Tuesday, May 08, 2018
Benefits and challenges a diverse workforce brings to an organization
Benefits
and challenges a diverse workforce brings to an organization
Introduction
Definition of diversity can be taken
as people from varied background working together in an organization to make it
successful. These differences in individuals could be religious and political
beliefs, gender, ethnicity, education, socioeconomic background, sexual
orientation and geographic location. The idea behind implementing diversity in
an organization could be any but the output is one single conclusion: To bring
different thoughts in a discussion before taking a final decision which may
help the organization to become more profitable. Diversity is one of the top
agendas for fortune 500 companies, as they realize that through diversity they
would be able to tap talent from an international arena and would also gain
place in world wide survey on best places to work. Making sure we have enough
percentage of people from all backgrounds also makes sure that we are
approaching an overall wholesome growth. Companies are lining up to consultants
to make sure their diversity index is in place and healthy as it is also an
index of valuation of the company.
Benefits
and challenges a diverse workforce brings to an organization
As a first look it may seem like a
win-win situation but on hindsight sometime having diversity in an organization
can backfire. It has been noticed in a few countries and organizations that
having a diverse set of people leads to an abeyance of any crucial decision.
The final call is taken by the CEO and therefore having a diverse set of people
in the top management can only add to time consumption. CEO may get influence
by his diverse counsellors, but this may only add more to his confusion.
To manage diversity, we need very
firm company policies in place. Let’s start by taking examples where diversity
has been a boon to the organization. Marketing earlier considered to be
stronghold of men. But what the world was missing was a touch of creativity and
empathy in all the marketing commercials. Customers more often are women who
also have a major say in products that are designed for men. For example,
aftershave and deodorants. Once women came in to the field of marketing, the
most important aspect that was missing suddenly started to appear. Women bought
the desirability factor in the commercials. Prior to women being a part of the
marketing team, commercials were meat to publicize the function or feature of
the products. Its only when women came on to the decision table that the
desirability factor was brought into commercials. Now most of the commercials do
not focus on the features of the product but now showcase what would be the
result if you use the product. This tough of creativity was brought when women
entrepreneurs came in the board rooms.
Regional
diversity
Another advantage of diversity is
that the talent pool increase. Diversity can also include employees from
different countries. So if we are
running short of talent on IT or any other software technology, we can also
float applications in other countries where we can find the required talent
pool. Diversity makes the pipeline for talent literally endless. We can hire
the right talent not just from different regions in the country but also from
different continents.
Diversity can have a negative impact
on the organization. Some crucial decisions may be left unanswered only because
the board is diverse, and all have opposing views on a particular topic. Let’s
take the current example of guns being banned from the United States. Since the
decision makers are all from diverse backgrounds it become very difficult to
come up with a law. Some say guns are essential since they are primary source
of self defense for women who are alone at home. Some are against guns since we
have seen an alarming number of students bringing guns to schools.
One more issue doing rounds nowadays
is whether to legitimize same sex marriage. People who are firm believers in Pope
do not sanction such marriages as they think they are against nature. On the
other hand, another diverse set of people who empathize with LGBT believe it is
only one way of expressing themselves and every person has the right to do so.
Therefore, we see that having a diverse set of people brings in diverse set of
ides with them which can lead to hours of discussion but not coming to any
conclusion.
On the other hand, when we see
successful corporations like Apple and Dell, we figure that these organizations
were run by one single force and everyone complied to their thoughts. There was
no room for diverse ideas in these organizations and we can safely say that
since everyone was aligned to one single thought the organization was the
benefactor. The top management did not waste precious time in arguing on the
pros and cons of an idea but mutually helped each other to reach fulfillment of
the CEOs diktat.
Recruitment
can have a major impact on diversity
Diversity can be effective for an
organization only if it is routed through the right channels and can be
controlled. One of the best ways to bring diversity in an organization is
through recruitment. The top management once it has decided to bring in fresh
talent from diverse source should hand over the baton to the Talent Acquisition
team. This is one of the best controlled ways since we can limit or increase
the intake of any specific group. Secondly the Training and Development
vertical becomes very crucial since the T&D department can train employees
on diversity training and make the employees more sensitive towards the need of
their fellow employees. One such example of these intervention is to make women
feel safe in the office environs and training all employees on prevention of
sexual harassment for either sex. If training not done properly can have very
bad and far reaching consequences which can also make an organization loose it
existence.
Diversity
led cartelization
Another major disadvantage of
diversity is cartelization among the employees. A strong idea which favors a
set of employees can be heavily defended by them and the minority group
opposing it may become isolated with no support. Individual differences may
become magnified and disagreements may turn into ugly altercations. This can
lead to certain set of people never discussing their thoughts and ideas with
others. These ideas could be worth million dollars but when a certain set of
people see their ides continuously being rejected by the greater group they may
stop giving their valuable inputs.
Diversity can have its own challenges
in terms of compensation of employees also. Suppose there is a job for an
Executive Assistant to the CEO and the salary is 10,000 dollars a month. If the
company recruits a person from a different country where the compensation is
not so steep and hires the diverse talent at half the compensation that was budgeted.
After some time, the EA to CEO figures out that the salary for EA to COO is twice
that of her, she would not be motivated on knowing this. Compensation for a
diverse company becomes a major challenge for HR in an organization. We have
also recently come across many incidents from film industry where the women are
paid significantly lesser than their men counterparts. This has raise a huge
hue and cry from the across the world. This is also one of the classic cases
where diversity if not managed well can lead to a detrimental effect in the
organization. Also, we have seen that employees who are not from a country are
not paid at par with the employees of that country. This has a high demeaning
effect on the organization. Not just being bad mouthed but being debarred from
countries for recruiting.
If senior management is looking or
diversity among them, then they need to be even more careful about the
selection and should approach a structured way to do so. Generally, it is
noticed that diversity leads to lot of critical issues going through multiple
rounds of brainstorming which can lead to unnecessary delays. Also, what has
been researched is that some issues may lead to cartelization among the members
of the deciding committee and they may try to isolate people of opposing views.
This could result in altercations and indefinite abeyance of critical decisions
Conclusion
To summarize all our learning from
the research that we did on diversity, it can be clearly stated that there is
nothing in black and white. There are a lot of grey areas where we are not very
confident if diversity is a boon or a bane. One important aspect to notice is
that diversity needs to be oriented properly in any company. If left unattended
then it can lead to serious repercussions. Its also critical for organizations
that do not push for diversity, since knowingly or unknowingly they might be
heading for a diverse set of people in their organization given the alarming
rate of digital networking. The crux of the matter is that each company should
have proper metrics in place for its diversity. Whether they are planning for
diversity or not, the metrics should be in place.
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)