Challenges and Solutions of Having Diversity in the Workplace

Introduction

Diversity simply is not just a thought but an actual phenomenon that relates back to early 400-500 B.C where primarily the Indigenous people of North America and Taoist stated the importance of unity in diversity (unity in diversity). Today’s world stresses this importance of having unity without uniformity and diversity without fragmentation. Diversity relates as understanding, recognizing and respecting individuals regardless of their age, gender, culture, religion, language and physical abilities. Grobler (2002:46) says that every human on this planet is unique and all of them share the same environmental and biological resources. The term workplace diversity can be defined as accepting and putting people of all the differences in one team in the business. Although majority of population favours diversity, few sections of society still resist to adopt the diverse culture in the workplace. Issues like racial Discrimination and gender bias in the workplace still exists when it comes to making Management decisions for the organisation. This leads to an imbalance in the work environment and thereby halt the process the growth of the individual as well as the entity. In present-day world, almost all the businesses have adopted and implemented diversity in their business and gained comparatively more revenue. Having a diverse people in an organization leads to more innovative and creative thoughts, an increase in cooperation, increase in productivity and more empathy between people with different cultural backgrounds, skin colours and gender.

Diversity creates thoughts

background, gender, personality and mindsets under one roof. Some work by making schedules and plans while some go with instant thinking and ideas. Some are theoretical thinkers while some are practical thinkers. So, by mixing up all types of people in an organization, will foster creativity, innovation and will increase efficiency. It is researched by (Diaz-Uda, Medina & Schill 2014) that diversity helps organizations to make better decisions as they believe that diverse mind brings out more creative thoughts which creates comfort in diverse group than that of the homogeneous. This is because diverse groups members not only have the intention to develop and showcase new viewpoints but also possess the ability to bring appropriate, careful and detailed information which is missing in homogeneous groups. Likewise, having diverse thinkers in an organization helps to identify those employees who can work calmly and can tackle the firms most difficult and pressure problems. According to a Harvard business review (2013), diversity unlocks innovation and out-performs others by creating an environment in the firm where ideas of everyone are heard. It is also surveyed by Harvard business review (2013), that companies having diverse workplace believe that their market share grew 45% more then that of their past years and 70% possible that their firm was able to capture new market. Ford motors company (2019), believes that their vision of having diverse and inclusive environment motivated employees to work together as a team which lead ford to bring innovation and deliver results which helps their business to get new opportunities in the global motor market. However, having diverse workplace often creates conflicts for an opinion to be selected and ideas to be heard, Upchurch (rio 2017) says that organizations having diverse people creates diverse opinions which leads to intellectual conflicts and debates. It is believed that conflicts lead to innovations. According to Romero (2014), conflicts can be seen in a positive way as conflicts reveals the truth which can help to solve problems and innovate new thoughts, conflicts teaches compromises, creates mutual respects and makes the team more understanding. Diversity of thought will let leaders and organizations to forget the old mindset of one right way and can get the opportunity to focus on creating a new learning culture where all types of people can work together and feel accepted, are comfortable in contributing their thoughts and can actively get the benefit of learning from each other.

Diversity brings productivity

Diversity in the workforce brings competitive advantages which leads to increase in the productivity of the business. Productivity, in the market leads to the output that a firm get by investing in the market. Increasing productivity in the firm leads to increase in profitability. According to Strauss (2018), companies having more cultural, gender, age and religious diversity tend to have 43% more profit then that of companies with homogeneous groups. A recent study by the Boston consulting group (Powers 2018) found that diversity in leaders helps to increase productivity in the business which leads to improvement in the financial performance of the firm in the market. BSG researched on 1700 different companies and in around 8 different countries of the world, they found out that companies that have more diverse management teams earned 19% more revenue than that of companies having homogeneous groups. This finding shows that, having diversity in the workplace in this generation is an integral part of the successfully higher revenue-generating business. Moreover, diversity in the business helps to attract more customers and that also increases the productivity in the business. Thompson (2019) believes that diversity in the Workplace helps to develop employee’s morale and interest which helps them to work more effectively and efficiently. This process helps the firm to increase their productivity. Having diverse employees in the business helps the firms to know about the various ideas and thoughts of employees as well as the customers and can fulfil their wants with better services. Therefore, it can be stated that diversity is the key to profitability and customer satisfaction.

Challenges and solutions of having diversity in the workplace

Although diversity is very helpful for business and creates a lot of opportunities and benefits still there are some potential challenges that business should overcome. Kreitner (2001:53) came up with some general barriers which must be implemented in diverse workplace. Firstly, the difficulties people face of balancing both their personal and professional life. The biggest issues which a woman in the firm with gender diversity face is that they must manage and balance their career and family altogether. Not only women face this problem, but also men face this issue too, because some societies and culture still believe that the responsibilities of men is to earn money and fulfil the requirements of their households. Therefore, that is the reason where most women find difficult to work although having a diversity of sex and men tend to seek jobs with high payrates. Hence, if any of the gender try to focus more on their careers then their personal life gets spoilt, and if they try to focus on their family life then their professionals life is seen to go off track so both men and women have to keep a balance on both their careers and personal life. To solve this issue companies like google, Microsoft, Facebook and various others across the globe have started providing houses, education facilities and various other type of benefits which employees can use to fulfil their needs and can work by balancing both their personal as well as professional life. Issues of colour and gender biasness, racial racism are also some stereotypes of which people feel uncomfortable in working in diverse groups, however to solve this issue (Brief 2008) believes that the human resource team, hiring officers, managers, CEO’S and other higher positioned officers must have the authority and resources to provide on the promise of equal employment opportunities, and their work must flow in a way that it stays with the organization overall goals and strategy. Law should be made in the entity regarding discriminations and strict actions must be taken against the one breaking the rules. Posters and legal agreement regarding the law should be given. Therefore, inspite having challenges, in present world most firms and business believe that diversity in the workplace, creates innovation and plays a key role in developing business across the globe.

Conclusion

[bookmark: _Toc18798171]Diversity in workplace is an integral part of the success of almost many companies around the globe, diversity is a wall that keeps the differences of gender, skin colour, sexual abilities, religion and culture away from the work environments and lets everyone of all kind work together as a part of the team. A diverse workplace helps to increase the productivity which leads to higher profitability, diversity also help the business to create innovation through diverse thoughts. Although, having a lot of challenges like gender and colour discrimination, conflicts among groups and various others, diversity makes the firm strong in the market. Despite of some people and firms arguing against having diversity at workplace, I believe that diversity in the business has always resulted in achieving great results and keeps the old mentality away by creating the awareness of world as a global village, togetherness and unity in diversity. It can be said by observing the current scenario that in the future the secret success behind firms having higher profitable margin would be diversity. According to Deloitte and Touché “the future belongs to those companies that fully appreciate and will value diversity”, even Starbucks describes diversity as a way of life and the core of our culture and a foundation for the way we conduct business. (Canas & sondak 2008, p.3)

References

1. Diaz-Uda A, Medina C, Schill B,2013, ‘Diversity of thought and the future of the workforce’, Diversity’s new frontier.
2. ALISON GRISWOLD 2013, Why ‘Thought Diversity’ Is The Future Of The Workplace, Deloitte, 6/09/2019, .
3. Kreitner, R & Kinicki, A, 2001, Organizational Behaviour: 5th Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill.
4. Romero, E.J.,2014, Conflict is Necessary for Innovation Published on July 2
5. ‘Strategic areas of Focus’2013, ford careers/diversity
6. Ann, S, Melinda, H, Marshall, Sherbin, L, 2013, ‘How Diversity Can Drive Innovation
7. ‘Diversity at ford’2019,
8. Powers, A, 2018. A Study Finds That Diverse Companies Produce 19% More Revenue. June 27
9. Johnson R 2019, What Are the Advantages of a Diverse Workforce, Jayne Thompson, January 28, .
10. Rio, A 2017, ‘So-Called ‘Healthy’ Conflict Leads to Innovation’, Chief learning officer.
11. ‘DIVERSITY AND INNOVATION A BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL’ 2007-2013, in the employment and social affairs area.
12. ‘Unity in diversity’, Wikipedia, 7 September 2019,
13. Brief, A.P 2008, Companions to management, diversity at work edition, Cambridge university press, university of Utah.
14. Canas, K, & Sondal, H 2008, opportunities and challenges of workplace diversity, library of congress cataloging, united states.