Month: October 2021

Being diversity-friendly is not just about changing the processes and support systems in the workplace. It requires a deeper-level mindset change a move towards unbiased acceptance of diverse individuals as equals in the workplace. This means CHROs must look at every HR intervention with a new lens if diversity is to be adopted as a business priority.

Technology is making it easier than ever to improve diversity levels and reduce discrimination, through providing greater transparency and insight. When an organisation adopts innovative technology and practices at the forefront of the talent’s journey into an organisation, the first thing that happens is you get better insight. You are able to see what is happening at different stages of recruitment, from who the marketing attracts for which roles, to how candidates are reviewed by different departments and managers, and how those candidates progress through the recruitment process down to a granular level of detail. Recruitment technology can monitor job offer rates by specific interviewers for example, allowing you to uncover conscious and unconscious bias.  

Once you have the visibility, the second major impact technology has is that it enables you to start making changes based on the data you see, and measure the impact of these changes. As you make changes, whether it is diversity awareness training for hiring managers or a different recruitment marketing strategy, you can see what happens, who you hire and where you can continue to make improvements. 

Special needs: One example of special needs is the fact that many women may need to take time off for maternity. Often, women are seen as the primary caregiver in the family and may need time off to care for an elderly person too. Having a non-discriminatory employment model that factors in such needs is important.

Compensation and benefits: Organizations’ compensation philosophy in terms of gender parity should be based on fairness, openness, and transparency.

Safety policies: Prevention of harassment at the workplace is one of the most important roles of HR. It is important to formulate policies keeping in mind the fact that the workplace of the future will be increasingly gender-diverse. Sexual, physical and emotional harassment policies should be clearly outlined and platforms provided for employees to safely report misconduct.

Training and development: Mentoring and coaching can help underrepresented minorities (including women) gain confidence and direction in the business world. Sensitization workshops can be conducted across the organization to help employees accept diverse working styles, expectations, and problem-solving approaches.

Technological benefit

Reduce unconscious bias

AI-powered recruiting solutions can be trained to perform objective assessments of skills, competencies, and talents, while ignoring demographic factors like gender, race, and age. Take, for example, bowmo an HR-based software as a service platform (SaaS) that helps eliminate the bias in database and resume searches. A pure skill-set-matching algorithm based on the Boyer-Moore string search algorithm makes this possible. The software is so designed that it does not use name, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or disability as screening parameters. It purely assesses the correct fit basis role, years of experience, technical skill/s, and sometimes education.

Removing Barriers

Beyond visibility and measurement, technology can increasingly help remove remaining visible and invisible barriers. Many businesses increasingly recognise the need to adapt recruitment process to avoid turning off certain groups of candidates, for instance those who require reading support or those whose first language is not English. One of the most dramatic technology-developments to combat discrimination in recent years is ‘talking technology’, making the online recruitment process more accessible to all.

Create job descriptions that appeal to diverse candidates

Job descriptions are usually an afterthought in recruiting. However, they are an important factor of an organization’s overall human capital strategy. In addition to setting candidate expectations, job descriptions are also an essential compliance checkpoint. Today, AI-powered analytics solutions can help employers identify bias in job descriptions, such as phrases that tend to be more masculine than feminine and recommend alternate phrases, words or sentences that help recruiters write more inclusive job descriptions. This can help reach out to the largely untapped diverse candidate pool out there.

Continual Improvement

Improving an organisational approach to diversity is a journey that never ends. We always need to analyse, review, and keep striving to improve. Many leading organisations are setting up dedicated community areas of careers websites for particular groups, which allow candidates to find out more specific and relevant information. Particular examples are disability pages on corporate career sites with functionality for candidates to engage in a conversation yet remain anonymous, providing them with an opportunity to explain any disabilities or unusual circumstances that might hinder their chances during the recruitment process prior to applying. Other recent smart approaches have been portals based at hiring specific groups such as women within technology. These portals highlight the successful careers that have already been forged, and have a warmer and more engaging language, in comparison to the often cold words of a job description, leading to higher levels of candidate engagement and ultimately greater number of applicants.

Highlight disparity in compensation

Embracing workforce analytics to address the diversity issue can help significantly. An analytics platform can comb through data from multiple sources and provide insights on the recruitment, compensation and benefits patterns of the organization, revealing pay gaps across the diverse workforce. A data-driven approach like this attaches real numbers to the diversity issue and can help CHROs create a strong business case to tackle the diversity and inclusion issue on priority.

Many people use the terms diversity and multiculturalism interchangeably, when in fact, there are major differences between the two. Diversity is defined as the differences between people. These differences can include race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, background, socioeconomic status, and much more. Diversity, when talking about it from the human resource management (HRM) perspective, tends to focus more on a set of policies to meet compliance standards.

Multiculturalism goes deeper than diversity by focusing on inclusiveness, understanding, and respect, and also by looking at unequal power in society.

Establish a sense of belonging for everyone

For each individual to bring their best self forward, a sense of belonging must first be established. Having a connection to an organization or group of people that makes you feel you can be yourself not only results in greater engagement and creativity in the workplace, it’s a psychological need.

But these changes take time, and they aren’t always linear, Clark says. “A client once told me that you don’t just fast-forward to belonging. You have to go through the hard work of focusing on diversity and creating that inclusive culture so you can get to belonging,” she says.

Start at the Top

Just like a parent should set an example of desired behavior before expecting their children to follow, so should the leaders of your organization. A diverse management team shows that you’re committed to the cause from the bottom up and the top down. The top members of the organization should speak positively of diversity and communicate their commitment to this ideal situation. Be sure to include a business case for diversity that can be shared with your stakeholders and other interested parties.

The top leader in one of our partner organizations personally leads the diversity efforts. He holds town hall meetings and regularly goes to the employee cafeteria to listen and talk about diversity.

• A partner’s Chief Executive Officer requires the selection panel for key positions to identify at least six persons qualified for the position and has held up key selections because of the lack of diversity in applicant pools.
• The Chairman of the Board of one partner organization registered the corporation’s statement of commitment to diversity with an external regulatory body. Changes to this commitment do not go unnoticed. Create Organizational Diversity Goals
• Simply having the idea of “diversity” on the minds of hiring managers isn’t enough. The human resources staff, hiring managers, CEO and others must come together to create organizational goals around diversity. Perhaps this means adding a new manager with a different cultural background or considering the addition of staff with unusual experiences. Whatever the goals are, they need to be in writing and widely shared.

Enact Mentoring Programs

A work site mentoring program shows that you’re committed to helping diverse members of your staff achieve their personal and professional goals. Mentors can be within your organization or from partnerships you have within the community, such as at local colleges and universities. The mentoring program should include activities during the workday as well as optional events during evenings and weekends.

One partner builds its diversity strategic plan upon its core values:

(1) Respect for the dignity of the individual

(2) Integrity

(3) Trust

(4) Credibility

(5) Continuous improvement

(6) Personal renewal

Recruit Widely and Broadly

While every organization has their favorite recruitment events and locations, expanding beyond these can help you achieve your goals for a more diverse workplace. Look to partnering with community organizations in your city as well as those in nearby small towns and villages where recruitment events are rare. Take your show on the road to satellite campuses of large universities. Consider recruiting from vocational schools and community colleges where appropriate.

Maximize joy and connection, minimize fear

People are wired to react with fear and distrust when their beliefs are challenged. While fear can be a powerful motivator, it also encourages people to narrow their perspective the opposite desired effect for creating a more inclusive workplace. Finding ways to frame challenges through a lens of possibility and elevating the power of shared experiences and storytelling to do so creates greater potential for positive change.

Workforce Diversity is a term that refers to a situation where employers appreciate and value individual differences within the workplace, where heterogeneous workforce is established as well as allowed to perform to it potentials in an equitable work environment. Cascio (2010) refers to it as a pragmatic business strategy that focuses on maximizing the productivity, creativity, and commitment of the diverse workforce while meeting the needs of diverse consumer groups. However, the challenge of a diverse workforce to most 21st century organizations is on how to create a work setting in which each person can have an opportunity to perform to his or her full potential and therefore compete for promotion and other rewards on merit alone. Hence, the concept of workforce diversity has been the result of different forces from global business environment.

In the 21st century, workforce diversity has become a major competitive factor for many organizations that are to become global competitors than the others. Hence, carefully creating an environment that is inclusive of a diverse workforce, companies will be in a position to outperform their rival one. The contributions that a diverse workforce has to overall global organization’s growth in the 21st century is as discussed in details as follows:

It is notable according to Lieber (2010) that when companies discover that they can communicate better with their customers through employees who are similar to their customers, hence those companies realize that they have increased their internal diversity and as the result they are able to retain both employees and their consumers.

In connection to that, the study by the society for Human Resource Management by Aghazadeh (2004) found that:

(a) 91% of employees reported that diversity initiatives helped their organizations compete in the marketplace.

(b) 79% believed that their diversity programs improved corporate culture.

(c) 77% said that diversity programs improved recruitment efforts.

(d) 52% indicated that diversity programs facilitated more effective client contact.

Enhance on organizational performance

The current literature reveals the fact that the relationship between diversity and organizational or group performance can be either positively correlated or negatively correlated. Diversity according to Gandossy et al. (2006) can be classified in two perspectives such as demographic and cognitive, and demographic diversity includes things like gender, age, race and ethnicity and on the other hand cognitive diversity includes knowledge, education, values, perception, affection and personality characteristics of an individual from a diverse work group.

Hence, the attributes, knowledge, education, perception as well as personality that an individual or group brings to the workplace if well managed, is considered to have positive contribution to the overall organization’s effectiveness and performance. That’s why Bergen (2005) noted that there have been many contemporary studies on demographic diversity and its effect on organization’s performance. It is notable according to Roberson and Parks (2006) that a diverse workforce results in higher perceived levels of overall company’s performance, profitability and return on equity. This is because diversity results in greater knowledge, creativity and innovation and thus, organizations tend to become more competitive than its competitor.

Moreover, organizations with the inclusion work environment tend to attract and retain the best talent available who are the key ingredient for generating creative ideas that in turn impact on organization’s performance. The fund so accrued due to lower turnover and fewer lawsuits as the result of retention through diversity inclusion programs enhances organization ability to increase more investments that in turn affect positively organization performance. This is because according to Deloitte (2011), an environment where employees feel valued and given freedom to pursue at their best tends to yield greater commitment as well as motivation to succeed and this means that fewer resources spend on grievances, turnover and the replacement costs that in turn re-invested to more projects.

For companies want to take role in global diversity, there are two possible approaches to take, which will depend on the organization’s structure and culture. One approach/role is a multicountry approach, where programs and initiatives are developed and implemented by people in various locales. This model is typically exercised by much decentralized companies, and can be beneficial because local leaders take ownership of the initiatives. And these leaders and councils look for detailed local knowledge of customs, laws and cultural issues that require to be addressed. Local commitment tends to be higher in experiencing this approach. On the contrary, however, the lack of overarching corporate guidance may mean unsuitable levels of work across regions. And typically, companies using this model do not have dedicated global diversity staff, but rather personnel that are working on diversity in their spare time. A second approach to global diversity that is more suitable for more centralized organizations is a topdown approach where diversity is hard-wired into all business units from the corporate level.

Companies experiencing this approach maybe sure about consistency in message and offer assistance with development and implementation of programs. However, care must be taken to ensure that local commitment is implemented.

Currently many companies with multinational operations have started to consider diversity as a global initiative, have developed a global business case, and have implemented some programs outside the US. They usually have a dedicated global diversity staff that provides assistance worldwide. But while there is clearly increased focus on diversity outside the US, for many companies it is less apparent how to approach the challenge, and many organizations struggle with how to expand their ongoing domestic efforts outside the US.

An evolving remote workforce 56% of the U.S. workforce can work from home and 25-30% of the workforce WILL work from home by the end of 2021. When working remotely, different employees have different living conditions. For instance:

• Working women are expected to balance home and work-life.
• There might be lack of a dedicated and quiet space for employees to focus on their work, and so on.

People in leadership will need to figure out ways to bridge the remote gaps, and minimize challenges if they allow remote work.

• Enabling diverse gender identity and gender expression raises issues on access to gender-neutral restrooms, adopting employee health benefits for transitioning individuals, and creating awareness around using inclusive language for gender non-binary and transgender employees. It’s a different mindset and we must be sensitive to it.
• Re-engineering employee experience: COVID-19 brought all four characteristics of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) to life, as the world felt the devastating impact of the pandemic on the health of people and businesses. There are countless examples of leaders and organizations anchoring their business aspirations and focusing on humanity being there for their people. Along with providing COVID-19 care and coverage for employees and families, many organizations set-up special trainings to help leaders lead remote teams, upskilling programs for employees to help them stay relevant in a dynamic post-COVID world, and EAP sessions on mental and physical well-being to help employees stay positive during this trying time. The concept of ‘equity’ is about understanding individual needs and tailoring policies that fit different needs, experiences, and opportunities. Organizations will need to focus on building virtual communities and providing avenues for pride and camaraderie.
• Multigenerational workforce: The current workforce includes up to five different generations and they each have unique workplace expectations and bring in different life experiences, voices and skill sets. It is important for leaders to be aware of the differences and use different strategies to, celebrate employees of every generation.
• Eliminating unconscious bias in the workplace: Unconscious bias is how we process information and make decisions based on our unconscious or inherent biases and prejudices toward others at home and work. Leaders must be aware of this and ensure that these biases are checked and minimized consistently. There are some good classes on Linkedin Learning if you need a resource to get you started.
• Adoption of HR Technology: Biases are human, and AI and Talent Analytics tools can be leveraged to reduce preconceived notions and promote a more inclusive workplace. HR Tech tools allow organizations to source potential candidates and shortlist the best talent based on key skills required for the job. These tools help check prejudices that edge into the recruitment process and may overlook a potential high-performing candidate. HR Technology can hold people accountable to an organization’s diversity goals. For example: capturing feedback from employees regularly via employee surveys or after townhalls can help the organization better understand how an initiative is being perceived and what can be improved.
• Gearing up for systemic changes: 2020 highlighted systemic injustices and flaws across our nation with the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many innocent people of color. It exposed the grim reality of a racist and unjust society. It uncovered the dire for organizations to gear up and make some radical and much-needed changes that will impact the functioning of our cultures. Leaders should do their best to combat any discrimination against underrepresented groups in their company and policies should be put in place to ensure that the workplace is a safe place for ALL employees.
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Equity in the workplace refers to fair and impartial processes and outcomes for each person in the company. To it, leaders and employers need to be mindful of the challenges, barriers, and advantages at play for everyone at any given point in time. Equity is the reminder that not everyone starts at the same level playing field, and swift and vigilant action is important in building a fair workplace.
• Hiring diversity professionals: Companies are now hiring diversity professionals who are committed to the vision and mission of creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. The job is a mix of HR, recruitment, and leadership roles and responsibilities. Diversity professionals carry on a number of tasks such as holding and organizing educative sessions on diversity and inclusion, creating an inclusive culture in the workplace, introducing new ideas to improve D&I in the workplace, rooting and pushing for the use of an inclusive language, managing complaints on harassment and workplace discrimination, etc. As the role of diversity professionals have become increasingly popular, the trend of hiring them is only predicted to grow this year.
• Increased transparency in goals: We know that more diversity in a company does not necessarily equal more equity and inclusion. While efforts at diversity may increase, the same is not always the case for efforts at inclusivity. A growing diversity and inclusion trend in 2021 will be for companies to set transparent targets, goals, and D&I initiatives. Doing so will increase accountability of people in leadership positions, encourage honest conversations between employees and their bosses, and inspire them to share ideas and solutions.
• Supporting employees’ mental health: The pandemic created a blow to the mental health of many employees and professionals because of businesses shutting down, people losing jobs, adjusting to the new normal of working from home, and the constant health scare of getting the coronavirus. Even though the conversation around the mental health and wellbeing of employees was already gaining traction in the past couple of years, 2020 witnessed it take a whole new turn. A relevant diversity and inclusion trend in 2021 will be for organizations to put effective policies in place on how supervisors, managers, and coworkers talk, behave, and empathize with each other.
• Looking beyond tokenism: Diversity and inclusion is much more than hiring a person of color or including one woman in a panel full of men. Diversity just for the sake of diversity, or political correctness, will not make the cut anymore. It is a time to be more mindful, and intentional about diversity and inclusion goals and strategies.

Cultural diversity in the workplace is when companies are open to hiring employees from all sorts of different backgrounds; regardless of race, religion and culture. When companies recruit and retain a diverse pool of people, it brings about different benefits to the company as well as its employees.

Companies will also gain from each employee by learning from each other’s experiences and applying this new-found knowledge to their work. Employees from all sorts of different backgrounds get to learn from their colleagues’ experiences from a different perspective. Thus, they are able to bring fresh ideas to the project by thinking out of their comfort zone.

Remember that a diverse workplace combines employees from different backgrounds, ethnicity and experiences, and together breed a more productive environment.

Another benefit of cultural diversity in the workplace is the increase in creativity among teams, and the ability to have a more diverse set of solutions to specific problems.

There are four layers of diversity:

• Behavioral diversity: Work, thinking, and learning styles (including beliefs and values).
• Workforce diversity: Group and situational identities (race, gender, ethnicity).
• Structural diversity: Combining different cultures, communities, and hierarchies.
• Business diversity: Markets, processes, creativity, and project management styles.

At the deepest level, an organization’s culture is based on values derived from basic assumptions about the following:

• The organization’s relationship to its environment. How does the organization define its business and its constituencies?
• Human nature. Are people inherently good or bad, mutable or immutable, proactive or reactive? These basic assumptions lead to beliefs about how employees, customers and suppliers should interact and how they should be managed.
• Appropriate emotions. Which emotions should people be encouraged to express, and which ones should be suppressed?
• What metrics show whether the organization and its individual components are doing well? An organization will be effective only when the culture is supported by an appropriate business strategy and a structure that is appropriate for both the business and the desired culture.

Most company cultures are not that different from one another. Even organizations in disparate industries such as manufacturing and health care tend to share a common core of cultural values. For example, most private-sector companies want to grow and increase revenues. Most strive to be team-oriented and to demonstrate concern for others. Most are driven, rather than relaxed, because they are competing for dollars and market share. Some of the cultural characteristics that distinguish most organizations include the following.

Values

At the heart of organizations’ cultures are commonly shared values. None is right or wrong, but organizations need to decide which values they will emphasize. These common values include:

• Outcome orientation. Emphasizing achievements and results.
• People orientation. Insisting on fairness, tolerance and respect for the individual.
• Team orientation. Emphasizing and rewarding collaboration.
• Attention to detail. Valuing precision and approaching situations and problems analytically.
• Providing security and following a predictable course.
• Encouraging experimentation and risk-taking.
• Stimulating a fiercely competitive spirit.

Degree of hierarchy

The degree of hierarchy is the extent to which the organization values traditional channels of authority. The three distinct levels of hierarchy are “high” having a well-defined organizational structure and an expectation that people will work through official channels; “moderate” having a defined structure but an acceptance that people often work outside formal channels; and “low” having loosely defined job descriptions and accepting that people challenge authority.

An organization with a high level of hierarchy tends to be more formal and moves more slowly than an organization with a low level of hierarchy.

Degree of urgency

The degree of urgency defines how quickly the organization wants or needs to drive decision-making and innovation. Some organizations choose their degree of urgency, but others have it thrust on them by the marketplace.

A culture with high levels of urgency has a need to push projects through quickly and a high need to respond to a changing marketplace. A moderate level of urgency moves projects at a reasonable pace. A low level of urgency means people work slowly and consistently, valuing quality over efficiency. An organization with high urgency tends to be fast-paced and supports a decisive management style. An organization with low urgency tends to be more methodical and supports a more considered management style.

People orientation or task orientation

Organizations usually have a dominant way of valuing people and tasks. An organization with a strong people orientation tends to put people first when making decisions and believes that people drive the organization’s performance and productivity. An organization with a strong task orientation tends to put tasks and processes first when making decisions and believes that efficiency and quality drive organization performance and productivity.

Some organizations may get to choose their people and task orientations. But others may have to fit their orientation to the nature of their industry, historical issues or operational processes.

Functional orientation

Every organization puts an emphasis on certain functional areas. Examples of functional orientations may include marketing, operations, research and development, engineering or service. For example, an innovative organization known for its research and development may have at its core a functional orientation toward R&D. A hospitality company may focus on operations or service, depending on its historical choices and its definition in the marketplace.

Employees from different functions in the company may think that their functional areas are the ones that drive the organization. Organizational leaders must understand what most employees perceive to be the company’s functional orientation.

Organizational subcultures

Any organization can have a mix of subcultures in addition to the dominant culture. Subcultures exist among groups or individuals who may have their own rituals and traditions that, although not shared by the rest of the organization, can deepen and underscore the organization’s core values. Subcultures can also cause serious problems.

For example, regional cultures often differ from the overall culture that top leadership tries to instill. Perhaps aggressiveness that is common in one area may not mesh with a culture emphasizing team building. Or an organization with a culture built around equality may have trouble if the national culture emphasizes hierarchy and expects people to bow to authority. Employers must recognize those differences and address them directly.

Sustaining a Culture

The management of organizational culture starts with identifying a company’s organizational culture traits or “artifacts.” Artifacts are the core business activities, processes and philosophies that characterize how an organization does business day-to-day.

Identifying these traits and assessing their importance in light of current business objectives is a way to start managing culture. Three broad concepts help identify the traits specific to a culture:

• Material culture. This involves examining everything that people in a group make or achieve and the ways people work with and support one another in exchanging required goods and services.
• Social culture. This refers to group members’ roles and responsibilities. It is the study of class distinctions and the distribution of power that exists in any group.
• Ideological culture. This is tied to a group’s values, beliefs and ideals the things people view as fundamental. It includes the emotional and intellectual guidelines that govern people’s daily existence and interactions.

Diversity management refers to organizational actions that aim to promote greater inclusion of employees from different backgrounds into an organization’s structure through specific policies and programs. Organizations are adopting diversity management strategies as a response to the growing diversity of the workforce around the world.

The HR Department is at the foremost of diversity policy implementation. Right from the time of finding the right talent to nurturing various employees’ talent, the human resource department is vital to helping implement such policies so that the employee’s abilities are the sole criteria for remuneration and appointment. Also, promoting the concepts of diversity helps the company goals succeed and improves revenue generation through quicker and more diverse solutions to all issues in the workplace. Thus diversity management should be implemented in close communication and alignment with company goals and top-management professionals.

Types of Diversity Management

Cross-national diversity management

Cross-national, or international, diversity management refers to managing a workforce that comprises citizens from different countries. It may also involve immigrants from different countries who are seeking employment.

An example is a US-based company with branches in Canada, Korea, and China. The company will establish diversity programs and policies that apply in its US headquarters, as well as in its overseas offices.

The main challenge of cross-national diversity management is that the parent company must consider the legislative and cultural laws in the host countries it operates in, depending on where the employees live.

Intranational diversity management

Intranational diversity management refers to managing a workforce that comprises citizens or immigrants in a single national context. Diversity programs focus on providing employment opportunities to minority groups or recent immigrants.

For example, a French company may implement policies and programs with the aim of improving sensitivity and providing employment to minority ethnic groups in the country.

Characteristics of Diversity Management

Provides tangible benefits

Unlike in the past when diversity management was viewed as a legal constraint, companies use the diversity strategy to tap into the potential of all employees and give the company a competitive advantage in its industry. It allows each employee, regardless of his/her race, religion, ethnicity, or origin to bring their talents and skills to the organization. A diverse workforce enables the organization to better serve clients from all over the world since diverse employees can understand their needs better.

Voluntary

Unlike legislation that is implemented through sanctions, diversity management is a voluntary organizational action. It is self-initiated by organizations with a workforce from different ethnicities, religions, nationalities, and demographics. There is no legislation to coerce or government incentives to encourage organizations to implement diversity management programs and policies.

Broad definition

While legislation and affirmative action target a specific group, diversity management uses a broad definition since the metrics for diversity are unlimited. The broad definition makes diversity programs more inclusive and has less potential for rejection by the members of the majority group or privileged sections of the society.

Steps to effective diversity management

• Effective Communication
• Employee Equality
• Diverse Teams Encouragement
• Maintain Transparent Policies
• Sensitivity Training
• Leadership
• Hiring

Backward Consequences

Negative spillover. This is when diversity initiatives have an undesirable effect on something other than the intended outcome. For example, diversity initiatives may result in negative attitudes among non-target group members. The root cause of this reaction may be the signal that targets are likely to succeed in the organization.

Backfiring. This is when a diversity initiative has an undesirable effect on the intended outcome, like when the program decreases representation or increases discrimination. A likely cause of backfiring is the implicit signal that target groups need help to succeed. Because diversity initiatives are supposed to help target group members, some people infer that target group members might not be able to succeed on their own. And this is problematic because it can lead to stereotyping and discrimination.

False progress. This is when a diversity initiative has the desired effect on the intended outcome when the diversity numbers improve, so it looks like things are getting better but that improvement is not accompanied by true underlying change.

There have been some anecdotal accounts about ways this might happen. For example, people have speculated that in order to improve the diversity numbers, a manager might take a non-managerial job held by a lot of women or minorities, and just reclassify it as a managerial job. It looks like the representation in managerial positions has gone up, but nothing has actually changed.

Workplace diversity refers to the variety of differences between individuals in an organization. Diversity not only includes how individuals identify themselves but also how others perceive them. Diversity within a workplace encompasses race, gender, ethnic groups, age, religion, sexual orientation, citizenship status, military service and mental and physical conditions, as well as other distinct differences between people.

In many organizations, it is common for the managers to discriminate against particular racial and ethnic employees because they would be playing favorites with those employees of their own kind. These needs to be avoided at all costs and the senior leadership should send an unambiguous message that discrimination and harassment would not be tolerated at any cost. Further, in Asian countries, it is often the habit that employees lapse into their own language without considering the implications that it would have on the employees who do not speak their language. These needs to be avoided at all costs as well and strict enforcement of the language of communication (whether it is local or global) must be done. The point here is that in many industries, the managers need to communicate in the language that the workers are comfortable with. Therefore, there are no issues in this case since the language of communication can vary. However, in corporate settings and in services sector companies, there are employees from diverse backgrounds who feel lost when the manager and the employees communicate in languages other than the official language of communication.

Remember the Many Dimensions of Diversity

Check yourself and your leadership on how you define diversity. Diversity isn’t just about race, which is one of the most common things that come to people’s minds when they hear the word “diversity.”

Gender is another well-known dimension of diversity. Although society has made a lot of progress in this area, much remains to be done. One-third of female survey respondents in an inclusion survey from Culture Amp still feel that expressing a contrary opinion has negative consequences for them in the workplace.

Race and gender continue to be important domains of diversity. But it should encompass all the ways that human beings can be different from each other. Diversity must also recognize our differences in culture, religion, income, education levels, physical abilities, and other domains.

Another emerging area, for example, is generational diversity. This refers to the balance of workers having different ages or belonging to different generations.

Incentive slabs and bonus criteria should not change with designation and hierarchy.

Policies need to be same for every individual associated with the organization. If you scold your subordinate for coming late to work, make sure your top manager also comes on time. Don’t change your policies for people.

Enforce Workplace policies that Support Diverse Groups

Next, it’s time to look at all your workplace policies to see if they support diverse groups of employees. For example, providing benefits like flexible work schedules and on-site day-care facilities makes your organization more appealing to employees with different interests and needs. The absence of benefits like these marginalizes workers who have young children. Also consider access to benefits like health coverage. Does it place certain groups at a disadvantage?

Aside from benefits, also examine other areas of how you get things done at work. This may include auditing employee forms and how communication takes place. Walk through your physical workspace to look for ways that the environment may be prejudicial to groups of people.

All areas of your organization have the potential to exclude specific types of people. So, you must examine every inch of your workplace both literally and figuratively.

Appreciate employees whenever they do well.

Individuals need to be given their due credit. Generally, what happens is that whenever a team performs well, the team leader gets all the recognition and appreciation whereas the team members are left out. You need to be impartial towards your employees to promote organizational diversity.

Uncover and Overcome Unconscious Bias

As mentioned before, most people have unconscious bias. As the name implies, an unconscious or implicit bias is a prejudice against specific groups of people that you’re not aware of. Yet, unconscious bias still affects your behavior and decision making.

Unconscious biases stem from associations your mind forms about a certain gender, race, age group, or other classification. These associations and stereotypes may be based on a single, isolated incident, experiences that took place in childhood, or even something you heard somebody else say in passing. You may never know. But their effects linger.

Your job as the manager of diversity is to help people discover and acknowledge their unconscious biases so they can work towards removing them. This can be part of the diversity training in the workplace. This article discusses other ways to counteract unconscious bias.

Encourage effective communication at the workplace to promote organizational diversity.

Make sure everyone in the organization irrespective of his designation or level in the hierarchy is aware of his roles and responsibilities. Make sure organization policies are communicated well to each and everyone.

Create a Diverse Organizational or Corporate Culture

Aim to build an organizational culture that supports and promotes diversity. Business Dictionary defines organizational culture as “The values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization.”

It further says that organization culture, also known as corporate culture, is expressed in:

(1) the ways the organization conducts its business, treats its employees, customers, and the wider community.

(2) the extent to which freedom is allowed in decision making, developing new ideas, and personal expression.

(3) how power and information flow through its hierarchy.

(4) how committed employees are towards collective objectives.

Include Diversity in Your Performance Reports

Finally, approach diversity quantitatively to increase your chance of success. Make diversity one of performance indicators, not just for human resources, but for all managers, team leaders, and members of the C-suite. Make diversity efforts measurable, track progress, and report on them regularly.

This makes you and other office leaders accountable for managing diversity in your organization. Given the complexity and depth of diversity, it can’t be the responsibility of only one department, let alone one person in a company. In the final analysis, increasing diversity is the job of every single employee, from the lowest intern to the CEO.

Get Leadership on Board

As with any initiative, it’s easier when you get the leadership on board with increasing diversity. Make sure your company executives are fully behind your diversity efforts. That way, the other people in the organization are more likely to embrace diversity, too. Leadership sets the tone for the rest of the company.

They’re also critical to your success. With the backing of leadership, you’ll find it easier to get the budget, time, and other resources you need. Ensure also that you’ve got the mandate to pursue diversity in the organization. It needs to be officially set in the company’s policies, so that efforts to increase diversity continue even when key people leave.

Recruit for Maximum Diversity

There are many things to look at in your recruitment process. Here are a few:

• The job description itself
• How you present and publish the job posting
• Ways to involve employees to reach more diverse applicants
• How and where you hold interviews
• How you ensure non-biased assessment of candidates

Managing diversity in recruitment is developing rapidly in the human resources space. You’ll find an array of reference materials, courses, and experts to help you in this area.

Conduct Diversity Training

Even though an increasing number of people are becoming aware of the importance of diversity, it doesn’t always come naturally. Even the most outwardly inclusive individual can have unconscious biases. This is why it’s a good idea to provide training on how to achieve and maintain a diverse workplace.

You can provide several types of training. The most basic is awareness training, which covers the importance and benefits of diversity in the workplace. The other type of training is skills training, or how to reduce prejudice and be more inclusive of others at work.

Diversity training isn’t as simple as it sounds. Even though most people may say they support diversity, they may have unconscious biases or simply not know how to live it out. Some training approaches can even backfire, especially if workers feel they’re being forced to take the classes or brainwashed in them.

Remember Retention

We’ve talked about recruiting a diverse group of job candidates. That’s only part of the story. Once you’ve hired them, you want to keep them.

And so, one of the strategies for managing diversity in the workplace is to look at how employee attrition or turnover is affecting your workplace diversity. This is a good barometer of how inclusive your organization is. You may be hiring people with a variety of backgrounds but if they’re leaving, that may be a sign that they don’t feel included after all.

Conduct an exit interview with minority employees to find out why they’re leaving the company. Use what you learn to make your policies and practices more inclusive.

Keep the Work Environment Positive

Discussion and activities around diversity can become contentious, yet it doesn’t have to be. If you promote a positive environment at work, then employees are more likely to feel happier. That also means they’ll be more likely to get along well with each other.

As you’ll learn from this article, creating a positive work environment also covers the physical environment and facilities, training, and communication in the workplace, among others.

Managing workforce diversity implies creating an organisational climate in which a heterogeneous workforce performs to its best potential; without the organisation favouring /dis-favouring any particular segment of workforce with a view to facilitating the best attainment of organisational goals.

(i) Creating Conditions for Common Organisational Culture:

Organisation must develop cross-cultural training programmes creating conditions for development of a common organisational culture and climate. Such common culture will create an environment in which a diversified work force can co-exist comfortably, peacefully and happily.

(ii) Creating Awareness of Diversity:

Management must create awareness in the organisation that differences among people as to age, sex, education, culture etc. exist in workforce; so that people may try to understand one another in a more rational and friendly manner.

(iii) Programmes of Special Care for Diversified Workforce:

Management must design programmes of special care, like the following:

1. Care for elderly people
2. Special work schedules to provide convenience to female workers etc.

(iv) Avoiding Discriminations:

A very significant technique for excellent workforce diversity management is to avoid any sort of discrimination among people on the basis of age, culture and specially sex. In the most developed country the U.SA, the Glass Ceiling Commission states that between 95 and 97 percent of senior managers in the country’s biggest corporations are men.

(The term ‘glass ceiling’ describes the process by which women are barred from promotion by means of an invisible barrier).

(v) Career Development Programmes:

There must be programmes for identifying each individual’s strengths, weaknesses and potential for career development; so that the organization can capitalize on the peculiar features of a diversified workforce. In fact, people should be valued for their difference and variety.

(vi) Prevention of Sexual Harassment:

With the entry of a large number of women in organisations, the phenomenon of sexual harassment is usually witnessed; which management must prevent by all means and at all costs. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions, like – unwelcome touching, joking, teasing, innuendoes (indirectly bad and rude remarks), slurs, and the display of sexually explicit materials.

According to Jenny Watson, Deputy Chairman of the UK’s Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), sexual harassment is no laughing matter for hundreds of thousands of British workers, who experience it.

(vii) Committees of Diverse Members:

Committees of diverse members must be formed for evaluating and addressing complaints of people, regarding their sad experience of working in the organisation.

Benefits of having a diverse workforce:

• Increased adaptability. Having a heterogeneous employee base helps increase your organisation’s adaptability in the market as a diverse workforce will be in a better position to understand what the consumer wants. This will lead to better product decisions.
• One of the biggest advantages of having a diverse workforce is improved innovation in the workplace. Because the employees see things differently and also think differently, interactions with each other will result in the sharing of ideas, knowledge and experiences which makes brainstorming a lot more fruitful. Diversity in the workplace also makes your employees more receptive to trying out new things which is key to creativity and innovation at work.
• Easier recruitment and retention. High-quality employees are rare, which means you need to do everything possible to acquire the few that are there. A recent survey by Glassdoor found that diversity was an important factor for people when evaluating job offers and companies, which makes diversity key for quality recruitment. Diversity also helps your employees feel included and appreciated in addition to helping them become more loyal and feel like they belong. This helps with employee retention.
• Broader market. Having a workforce with a variety of skills and experiences (including cultural understanding and languages) allows your business to be able to provide products to customers from all over the globe. And with the ease with which businesses can make cross-border business transactions in this day and age, this is a big competitive advantage.
• Increased productivity. Diversity in the workforce ensures there’s diversity in the way of thinking. It also provides you with a broad mix of expertise and experience in certain processes which encourages your employees to interact and learn from each other. The kind of open communication that results from this kind of interactions leads to improved teamwork and collaboration. Additionally, diversity has been found to increase morale within the workforce which not only leads to increased productivity but greater employee satisfaction as well.

Diversity and inclusion seem to go hand in hand. There is a lot of buzz surrounding making workplaces more diverse. This often means making hiring processes as transparent and open as possible.

Diversity and inclusion are not one and the same, and neither happens through osmosis. To make employees feel more included, appreciated, and safe in the workplace, initiatives must be targeted to achieve specific results.”- Karima Mariama-Arthur, CEO and founder of Word Smith Rapport speaking in Forbes.

Leadership Strategies:

Challenge your unconscious bias

Eric Kandel won a Nobel prize for his work in the field of neuroscience. He believes that the majority of our free will actually takes place subconsciously. This leads to something called unconscious bias – a predisposition to see a situation in a certain way.

One unconscious bias is the classic gender role association:  MALE = WORK and FEMALE = HOME.

Check your social media activity

What are the demographics of your followers on Twitter?

Treat all individuals equally irrespective of their designation, back ground, community and religion. It hardly matters to the organization whether the individual concerned is a Christian, Muslim, Hindu or a Sikh. What matters is his willingness to learn and passion to perform. Rules and regulations ought to be same for everyone. If the organization has decided to give ten leaves to its employees over a period of one year, make sure the same is granted to the office staff, pantry boy and even to the entry level executive. There are organizations where only the top level people enjoy the company benefits. Such a practice is unacceptable and leads to dissatisfaction among employees.

Incentive slabs and bonus criteria should not change with designation and hierarchy. Policies need to be same for every individual associated with the organization. If you scold your subordinate for coming late to work, make sure your top manager also comes on time. Don’t change your policies for people.

Encourage employees to interact among themselves, discuss work, share experiences and also gain from each other’s experience. Believe me, this way individuals not only come closer to each other but also get to know a lot about each other’s strengths, culture, working style and also learn many new things from them. Every individual has some or the other talent. Let people share their knowledge with fellow workers and utilize their talent in the best possible way. Encourage them to sit with their fellow workers once every day to discuss team’s strategies and even decide on the plan of action as to how to achieve the organization’s goals within the shortest possible time frame. In today’s business scenario, it is essential individuals develop the habit of working in unison; else work can never be accomplished within the deadlines. When individuals work together, not only they help each other in their respective assignments but also motivate each other to come up with their best work every time. This way, your organization also becomes a better place to work.

Appreciate employees whenever they do well. Individuals need to be given their due credit. Generally what happens is that whenever a team performs well, the team leader gets all the recognition and appreciation whereas the team members are left out. You need to be impartial towards your employees to promote organizational diversity.

Encourage individuals to celebrate festivals together irrespective of the religion and community they belong. Divide them in groups and ask them to decorate the office, arrange for a small party at office, get gifts for colleagues and so on. The idea is not to check whether they are capable of doing so or not but to make them aware of different cultures and traditions. Such an initiative also goes a long way in developing a feeling of trust and respect for their counter parts. This way, they start accepting each other and also working together as a single unit.

Encourage effective communication at the workplace to promote organizational diversity. Make sure everyone in the organization irrespective of his designation or level in the hierarchy is aware of his roles and responsibilities. Make sure organization policies are communicated well to each and everyone.

Guide your male employees and ask them to behave sensibly with their female counterparts. Make them understand that they need to draw a line somewhere while interacting with their female colleagues. Do not blindly support them. If any female employee complains about anyone, please do not ignore the same. Try to find out the actual problem and act at the earliest.