Value of Diversity in the Workplace

Value of Diversity in the Workplace

Value of Diversity in the Workplace

Introduction

Diversity is defined as acknowledging, understanding, accepting, valuing, and celebrating differences among people with respect to age, class, ethnicity, gender, physical and mental ability, race, sexual orientation, spiritual practice, and public assistance status.

Human resource management is an approach to managing the human resources of organisations, which recognises the importance of an organisations workforce as vital human resources contributing to the goals of the organisations, and the utilisation of several functions and activities to ensure that they are used effectively and fairly for the benefit of the individual, the organisation and society. Five main functions and activities identified are human resource planning, staffing, performance management, managing the work environment and establishing and maintaining effective working relationships. One of the main assertions of effective human resource management in an organisation is the direct impact on bottom line outcomes. When diversity management strategies are incorporated enhancing working relationships, the bottom line effects of diversity management can be predicted. At the same time, the symptoms of poor diversity management can be gauged through an analysis of individual, team and organisation effects and outcomes.

Discussion

Human resource management focuses on improving the human resource functions such as planning, staffing, appraisal and remuneration, to meet the objectives of attracting, retaining and motivating employees in order to improve organisational outcomes and potentially the bottom line. Diversity arises from the effective management of diverse opinions in decision making and problem solving which leads to enhanced creativity and innovation. Effective diversity management achieves these goals while allowing business to tap into the unique knowledge, skills and experiences of its workforce.

Diversity is the scope for organisations to develop a competitive advantage in managing diverse human resources and derive the benefits of that advantage through bottom line returns. Advantage comes not from diversity itself but rather from forging a link between the external environments fostering diversity and internal organisational systems that are capable of capitalising on it. Waddell (2000)present six broad areas in which sound diversity management can create a competitive advantage to the organisation: cost, resource acquisition, marketing, creativity, problem solving and organisational flexibility. Hirsh (2003) later developed the value in diversity aspect by identifying two types of diversity effects on organisational effectiveness. One type addresses effects that derive from the impact of group identity on the experiences and work outcomes of individual members, equal opportunity and motivation to contribute effects. The other type of effects relates to how the performance of homogenous workgroups compares to that of heterogenous workgroups. Fisher (1997) categorise the benefits as cost savings and winning the competition for talent together with the opportunity to drive business growth by leveraging the many facets of diversity. The cost savings occur in several areas: turnover, absenteeism and legal action on sexual, race and age discrimination. The examples of driving business growth include improving marketplace understanding, increased creativity and innovation, producing higher quality problem solving, enhance leadership effectiveness and building effective global relationship (Shapira ...