should carefully review and plan their interview process. Make sure all applicants have an equal opportunity to participate in their interview and explain why they are the best person for the job.

Some application processes may disadvantage certain people. Think about whether you need to adjust the process to accommodate the needs of applicants from different cultural backgrounds or people with disabilities. Some strategies you can use to remove barriers for applicants include: simplifying requirements to respond to any selection criteria ensuring any online job portals are accessible and easy to navigate simplifying application procedures not requesting unnecessary information.

Asking applicants to submit a comprehensive written statement on why they want the job might not be necessary for a cleaning position. It could also discourage people with limited English language skills from applying for the job.

To attract the most suitable candidates within the company, it is important to advertise the job role or position at first. The candidates would be attracted by seeing the advertisement and provide their resumes, based on which, the selection process will commence. This is how Kingfisher Garden can manage the advertising of jobs to attract the skilled and expert candidates to become a part of the organization.

Bullying is when people repeatedly and intentionally use words or actions against someone or a group of people to cause distress and risk to their wellbeing. These actions are usually done by people who have more influence or power over someone else, or who want to make someone else feel less powerful or helpless.

Sexual harassment is any unwanted or unwelcome sexual behavior, which makes a person feel offended, humiliated or intimidated. Sexual harassment is not interaction, flirtation or friendship which is mutual or consensual. Sexual harassment is a type of sex discrimination. Sexual harassment disproportionately affects women with 1 in 5 experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace at some time.

Kingfisher garden center have its grievance procedure resolve problem faced by employee any kind of discrimination. There is mechanism in place for resolving this issue.

In the first part employee should make application to human resource management regarding complaint and proposed grievance from department along with employee have to define the discrimination which is faced by him and name and his assistant of discriminator. First of all employee should try to resolve the problem himself by making direct communication with the discriminator. If he need help others then he can take help of others including his senior to resolve that matter. In the end if the problem going to persist and discriminator have to interact with senior and ask them to put their step into the matter. The line manager works as an intermediary between the manager of the organization and the employees, who reports about the various incidents and transfers messages and information provided by the higher-level authorities to the staffs. In case of any complaints related to workplace bullying and harassment, the line manager must immediately report it to the manager and higher management authorities to prevent such occurrences again at Kingfisher Garden. The flow chat of the procedure is shown in the appendix 1 and two below.

Diversity training represents the opportunity for employers to educate employees about diversity. Although diversity training cannot completely change an individual’s beliefs, it does have the ability to increase awareness, impart knowledge, and educate employees on how to accept differences among fellow employees. Organizations use diversity training to bring out the best in their employees. Kingfisher employees will need the following requirements while undergoing diversity training. First, they will need time for the training programs. Time can be met if the firm gives its workers some time off to go and attend the diversity training program. Second the employees require some money to pay the trainee if the company is not paying for training program. The firm can help the employees get the money by negotiating a inexpensive trainee who can educate its employees at a cheaper cost. The firm can also decide to give its workers allowance to pay for the training program. The company can also decide to fund diversity training for its employees because when the workers understand the importance of diversity, the firm will benefit a lot.

The third need is motivation for the employee to attend the training programs. The company might decide to motivate the employees by awarding workers who have fully completed training programs a promotion or give them opportunity to teach other employees about workplace diversity. The fourth one is reading materials that the employees will be reading during their training. The company might decide to meet the requirement by providing the materials to its employees or give them access to internet where they can get the materials required for training. The firm should invest in the training program for workplace diversity because once the workforce has understood the importance of diversity they will implement I to the advantage of the organization.

There are number of way to promote benefit of diversity same steps can be used to disseminating the diversity policy to staff through the handbook elaborating the benefits of diversity, through the induction process, regular staff meeting, and success stories in newspapers and bulletin. Other steps include community development to explain the benefits annual basis or suited to company, awarding the best employee in term of non-discriminator, explaining the reason to have diversity in work place, and study them forethought research, winner of the AHRI diversity award. Lastly update to staff about diversity is crucial part of implementing diversity in organization. Any update in diversity policy should be communicated to staff members to timely basis also feedback should be expected from the staff about updated stuff. Communication can be done with employee in many ways like weekly meeting, Publish in weekly or monthly intranet newspapers, Meeting with departmental heads and many others.

Organization uses many external forums to acknowledge their progress toward diversity in the work place (Hickson, 2017). They can do this by formal entering in award function or becoming a member of professional association that provides diversity. This public demonstrate of the organization commitment to diversity has many benefits. WGEA workplace gender equality agency employer choice awards for equality (Bond & Haynes, 2014). That award helps the organization to enhance brand significant. CRS referred as Commonwealth Rehabilitation service: Is a government organization a leading provider of disability employment service. Annually they provide the award to employer who is success and committed to employment opportunity to disable peoples. DCA Diversity council of Australia is an independent, nonprofit organization that acts as diversity advisor across the Australia. Organization becomes the members of the council to promote their brand thus kingfisher garden should become member of the organization.   RAP Reconciliation Australia: Reconciliation Action plan: A national organization that promote reconciliation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Peoples and Australian community (Bond & Haynes, 2014). All above are external forms that can be used to promote diversity policy of kingfisher garden.

Conclusion

The policy of Kingfisher garden covers most of the important items that support workplace diversity. Services like parental support and scholarships programs that the organization provides show that the firm really values its employees and other stakeholders. However, there are some improvements that need to be made in the firm’s diversity policies. First, the firm should provide frequent education to its members on the importance of workplace policies so that the employees can get motivated after knowing the importance of diversity in a workplace. The organization should also employ people from different culture to set good example to the employees. The scholarships should also be introduced to young men so that the gender equality policy is followed to the later. Diversity in a workplace is vital in that it allows generation of new ideas when different people from various backgrounds come together and to seek solution to a problem. To recommend, all institutions should include diversity in their workplace because it is beneficial.

At the working place kingfisher garden is having best as much as policy to support  problem regarding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and most of areas are cover in this policy kingfisher garden must In practical review their policy and make changes the policy as required by time. Workplace diversity has become a necessity for businesses as the labor force demographics change and global markets surface. Both employees and organizations reap tangible and intangible Benefits from workplace diversity. The following are some of the benefits of workplace diversity: workplace diversity promotes mutual respect among employees second, an organization that embraces workplace diversity builds a great reputation in the society and might likely become a market leader. Third, it increases creativity as people with different ways of solving difficult problems work together towards a common solution. Fourth, it decreases law suits and increases productivity and lastly it boosts employee’s chances of learning difference languages and others’ cultural values.

References

Al-Jenaibi, B. (2017). The scope and impact of workplace diversity in the United Arab      Emirates–        A preliminary study. Geografia-Malaysian Journal of Society and Space,        8(1).

Bond, M. A., & Haynes, M. C. (2014). Workplace diversity: A social–ecological framework and policy implications. Social Issues and Policy Review, 8(1), 167-201.

Dinesen, P. T., & Thuesen, F. (2015). Working Together?: Ethnic Diversity in the Workplace        and Social Trust. In European Sociological Kongress.

Guillaume, Y. R., Dawson, J. F., Otaye?Ebede, L., Woods, S. A., & West, M. A. (2017). Harnessing demographic differences in organizations: What moderates the effects of             workplace diversity?. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(2), 276-303.

Hickson, G. (2017). Are There Differences Between how Organizations Promote Their      Commitment to Workplace Diversity and how They Enact it Within Their Organizations?                      (Doctoral dissertation, Acadia University).