Importance of Managing Diversity in the Workplace

The report is presented for discussing the various important aspects of managing diversity within the workplace of business organizations. In this topic, the diversity management at CERA along with the various debates concerned with it will be illustrated for making Mark French convinced with the business rationale arguments with ease and effectiveness. The management of diversity at the workplace means creating a diverse workforce consisting of employees and staffs with different characteristics and experiences belonging from different backgrounds, cultures, gender, age, race, religion or ethnicity (Ashikali & Groeneveld, 2015).

Human resource management is one of the major aspects of business for the achievement of business goals and objectives and at CERA; everything was going normal, just as the other business organizations. The HR teams were involved in weekly meetings and even reviewed the recruitment and selection processes, though something was left out. The major thing that was missing had been the inability to manage changes and improve the cultural fit, furthermore make proper selections of skilled and knowledgeable individuals based on their merit, rather than by considering their background, culture, race or religion from which they belonged. Investments were mainly done for the HR practices for achieving the best quality of services and remain innovative too. It was necessary for managing changes and bring something new that could not only improve the business performance but would also result in fulfilling the needs and requirements with ease and effectiveness (Olsen & Martins, 2012). Being one of the consulting organisation within the civil construction company in Sydney, Australia, the company must provide the best quality solutions and advices to the clients for understanding their needs and deliver then design solutions that could satisfy their needs and at the same time save a lot of time and cost (Van Vuuren et al., 2012).

To manage proper diversity at CERA‘s workplace, it is important to focus on the communication and make employees informed about the policies, practices and safety rules and regulations along with understanding of sign languages. This would facilitate the communication between individuals from different backgrounds and allow them to work together as an unit. Each and every employee must respect each other and prevent any forms of discrimination and make judgmental decisions based on their performances rather than by assessing the personal factors. The employees of CERA must be motivated to work in diverse groups for understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses and furthermore combine their talents to deal with the issues as well as form effective relationships among each other (Lauring & Selmer, 2012).

Strategies for Effective Diversity Management

The various components for managing diversity within workplace are useful for managing the human resources without considering the cultural aspects. By obtaining all the necessary components of diversity management, it would be easy for making the HR practices flexible and met the requirements and preferences of clients properly too. Heterogeneity allows for managing creativity and innovation and make effective decisions by analyzing certain components that are needed for the management of diversity within the workplace of CERA (Ibarra, Ely & Kolb, 2013). The diversity management practices are made successful with the involvement of various components including a proper training or developmental program, Proper leadership and guidance, specific goals and objectives, a proper assessment tool and review process.

Change processes must be enabled within the business organisation and so a thorough assessment could help in determining the various things required for managing diversity and even manage the focus groups and employee surveys for obtaining ideas about the potential solutions. Training and developmental programs could be arranged for managing experimental learning and share individual benefits for the multiple parties involved with the diversity management program. One of the most important concepts is the leadership support that can allow employees to move in the right direction and remain focused on the career prospects. Leadership is managed without any discrimination based on gender; rather the leaders based on their effective skills and knowledge manage the human resources (Homberg & Bui, 2013).  

To manage diversity, various dimensions are created for supporting the values and cultures, furthermore identify the processes that can resolve the cultural differences issues and ensure compliance with the diversity management principles and policies.  The managerial strategies allow the managers or leaders of CERA to set performance criteria for the employees and monitor the performance management system to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the staffs. These kinds of strategies also facilitate the management of rewards for the employees’ performances and provide training opportunities for enhancing their skills and knowledge level too (Fine, 2012). For managing the diversity at workplace properly, there are various approaches undertaken by the Government such as implementing the Equal Opportunities Act and Discrimination Act so that all the employees are paid equally on the basis of their performances rather than through discriminatory acts at CERA (Holm, 2012).

Employing the right people, i.e., with the right skills, knowledge and expertise is essential along with assigning them with the most appropriate roles and responsibilities for managing the human resources appropriately. The recruitment and selection are considered as essential HR practices where the recruitment process involves the development of a job posting and its description on newspapers pr magazines for attracting the talents. The selection process enables matching up the skills of individuals with the job characteristics and determines whether the job requirements can be met or not. The search committee or interview panel selects the candidates without any bias rather their skills, knowledge and experiences are considered prior to the interview process (Breaugh, 2017). The last step is the interviewing of candidates where the candidate’s ability and skills to perform the job are assessed and called in for the interview session.

Recruitment and Selection Processes

Along with the management of diversity, the HR practices also include understanding the impact of human capital management on business success and the development of compensation structure for setting the right wages of the workers. The costs associated with the business turnover would be reduced and the low skilled workers should be replaced with new and skilled staffs with the right knowledge, skills and expertise. By investing in the HR practices, it would be easy for managing records and work logs, furthermore comply with the Health administration rules and Occupational safety principles (Certo & Certo, 2013). By making investments on the HR practices at CERA, the recruitment and selection processes could be improved and it would develop strategies for managing diversity within the workplace with ease.

The people belonging from different background and cultures would be understood and fairness should be done for maintaining positive attitudes and behaviors among the employees within the workplace. To resolve the diversity management issues, employees should interact with each other and engage themselves in meetings to discuss the issues and encourage them to adapt different communication styles. Investments in HR practices could be beneficial for conducting reviews and assessment of employees’ performances and delegate tasks accordingly (Dettmer, Knackendoffel & Thurston, 2012).

Gender diversity is a positive aspect in fulfilling the leadership roles and responsibilities. Providing the opportunities, it is not always necessary to appoint a male leader, because sometimes skilled female individuals can also grab the opportunity to excel and guide the employees in the right direction. Gender diversity in leadership could improve the business performance by enhancing the efficiency of decision-making and improve the corporate governance and select the most of talents with the right skills knowledge and expertise (Boulouta, 2013). Therefore, it is clear that gender diversity can be a useful thing and with a prominent and skilled woman carrying out her roles and responsibilities as a leader, will bring the best of performance and improve the business outcomes for CERA too.

Workplace diversity is one of the significant and crucial factors for the organization since it enables the organization to manage it performance in terms of successful management of the workforce, within the organization. However, it can be added that the workplace diversity has certain benefits and challenges that needs to be met. In other words it can be explained that managing of the diversity not only involves the handling of the diversification within the workforce but it refers to the successful managing of the clashes that can come up due to the differences between the staffs and employees (Olsen & Martins, 2012). The managing authorities like the HR managers have to come across several crisis in the mitigation of the clashes, that arises due to diversities and dissimilarities amongst the employees. These conflicts can arise due to difference in the perception, the ethnicity, educational backgrounds, cultures, orientation and even religion (Patrick & Kumar, 2012).

Communication and Respect

One major challenge regarding the diversity management that can be highlighted is the cultural and linguistic differences. It can be considered that employees who can hail from different parts of the world have their own distinct lingual and cultural distinction can create certain difficulties in the expression of their ideas and perception. There is also high possibility of getting misunderstood due to their verbal dissimilarity and unfamiliarity with their respective cultural attributes. In such case, it can be presumed that this difference may or may not give rise or misunderstanding and conflicts in the workplace (Podsiadlowski et al., 2013).

Negative attributions and behavior exhibited by the employees can prove fatal for the organization’s reputation and unstabilize the harmony and environment of the respective work environment. This in turn can take a toll in the proper functioning and the smooth operations of the company resulting in loss of productivity.

The management, while considering recruitment and selection of employee should never tolerate unethical outlook and perspectives like prejudice, stereotyping along with discrimination. Retention and Termination should also not be based on discrimination. This can lead to a fatal uprising and eventually leading to legal war against the organization, offering severe blow to the company reputation and image.

Differences in the diversity or orientation can led to major setback if they are not managed in the initial stage. To effectively counter with these challenges, the organization should work of certain policies that does not tolerates specific challenges like discrimination, harassment and abuse based on cultural differences and orientation (Harvey & Allard, 2015).

To effectively balance the differences in the languages, the company can work on the implementation of some common links that can be easily used and understood by the employees from both the ends (Bosetti, Cattaneo & Verdolini, 2012). This can facilitate in the better understanding but help in reducing clashes due to misunderstanding and misperception.

Even if it can be assumed that CERA has its efficient team for managing the diversity within the company. However, it can be suggested that the company can work on certain zero tolerance policies can be implemented by the company, which in turn would enforces the employees to treat their co-workers with tolerance and with respect, irrespective of the cultutal and orientation differentiation. These policies should retort to extreme measures in term of its implementation and strict penalization in case of breaching.

It can be further suggested that the company should be flexible enough to place the employees based on their orientation in the operational team, where these certain individual would feel free to interact (Singh, 2013). It can further added that CERA can introduce induction to specify and address these issues to prevent discomfort and clashes.

Leadership and Guidance

The company can be further be suggested to effectively use the McKinsey 7s model in the successful management of diversity can be helpful. The application of the Hard and Soft elements can be applied to achieve the same. The elements illustrated in the model (Strategy, Structure, Systems, Shared Values, Skills, Style and Staff) can be used to achieve and maintain the diversity in the workplace of an organization (Singh, 2013).

With consideration to CERA, they cater the needs of the diversified customers all around the world. Therefore, diversities in the workplace would have positive connotations in their internal spheres. Successful management of the diversity would favorably bring the employees together from different diverse cultural and ethnical background (Singh, 2013). It in turn would facilitate CERA in shaping the diversity, based on the opinion of the workforce, which would also help to generate more alternatives in case of any crisis. In this manner, the company would have the access to the different ideas, opinions and suggestions for any specific concern (Barak, 2016).

Based on these facts, CERA functions in the Global market with its presence felt in the different countries all around the world. CERA follows the requirement of effectively establishing the assorted necessities of the clients from different countries. In this case, efficient diversity management will prove beneficial for the same (Bratton & Gold, 2012). It can be considered by the fact that, diversity management would help to recruit employees from diverse background and selecting them based to their background enables them to provide customized service to the customers.

It can be identified that CERA will get benefited from the effective management of diversity with the circulation and development of innovative ideas among the workforce. This is due to the reason that higher levels of knowledge sharing among the employees would encourage better generation of new and innovative concepts (Bratton & Gold, 2012). This in turn would help in gaining competitive edge in the Global market. Therefore, it can be recommended that, in the in-house management of CERA, should effectively initiate and manage the diversity. However, it can be suggested that Mark French should consider certain factors before initiating such an approach.

This is because there are some concerns, which if not properly managed can create barriers in the organization (Bratton & Gold, 2012). The factors that needs to be well thought-out is the maintaining the impartiality among the workforce. This is because the workforce comprises of diversified staffs from dissimilar backgrounds and it is ethical to respect and represent them without any hindrance or biases, failure to which can cause chaos and disintegration within the team. In addition, the company should not exhibit special favors or preference to any particular community that lead to the prejudicial perception amongst the employees. Therefore, effective management of these factors should be considered before initiating such an approach.

Creating and Supporting Diverse Teams

Conclusion

With the help of this report, it can be concluded that effective management of the diversity is utmost important for any company to thrive in the rising competition. Certain measure can be taken to effectively restructure the diversity management of the company. CERA is one of the flourishing companies that can perform better, if the management can successfully supervise the diversity within the company. This report also helps conclude the fact that diversity management comes with certain challenges that needs to managed to effectively avert any rising crisis and can be suggested to management of CERA for the successful implementation of the approach.

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