Accepting Diversity: 11 Ways To Implement At The Workplace
The Facts
Q&A
Diversity benefits management in numerous ways. A diverse workforce provides a wide range of ideas, perspectives, and skill sets to the management, providing more innovative and creative ideas. Management of diversity in the organizational action done as a part of HR management is mainly for including its various employees with different backgrounds. It aims to promote equality and diversity in the workplace through its employees' social, ethnic, cultural, and racial diversity. This is done by implementing policies and strategies for ensuring diversity in the workplace.
65% of the senior executives believe that implementing diversity and inclusion programs lies within the responsibilities of HR. The Human Resource Department plays a major role in ensuring diversity in the workplace.
How Diversity can be Ensured by HR and The Management are:
These are some ways in which a company can ensure diversity at the workplace:
- Create More Inclusive Workplace Practices
A comprehensive evaluation and assessment of the workplace must be made. To ensure workplace diversity, existing policies must be amended, or new ones must be created. No one must be treated unequally as they will feel dissatisfied with their jobs and might quit the organization. Other practices that support diversity in the workplace are:
(i) Allowing holidays for religious events for the employees.
(ii) Offering daycare services in the workplace.
(iii) Reviewing the workplace to provide more inclusive facilities like non-gendered restrooms.
(iv) Giving the option for flexible hours.
(v) Using apps for translating so employees can speak in the language they are comfortable with within the workplace.
- Clear Communication And Creation Of Employee-Led Task Forces
Policies addressing diversity are not sufficient. There must be clear communication and follow-up of the implementation of the policies to ensure they are effective. The policies must include and address the needs of all the diverse employees in the organization. They must feel comfortable approaching the managers if they have any issues regarding their treatment in the company because of gender, age, sexual orientation, or any other factor. The management must be confident in their communication with the employees and prevent the usage of inclusive language and making assumptions. It sets up open and respectful communication channels internally.
The management must make sure to ask for feedback from its employees regularly. There must be a creation of dedicated, diverse task forces with members of every department for recruitment of candidates and their training. Therefore, the management can ensure transparency and ownership from the team. With these task forces, ongoing efforts can be assisted for strengthening workplace culture and engagement of employees. This is very helpful for the employees who are not comfortable communicating through open channels.
- Offer Meaningful Opportunities For Employee Engagement
Conduct regular surveys to find out the needs and preferences of the employees, like their favorite places to visit, and the management can arrange work-based activities and external employee engagement outings. By such outings, the employees can find out how other locations deal with issues that arise in their areas. This will encourage the employees to think from a different perspective.
- Create Mentorship Programs
Mentorship programs are vital for the employees to ensure that every employee has an opportunity to advance. Those who have high potential must have a good mentor regardless of their age, gender, or other factors. The company can also adopt other measures:
(i) Support developmental opportunities by contributing to employees' continuing education. It will make them happier and more productive.
(ii) Connect employees to outside resource groups. These groups are dedicated to young professionals and women's leadership.
(iii) The management must ensure that the leadership team reflects diversity and promotion of employees from varied employees to leadership roles
- Offer Workplace Flexibility
Flexibility in the workplace refers to giving employees more leniency when and where they work. This means giving them a more acceptable workplace and accommodating working parents or employees who may have to work part-time remotely. By providing the flexibility that focuses on diversity and inclusion, the management attracts a wider pool of talented candidates. 67% of candidates who look for jobs care about diversity and inclusion in the workplace. By such attractive measures, they can gain high-quality candidates from a large pool, giving them a competitive advantage over their competitors.
- Recruit Over Broader Geographic Areas
Diversity in the workplace encourages innovation and creativity among the employee as everyone, regardless of their job position, brings varied experiences, backgrounds, ideas, and perspectives to the table. By constant employee engagement and open communication channels, diversity becomes the core of every organizational activity, and there is sustained commitment of the employees towards the organization. Moreover, the management gains employees who speak multiple languages, which is essential for speaking with foreign clients, customers, and partners.
- Educate Managers On The Benefits Of Diversity In The Workplace
The relationship between the management and employees is important. Most employees quit their jobs when they feel disconnected from the management. Sometimes, the management is not aware of the importance of diversity in the workplace. They may not hire employees belonging to different backgrounds. They must be empowered with the necessary skills and create a diverse workforce. Such types of sensitivity training must be provided to the management.
Assessment of reporting structures and employee feedback mechanisms must be done to ensure clear communication between the employees and the management. With workplace diversity, appropriate resources are provided to the management, and the potential of the workforce will become unlimited.
- Confront Unconscious Bias
Unconscious biases mean the social stereotypes existing about particular groups of people formed by others outside of their conscious awareness. Everyone has some unconscious beliefs about certain groups of people. Such biases must be recognized, confronted when it comes to diversity acceptance and collaboration, and discouraged. If not, it will lead to conflicts within the employees or between the management and employees.
- Move Away From Prohibitive Language
The management must avoid giving rigid demands to their employees. Instead, by accepting the idea of a diverse workforce, the employees can accept and respect each other. Employees may not respond positively to rigid demands when their understanding of beliefs affects work. About 50% of the practices adopted are not directly related to diversity but are the ones that are desired by every employee, like fair treatment and organizational flexibility. Therefore, employees must move away from directional or prohibitive language.
- Look Beyond Compliance
The management must recognize that diversity in the workplace is more than compliance with positive action initiatives and filling quotas. Constructing a diverse workplace means using the differences within the employees to drive the organization towards success. They must respect the differences within the employees and try to understand their views and perspectives.
Conclusion
When people of different backgrounds are brought together, various thought processes, ideas, and perspectives are evolved. Management of a diverse workplace must not be seen as a mandatory component for success but as a vital tool for employee creativity, improvement of company efficiency. Compact and direct measures to ensure diversity are not the only way to ensure the organization's success. This will ensure employee satisfaction and boosts the overall performance of the organization.