Managing Cultural Diversity in Workplace
‘Managing diversity is an integral part of effective human resource management.’ The purpose of managing diversity is to create an environment that provides the opportunity to the employees to overcome the organisational objectives. It is not like giving advantage to any particular group or person; it is providing additional insight among all the employees of an organisation to achieve the target in their workplace. It is having a mixture of people with different group identities within the same organization. Three main approaches can be derived while discussing about diversity management: Equal Employment Opportunity or Anti Discrimination, Affirmative Action and the Diversity Management. While Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Actions are legal approaches which are needed to be developed, implemented and practiced inside of an organization, the Diversity Management is more likely to take the initiative to practice the other two legal approaches for the well-run of the organisation. After the discussion about the equal employment opportunity approach, this essay gradually highlights the affirmative action and diversity management programs. Considering the facts, research statements and the examples, finally it justifies the importance of Managing Diversity in today’s work places, which is an integral part of effective human resource management.
Among the three approaches of managing diversity, the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) or the Anti Discrimination is an approach which means giving people a fair chance to succeed by avoiding discrimination based on unrelated job factors such as age, race, sex or nationality. It is a condition of changing workplace environment in the areas of discrimination, sexual harassment etc. to ensure equal access to all employees in their workplaces. This is a legal approach of imposing legal obligations and liabilities on employers. The equal employment opportunity is segmented into various legal acts. For example: The Australian Workplace Relations Act of 1996, The Australian Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, Prohibition of Discrimination Act 1966, The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 which was developed by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) of USA, The Oppression of Women and Children (Special Enactment) Act of 1995 in Bangladesh etc. It is observable that, all these legal steps has been developed only to ensure that each and every employee of an organisation should get equal treatment. So, it is the employers (HR executives) duty to determine that what sort of legal approach they should adopt for their organisation. Considering the organisation’s environment, employers can also adopt more than one legal approach.
Workplace Relations Act 1996 of Australia deals with the industrial relations system and processes which is included with the anti-discrimination provisions. It is the culmination of process of industrial relations reform in Australia which has been underway since early 1980s (Stone 2002). The main theme of this legal approach is to increase the work force diversity by eliminating the discrimination on race, sex, age, disability, family responsibilities, maternal leave, religion, marital status, family status, political preferences, ethical beliefs, minor physical disabilities etc. This act also emphasizes the need to assist employees in balancing their work and family responsibilities and decentralisation of industrial negotiations. The amended of the 1964 Civil Right Act of United States in 1972 EEO Act clearly says that, an employer cannot discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, religion, sex or national origin with respect to employment. In the late 1990s, the government of Bangladesh took the initiative to develop a legal act regarding women discrimination and finally in 1995 the ‘Oppression of Women and Children (Special Enactment) Act, 1995’ has been introduced.
Multinational organizations like Coles Myer, Westpac is now following these types of legal approaches regarding equal employment opportunity for women and minority. Since 1993, the proportion of women working in Westpac has tripled from 11% to 34% because of providing family services to women. Westpac offers its women employees paid maternity leave, paternity and adoption leave, up to 52 weeks’ leave in total for new mothers, establishment of four child-care centres, development of breastfeeding policy, guarantees to new mothers of a return to the same position, opportunities to work part-time until a new child’s second birthday, (In Bangladesh, ‘Bangladesh Army’ is also practicing EEO approaches in commissioned officer recruitment and selection. Tribal people from Chittagong Hill Tract areas are getting recruited as soldiers. Bangladesh Army also started recruiting females in commission rank since 2002. Women also have to perform the 18 months “Bangladesh Military Academy Long Course Training (BMA Long Course Training)” together with men to get qualified in the commission rank. Women are getting equal salaries like men and they are also getting promoted according to their performance. These females face exactly the same opportunity and hard training procedure like males. They are also getting promoted accordingly. Although men and women are treated equally in every steps of recruiting, training, promotion, transferring, salaries and compensations, sick pay, women also get the opportunity of maternity leave because it is their right to take a vacation in that time. Bangladesh Army also practices pension scheme and retirement / early retirement programs, pension programs, health cover for the aged/senior officers, (http://www.bangladesharmy.gov/).
While EEO aims to ensure that anyone regardless of race, color, sex, religion, nationality or age has an equal chance for a job based on his/her qualifications, Affirmative Action (AA) goes beyond equal employment opportunity by requiring the employer to make an extra effort to hire and promote those in the protected groups – female and minorities. It is like an umbrella term, consist of a wide range of programs that requires firms to make special efforts to recruit, hire and promote women and members of minority groups. Like the EEO, it is also a specific legal program imposed on the employer. This legal obligation is implemented by the employer for the employees to eliminate and prevent job discrimination in all phases of employment. For Example, in Australia, the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act of 1986 ensures taking positive steps by means of legislative reform and management programs in organisations in order to achieve demonstrable programs towards EEO. This Act was amended and re-titled as ‘Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999’ - (the EOWW Act). All companies who have more than 100 employees must have this law which means let women ‘fair go’. These companies need to submit the annual report to the government agencies like Affirmative Action Agency regarding their Affirmative Action practices in their organisation. Employers who failed to comply with the reporting requirements can be barred from government facilities, programs and they names also may be named in the parliament, (Stone 2002). Affirmative Action thus includes specific actions in recruitment, hiring, promotions and compensations that are designed to eliminate the present effects of past discrimination. The most important measure of an affirmative action program is its results. The program should result in measurable, yearly improvements in hiring, training and promotion of minorities and females in all parts of the organisation.
Both the EEO and AA programs are legal approaches need to be adopted by the employer for the organization. On the other hand Diversity Management is not a legal requirement, rather it is consists of the activities which are involved in integrating non-traditional employees such as, women and minorities into the work force and using their diversity to the firm’s competitive advantages, as well as considering other work force diversity characteristics that need to be addressed to ensure fair and effective utilization of employees. It is a multi-shaped term of HRM practice, combination of the EEO and AA approaches that can be used to describe the about the increased number of nationalities, number of female employees, number of young and aging workers, working in a workplace. Diversity management can be a valuable resource for an organisation if the benefits of the diversity can be maximized and thus it can be turned into productive diversity. While migration is taking place in developed countries like Australia, USA, Canada, these countries will definitely face the cultural diversity more rapidly day-by-day. So, it is very important for these countries to establish and implement diversity management programs in the organisations. This HRM practice allows non-traditional and minority group employees to work more effectively and efficiently within the existing structures and environment of the organisation. Different types of organisations need different types of approaches to be adopted according to their employee need. More specifically, organisation will adopt and practice diversity programs according to its organisational culture and environment. Managing diversity does not mean controlling or containing diversity, it means enabling every member to perform to his or her potential.
Superstore giants like Coles Myer, Woolworths are now recruiting people by maintaining and following the anti-discrimination approaches. In their stores, a large number people from different backgrounds and cultures are working in various departments which is improving the yearly turnover of these organisations.
A library and the collections held within it is a reflection of the community it represents. Similarly, a diversed workplace implies about an organization – how successful it is. Managing diversity is serious about treating everyone well- workers as well as executives, women as well as men. If all employees are treated equally, the outcome will be equal also. So, recruiting a diverse workforce is not just socially responsible, rather it is a necessity now-a-days. Today’s business must have a global focus, not only the local focus. Companies need to promote diversity primarily because it makes good business sense. So, organisations have to take it seriously and build it into day-to-day management. The present overall picture in marketplaces are showing us that women and minorities will represent the lion’s share of labor force growth over the foreseeable future because, globalisation of markets increasingly requires employers to hire minority members with cultural, language and other skills to deal with the customers. As a result, companies today are increasingly striving for racial, ethnic and sexual work force balance, ‘not because of legal imperatives, but as a matter of enlightened economic self-interest’, (Coil & Rice 1993). Increasingly, in other words, more and more employers are coming to the realisation that they have to actively recruit and maintain a diverse work force in order to tap the changing demographics in the country, as well as to take advantage of the contributions that diverse work force can make toward customer goodwill, marketing and other functional areas of the business. Organisations like Westpac, Coles Myer are the best examples of Diversity Management practitioners. From top to bottom, these companies practice and follow the Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action plans for its employers. The Coles Myer management team nurtures all the differences that make their employees unique such as: culture and race, age and gender, race and religion, physical ability, education different ways of thinking, talents and specialities.(http://careers.colesmyer.com/content.asp?newsid=90314). Through diversity management they optimise the contributions of their workforce in an environment that works for everyone. Ongoing training, growth and development opportunities ensure employee performance and job satisfaction maximised. In conclusion I can say that Managing Diversity is certainly an important part of effective human resource management.
References:
Coles Myer,[online],Available: (http://careers.colesmyer.com/content.asp?newsid=90314) (Accessed 09 August 2004)
Bangladesh Army, [online], Available: http://www.bangladesharmy.gov/ (Accessed 06 August 2004)
Australian Government Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency, [online], Available: http://www.eowa.gov.au/about_equal_opportunity.asp/ (Accessed on 09 August 2004)
Coil, J. & Rice, C. 1991, Managing Work-Force Diversity in the 90s: The Impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Employee Relations Law Journal, Vol. 18, no.4, pp.547-565.
Dessler, Griffiths, Lloyd-Walker & Williams. 1999, Human Resource Management, Prentice Hall, Australia.
Dessler, Griffiths & Lloyd-Walker. 2004, Human Resource Management, 2nd ed. Pearsons Australia Pvt. Ltd, Australia.
Stone, R. J. 2002, Human Resource Management, 4th ed, John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, Sydney, Australia.
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