Managing DIVERSITY Flashcards
Define diversity
The range of traits of a group of people have: gender, age, language, ethnicity, cultural background, disability, sexual orientation or religious belief
why is diversity Important ?
1.it increases skills, ideas, talents and perspectives in an organisation.
2.Diversity in skills, talents, ideas and perspectives increases the **likelihood of innovation, creativity and change in an organisation
what are the benefits of Diversity
Competitive advantage can be strengthened through increasing the diversity in an organisation, for example:
- ** Improved morale and employee loyalty** (sense of belonging and value)
- **Higher levels of creativity and innovation **(opportunities for growth)
- Greater insight into the global marketplace (enhancing market offerings, improving advertising and promotion)
- Greater employees satisfaction (more productive workforces)
Fast and effective problem-solving (cost reduction, opportunities for enhanced market offerings)
Managing and Catering for Diversity (there are many challanges to increasingly diverse workforce and challeges)
Examples inlcude
* Flexible ways to work like part time work.
* Physical supportlike ramps,wider doorways ,automatic doors and office
* Diversity and inclusion training for all employees
this is important
Challenges to diversity in the workplace
**1.conflict
2.racism and discrimination
3.Conflicting woriking styles,opinions and beliefs
4.Dominant cultural values that file to include everyone
5.confusion and misunderstanding **
Strategies to do achieve genuine productive diversity, include:
In order to utilise diversity in the workplace, business must ensure employees feel free to contribute ideas.
- Ensure everyone is heard – hold meetings, organise consultation, have formal and informal ways to collect feedback and suggestions.
- Make it safe to propose ideas – this will encourage creativity and looking at problems in innovative ways.
- Give employees authority to make decisions – if they have the responsibility for making decisions they will feel more valued by the business and be more committed to the outcome.
- Give constructive feedback – work with staff on their ideas and give them support to develop them.
- Implement feedback from staff – participation and innovation will be encouraged if employees see that their input is valued and acted upon
How diversity can create opportunities for business growth.
1.Expanding and forming new markets (growth opportunities)
2.**Advertising or communicating with clients in their preferred language(s) **
3.Greater representation of diverse cultures and backgrounds in advertising (enhances advertising effectiveness)
4.**Leveraging cultural and religious festivals as marketing opportunities **
5.Accessing new market segments in domestic market (e.g. the Afghani community in Australia)
Therefore, with greater workplace diversity can create opportunities for
This is why business should cater for Diversity
“Therefore, with greater workplace diversity can create opportunities for business growth”
Managing diversity therefore becomes a strategy create and leverage business growth opportunities .This strategy helps to
- develop strong relationships with suppliers and the workforce
- **breed innovation of ideas, products and processes **
- generate better ideas and methods through openness in communication
- foster stakeholders’ willingness to do more business
** generate a greater understanding of needs and wants of customers, suppliers and employees **
- increase employee motivation promote creativity in the workforce
Overall message of diversity
Diversity brings a range of different perspectives, cultures and views to global businesses. allowing for the development of business in new markets and contributing towards a strengthened competitive advantage in the global marketplace.
