DIVERSITY OF WORKFORCE IN ORGANIZATIONS

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What is diversity?

Diversity can be defined as acknowledging, understanding, accepting, and valuing differences among people with respect to age, class, race, ethnicity, gender, disabilities, etc. (Esty et al 1995 cited in  Algahtani, 2013, pp.53)

Globalization and Diversity 

 The rapidly increasing globalization has created a situation where more people from various diverse backgrounds interact with each other. Worldwide economy is competing within a global framework and people have become a part of it. Due to this reason, organizations have more diversified workforce to remain in competition.

Benefits of Diversity in workplace 

In a work place employees are interdependent and respecting individual differences can increase productivity. Diverse workforce will increase marketing opportunities, recruitment, creativity, and business image. Further it will reduce lawsuits. Both employers and employees are benefited from diversity (Esty et al. 1995 cited in Green, 2002).

A company’s performance and bottom line improves with a diverse workforce.

A key driver of internal innovation and business growth is workforce diversity. This was identified through a study done by Forbes (Walter, 2014).

Global Examples 

Denny's is a table service diner-style restaurant chain. It operates over 1,600 restaurants in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom etc. In early 90’s it became infamous by denying service to African Americans. The Company faced two lawsuits for discrimination and repeated civil rights violations, which ended up settling the cases for $ 54 million. Due to the above the company went through a major transformation and appointed a chief diversity officer, mandatory diversity training was given to employees and a policy was implemented not to tolerate any discrimination. Further they increased hiring minority employees. With all these changes Denny’s was ranked by the Fortune magazine as the best place for minorities to work in 2000 and 2001 (Barak, 2005)

 Virgin’s success over the 40 years has been the company’s policy of employing a diverse workforce, from a variety of backgrounds and who have various skills, viewpoints and personalities which will help to spot opportunities, anticipate problems and come up with original solutions before the competitors (Branson, 2018)

Reference

Algahtani, A., 2013. Diversity in the Corporate Setting. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 4(14), pp. 53-57.

Barak, M., 2005. The Management of Workplace Diversity. [Online]
Available at: https://brownkutschenkovargo.weebly.com/real-world-examples.html
[Accessed 25 june 2018].

Branson, R., 2018. Why Richard Branson Values Diversity. [Online]
Available at: https://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/why-richard-branson-values-diversity
[Accessed 25 June 2018].

Green, K. et al., 2002. Diversity in the Workplace: Benefits, Challenges, and the Required Managerial Tools. University of Florida/IFAS Extension, Volume HR022.

Walter, E., 2014. Forbes. [Online]
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ekaterinawalter/2014/01/14/reaping-the-benefits-of-diversity-for-modern-business-innovation/#3653ad652a8f
[Accessed 25 June 2018].