According to pew research center demographic projection, the United States will no longer have a particular racial or ethnic majority by 2055. This trend toward a more diverse population will significantly impact the workforce and how organisations manage workplace diversity.
Organisations that understand how to manage workplace diversity properly will have a significant advantage in recruiting and hiring talent in the coming years. This post provides specific recommendations and guidance on how firms can better approach and manage workplace diversity.
What exactly is diversity in the workplace?
It is fundamental for a business to foster a more varied and inclusive workplace to understand workplace diversity.
The variety of distinctions amongst individuals in a business is referred to as workplace diversity. Diversity encompasses how people identify themselves and how others view them. Diversity in the Workplace includes race, gender, ethnic groups, age, religion, sexual orientation, citizenship status, military service, and mental and physical conditions, among other things.
What are the advantages of diversity in the workplace?
There are numerous advantages to having a diverse workplace. To begin with, firms that commit to recruiting a diverse workforce have a bigger pool of applicants to pick from, which can lead to identifying more suitable individuals and shortening the time it takes to fill open positions. Conversely, businesses that do not recruit from broad talent pools risk losing skilled individuals and having difficulty filling essential posts, which raises recruitment expenses.
According to a Glassdoor survey, 67% of job searchers believe a diverse workforce is crucial when considering job offers, and 57% believe their businesses should be more varied. These figures are telling. Not only can firms fill vacancies with competent candidates more quickly by recruiting from mixed talent pools, but a diverse workforce also enhances their employer brand, which is critical when it comes to attracting the appropriate people.
A varied workforce with multilingual employees and personnel from various ethnic origins can also benefit firms looking to develop or improve operations in international, national, regional, and local markets.
Other perks of diversity in the workplace:
- Employees from various backgrounds enrich organisations with innovative new ideas and insights shaped by their cultural experiences.
- A diverse workplace will assist firms in better understanding their target populations and what motivates them.
- A diverse workplace can help an organisation’s culture better fit with America’s demographic make-up.
- Customer satisfaction has increased due to improved interactions between personnel and a more diversified clientele and public.
How to manage diversity in the workplace
Managing workplace diversity poses a series of distinct challenges for HR managers. However, you can lessen these obstacles if an organisation makes a genuine effort to foster a more diverse workplace by establishing a culture of tolerance, open communication, and developing conflict resolution procedures to handle concerns that may occur.
To effectively manage diversity in the workplace, leaders must first understand their histories and how their behaviour and beliefs affect their decision-making in a varied context.
Tips for dealing with workplace diversity:
Communication should be prioritised.
Organisations must maintain efficient communication with employees to manage a diverse workplace. Policies, processes, safety standards, and other critical information should be tailored to overcome linguistic and cultural obstacles by translating texts and employing visuals and symbols where appropriate.
Take care of each employee as an individual.
Make no judgments about employees from diverse backgrounds. Instead of attributing behaviours to a person’s history, look at each employee as an individual and rate achievements and failures based on the individual’s worth.
Instruct employees to work in different groups.
Diverse work teams allow employees to get to know and value one another on an interpersonal level, which can aid in the dismantling of preconceived assumptions and cultural misunderstandings.
Standards are based on objective criteria
Set a single set of rules for all employee groups, independent of the background. To ensure that each employee is treated equally, ensure that all employment actions, including discipline, adhere to these standardised standards.
Remain open-minded
Recognise and encourage employees to recognise that their own experience, background, and culture are not the only ones that add value to the firm. Look for ways to bring a comprehensive set of viewpoints and talents to achieve organisational goals.
Hiring
It is critical to seek and hire individuals from various backgrounds to create a diverse workplace. This necessitates the elimination of bias in interviewing and assessing talent by leaders and others who influence hiring decisions. A diverse workplace should be the inevitable conclusion if firms can overcome prejudice and hire the most qualified people with the appropriate education, qualifications, experience, and skillsets.
Guidelines for recruiting a diverse workforce:
- Include a diverse interview panel to guarantee that candidates are picked purely based on their suitability for the role.
- Managers should be instructed on what questions they can and cannot ask during an interview. Questions about an applicant’s personal life, such as which religion they attend, their love life, and political convictions, are, for example, prohibited.
- When recruiting, think beyond the box. For instance, suppose a company wants to hire more women in the engineering department. In that case, they could contact professional organisations that cater to women in engineering and request that available positions be advertised in their newsletters or member mailings.
Policies and procedures
Organisations that value diversity must also ensure that policies and practices are in place to protect employees’ rights while remaining compliant with federal standards.
A firm must consider the influence of its policies and procedures on a diverse group of employees. To better understand how employees feel about diversity policy, companies should offer a means for employees to provide feedback through surveys and suggestion boxes. Any comment, whether favourable or unfavourable, is helpful. Companies must be prepared to adjust and change policies that may be viewed as impediments or detrimental to employees.
In addition to formal regulations, it is critical to ensure that an organisation’s non-official “rules” are conveyed to all employees to express business values and culture to all personnel effectively.
Policies and procedures are documented
Documenting diversity policy properly is an effective way of communicating diverse viewpoints. Once clear strategies are in place, paperwork outlining each regulation should be put in the employee handbook. In addition, diversity policies should be evaluated with each new hiring, and any changes to rules should be communicated to current employees.
Employee handbooks should include the following sections on diversity:
- The company’s diversity policy should be outlined in the code of conduct.
- Employees are made aware of diversity through the non-discrimination policy.
- Policy on compensation and benefits
- Termination and working conditions
Training for sensitivity
Employees must know how to coexist with various people and cultural sensitivity to achieve peace in a diverse workplace. Sensitivity training may assist an organisation in managing workplace diversity in helping employees in being more self-aware, which is critical in helping employees understand their own cultural biases and prejudices.
The advantages of sensitivity training include:
- Employees can examine and alter their attitudes about persons from various backgrounds as a result of this programme.
- Employees can learn to appreciate the perspectives of others.
- Displays to employees which acts are offensive and why they are thought to be so.
- Employees are taught how to gently express that a coworker has offended them and adequately resolve the problem.
- Explains to employees how to apologise to a coworker if they have inadvertently upset them.
- Sensitivity training should be provided to all employees; adding specific training for managers makes it even more effective. Some businesses also provide sensitivity training online.
Stay away from diversity laws
Managing diversity in the workplace necessitates that organisations stay current of evolving employer-related rules and trends, particularly those about diversity. Organisations should evaluate internal policies regularly, particularly those about harassment and equal opportunity, to ensure that they reflect the most recent laws and regulations.
If an organisation has a global or multi-state presence, it must keep track of regional changes in laws and regulations, which differ from country to country and state to state.
Conclusion
For organisations, encouraging diversity is the way forward. Businesses that can successfully manage diversity in the workplace will have a distinct competitive advantage over others in terms of distinction, creativity, and employer branding in a global talent market.