by 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.
