Frequently asked question: Can Managing
workplace diversity strengthen work teams?
Diversity
in the workplace encompasses a range of elements. Differences in national
origin, primary language, religion, social status and age can benefit or harm
organizations. Managing diversity effectively is the key to leveraging the
advantages and minimizing the disadvantages of diversity in the workplace.
Diverse
Experience
Co-workers
with diverse cultural backgrounds bring unique experiences and perceptions to
the table in groups and work teams. Pooling the diverse knowledge and skills of
culturally distinct workers together can benefit companies by strengthening
teams' productivity and responsiveness to changing conditions. Each employee in
a diverse workplace possesses unique strengths and weaknesses derived from
their culture in addition to their individuality. When managed properly,
diversity in the workplace can leverage the strengths and complement the
weaknesses of each worker to make the impact of the workforce greater than the
sum of its parts.
Learning
And Growth
Another
advantage of workplace diversity is the opportunity for employees' personal
growth. Being exposed to new ideas, cultures and perspectives can help
individuals to reach out intellectually and gain a clearer view of their
surroundings and their place in the world. Spending time with culturally
diverse co-workers can slowly break down the subconscious barriers of
ethnocentrism and xenophobia, encouraging employees to be more well-rounded
members of society.
Communication
Issues
Diversity
impacts workplace communication in positive and negative ways. Between
co-workers, diversity can place impediments in the way of effective communication,
which can directly dampen productivity and the cohesiveness of small groups.
Spending time with diverse employees can break down communication barriers over
the long-term, but first impressions and co-workers' orientation periods can be
difficult to control when cultures clash. Diversity can strengthen your
company's relationships with specific customer groups by making communication
more effective. Customer service representatives can be paired up with
customers from their specific demographic, making the customer feel comfortable
with the representative, and thus with the company. A number of companies in
the southwest United States, for example, prefer to hire bi-lingual customer
service reps to deal with Spanish-speaking customers in their native language.
Integration
Issues
Social
integration at work can only be influenced to a small degree. The formation of
cliques and exclusive social groups is a natural process that can be impossible
to control at times. Because of this, companies can experience informal
divisions in their staff, creating a situation where culturally diverse
employees avoid exposure to each other during break times and after work.
Although there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this scenario, it can hinder
the effectiveness of sharing knowledge, skills and experience, thus curbing
productivity growth and the effectiveness of teams.
Disadvantages in Increasing Diversity in the Workplace
Business
communities admire employers that strive to increase diversity throughout the
workforce. However, companies that implement their strategies for increasing
diversity encounter a number of challenges. The challenges related to
receptiveness to training and prioritizing hiring decisions based on diversity
can transform those challenges into disadvantages.
Mandatory
Training
Increasing
workplace diversity often includes mandatory diversity training, during which
employees, supervisors and managers receive lessons on how best to interact
with customers, clients and employees who represent diverse populations.
Mandatory training for some employees is the equivalent of forcing employees to
accept diversity at all costs, regardless of their personal exposure and
experiences. Training that's forced upon employees may have unintended
consequences. Employees who feel diversity training shouldn't be mandated might
believe instead that the mere concept of diversity is more important than any
other kind of employee training and development the employer provides to
improve employees' skills and capabilities.
Hiring
Manager Authority
In
the name of increasing workplace diversity, employers may feel pressured to
recruit applicants from diverse groups. Many hiring managers believe that
employer edicts concerning increasing diversity require them to overlook more
suitably qualified applicants in favor of applicants who bring diversity -- not
necessarily talent -- to the organization. In these circumstances, hiring
managers may begin to resent how increasing workplace diversity affects their
ability to exercise independent judgment, as well as their authority in making
hiring decisions.
Workplace
Relationships
Employees
who realize the company's goal is to increase diversity may feel they are less
important if they don't represent the typical diverse populations that focus on
race, sex, national origin, age and disability. In a workplace where employees
don't belong to diverse populations, these employees may feel undervalued and
unappreciated based purely on the fact that they don't represent diversity.
They also might believe that employees from diverse groups have more
opportunities for advancement, thus disrupting the working relationships they
once had with colleagues and co-workers.
Myriad
Accommodations
Although
the premise of workplace diversity is mutual respect, making accommodations for
numerous diverse groups' demands can become burdensome on employers, making
diversity management difficult. Employee requests and work constraints based on
religion, national origin, gender and race can become overwhelming if your
workplace has so much diversity that it takes a full-time human resources staff
member just to keep track of accommodating the needs of diverse groups in the
workplace. Examples of accommodating numerous diverse populations include
translating materials into multiple languages and having interpreters on hand
for meetings with employees, accommodating employee absences due to religious
practices or disabilities, as well as adjusting business hours to coincide with
preferred schedules for employees with different work styles and personal
obligations.