Chapter Outline
· Diversity
· Discrimination
· Biographical Characteristics
· Ability
· Contrast Intellectual and Physical Ability
· Implementing Diversity Management Strategies
· Effective Diversity Programs
We all are not same, managers often forget these differences which cause misunderstandings, miscommunication and conflicts. Through effective diversity management organizations can attract the employees with hi-tech skills, abilities and ideas.
Diversity is a vast term; workplace diversity refers towards any characteristic which make people different from one another.
· The collective strength of experience, skills talents, perspectives and cultures that each employee bring to the company.
· It also includes variety, differences, multiformity (instead of uniformity), or dissimilarities.
· Another definition says, diversity is all the ways in which people differ.
Demographic Characteristics of the U.S. Workforce:
Women today are more educated, full time employed and getting higher salaries than in 1976.
In the last around fifty years, the gap in salaries between white and black has decreased significantly.
Managers need to cope with following diversity issues:
· Workers of age 55 and above increasing. Their medical expenses are increasing. After their retirement, companies might face problems in hunting skilled employees.
· Young employees have to take care of their elderly relatives at home.
· As workforce is getting diverse, so, multilingual training programs need to be introduced.
· Work-life benefits for dual-career couples.
Levels of Diversity:
· Surface level Diversity:
Demographic differences like, age race, gender, ethnicity, that are easily perceived differences.
· Deep-level Diversity:
Difference related with feel, like values, personality, work preferences, etc.
It is to note a difference among things, which in itself is certainly not bad.
Discrimination allow person’ behavior to be influenced by stereotypes about groups of other people. Whether intentional or not, discrimination is very harmful for employees and organizations i.e., increased turnover, negative conflicts, citizenship behavior and reduced productivity etc.
Many of these discriminatory actions are prohibited by law, so are not in practice in many organizations.
Diversity is a vast term; workplace diversity refers towards any characteristic which make people different from one another.
Forms of Discrimination:
Some obvious biological characteristics in which employees differ are age, gender, race, disability and length of service.
Age:
The relationship between age and job performance is becoming important because of three main reasons.
First: There is a set belief that job performance declines with increasing age.
Second: The workforce is aging, in US most of the employers admit that older workers represent a huge potential pool of high-quality applicants.
Third: The US legislation has outlaws the mandatory retirement at the age of 60 or 70.
Surveys show mix results, some employers see older employees full of experience, judgment, commitment and quality of work and strong work ethics. While other employers think that older employees are less flexible and resist new technology. So, age clearly hinder the initial screening for hiring employees.
If we talk about absenteeism, older employees have lower rates of avoidable absence than the younger ones, but both have equal rates of unavoidable absence.
Skills like speed, strength, agility and coordination declines over time which leads to job boredom but at the same time more than 800 studies found that older workers are more satisfied with their work.
Sex:
It is found in studies that, both men and women are equally compatible in problem-solving ability, competitive drive, analytical skills, sociability, motivation or learning ability.
Psychological studies have found that, women are more agreeable and willing to confirm to authority where men are more aggressive and have more expectations for success, but these are very minor differences.
Sex roles have effect on perceptions, if women succeed in traditionally men domain, then such females are less likable, more hostile and less desirable as supervisors.
Women prefer jobs, that supports work-life balance, which obviously effects their career advancements. For example, a mother would prefer to work part-time and flexible working hours. As, if a child is ill, mother is supposed to stay at home.
But things are now getting change, men are taking equal responsibilities at home as women do. Interestingly, parents are less committed to their jobs, dependability than the individuals without children.
Following are the sexual harassment cases filed by men in 2007 and 2009;
Race and Ethnicity:
Race: is a biological heritage, people use to identify themselves.
Ethnicity: is the additional set of cultural characteristics that often overlaps with race.
Race is a controversial issue. Evidences shows that, some people find uncomfortable while interacting with other racial groups, unless there are clear directions to behave in a certain way.
Race and ethnicity greatly relate with employment outcomes such as hiring decisions, pay, performance evaluations, and workplace discrimination.
For example: in hiring process, the selectors favor the applicant of his own race.
Racial and ethnic discrimination also leave negative impact at workplace. Some researches suggest that, there is a positive impact on sales, if organization have positive climate for diversity.
Disability:
ADA (Americans Disabilities Act, 1990) protects the employment rights of individuals with disabilities. Employers are required to make reasonable accommodations, so the physical disabled individuals can easily access their workplace.
Disability is a broader term, “a disabled person is the one, who has any physical or mental impairment, that limits his one or major life activities.”
Examples of disability are: missing limbs, down syndrome, alcoholism, chronic back pain, deafness, diabetes etc.
There are some jobs, where disabled people cannot be accommodated, like, the job of a firefighter, a blind person cannot become a bus driver.
But technological advancements are reducing employment barriers for disables, Example, a person who cannot walk and he is educated, he can teach online.
Studies suggest that, disable workers receive higher performance evaluations but still they are less likely to be hired.
Other Biographical Characteristics:
Other biographical characteristics are: tenure, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity.
· Tenure: It refers towards seniority- productivity relationship. Seniority is the time spent on some particular job. Tenure is taken as work experience. Studies have shown positive relationship between seniority and job productivity.
Absenteeism is the only factor which is negatively associated with seniority and productivity.
If we talk about turnover, as employee is getting senior, there is less chance for him to quit.
Evidences have shown that, job tenure and job satisfaction have positive relationship.
· Religion: there is always a conflict between the people from different religions and sects. Countries have made laws, to guide employers, not to discriminate employees due to their religious beliefs, but still, this is the big issue in organizations.
Example: the propaganda against Muslims, and labelling them as terrorists.
· Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: Many organizations have made their laws, to protect employees on the basis or sexual orientation. Example: IBM, Intel, Motorola offer benefits to gays.
Avoiding the benefits, many gay, lesbian and bisexual employees hide their gender identity due to the fear of being discriminated.
In 2001, only 8 companies in the fortune 500 had special policies on gender identity, and in 2006 this number jumps to 124.
IBM says “We believe that having strong transgender and gender identification policies is a natural extension of IBM’ corporate culture.”
We all are not created equal in our abilities. Everyone is born with certain strengths and weaknesses.
Ability: It is the current capacity to perform different tasks in a job. Abilities are made up of two factors which are: intellectual and Physical.
Intellectual Abilities:
Intellectual abilities are abilities needed to perform mental activities, i.e., thinking, reasoning and problem solving.
Intellectual abilities are consisted of seven most cited dimensions, which are: number aptitude, verbal comprehension, perceptual speed, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, spatial visualization and memory. Each of these is described in the following image.
Research suggest that GMA (General Mental Ability) vary very little across different cultures, that means the mental ability of people in US is not different than the people of Libya or any other country, keeping the economic and educational differences in count.
Jobs requirements vary in terms of intellectual ability, if the job is complex in terms of information processing demands, then more general intelligence and verbal abilities will be required to perform it successfully.
The correlation between intelligence and job satisfaction is almost zero, because they critically evaluate the job conditions.
Physical Abilities:
Along with intellectual abilities, physical abilities have been and will remain valuable. There are nine basic abilities which are required to perform the physical tasks, these are: Dynamic strengths, trunk strength, static strength, explosive strength, extent flexibility, dynamic flexibility, body coordination, balance and stamina. These abilities vary in different individuals.
Above mentioned nine abilities are described in the picture given below.
The Role of Disabilities:
The importance of abilities can create problems while formulating workplace policies that recognize diversity in terms of disability status. It is discriminatory to make blanket assumptions about disabled individuals. It is also possible to make accommodations for disabilities.
Diversity management lets everyone know and make them sensitive to the needs and differences of others.
Attracting Selecting, Developing, and Retaining Diverse Employees:
Attract diverse workforce through targeted recruiting messages to specific demographic groups which are underrepresented in the workforce, advertise in colleges, universities, join different demographic groups who represent minorities or speak about women empowerment, mention about diverse workforce prominently in recruiting material and messages.
Research has shown that minorities and women are highly interested in the employers, who make specific efforts for diverse workforce.
Companies who fail to get minorities and women in their managerial positions, sends negative message about diversity climate of the organization.
Such organizations, that don’t discourage the discriminatory behavior against applicants on the basis of Demographic Characteristics during selection process are more likely to face problems.
If we talk about Personality, the employee who have similar personality traits as of manager or co-worker is more likely to get promotions and other benefits. In collectivistic cultures, similarity to supervisors is more important for advancements in jobs and in individualistic cultures similarity to peers is more important. That means deep-level diversity factors are more important in shaping people’ reactions to one another than the surface-level characteristics.
Diversity in Groups:
In today’ world, most companies require work in group settings, so the group members need to communicate with one another and need to establish common way of looking at and accomplishing organizational goals.
Whether diversity in groups hurt or helps, it depends upon situations, tasks nature etc., sometimes it hurts and sometimes it facilitates. If the task is innovative then, then diverse workforce can help a lot.
Organizations put their maximum efforts to get benefit out of diversity, including recruiting and selection policies, training and development practices. There are three distinct components of diversity management program.
· First: teaching managers about the legal framework for equal employment opportunity and fair treatment for all people regardless of their demographic characteristics.
· Second: teaching managers about, how diverse workforce can help the firm grow in the diverse market.
· Third: they encourage development practices to enhance the skills and abilities of all workers, and acknowledging the fact, how differences in perspective can be valuable for organizations to improve performance.
One short session without strategies is not enough to encourage effective diversity management, as it is observed, organizations that provided trainings were not consistently more likely to represent minorities and women on company’ top positions than organizations that did not.
Strategies should be able to measure the representation of minorities and women in the top management and should hold manager accountable if any discrimination is seen.
Researchers suggest that, diversity can promote positive attitudes among people;
· Diversity experience can undermine Stereotypical attitudes.
· If the viewer is motivated and able to consider new perspective on others.
· If the perceiver has good experience, then he will try to suppress the stereotypes and generative thoughts.
· If the perceiver has positive experience of stereotype undermining is repeatedly frequent.
To better manage diversity, managers should look for any hidden barriers to advancement, make selection system more transparent, improve recruiting practices and provide training for those employees.