The difference between the employees of an organization on the basis of functionalities, age, gender, religious, lifestyle and geographic origin, etc is known as workforce diversity. It is a wider term used to refer all the different types of diversity in the workplace. These variations include the following.
- Racial & Ethnical Groups
- Older Workers
- Gender
- Education
- Dual-career Families
- Religions & Culture
- Persons with Disabilities
- Immigrants
- Young Persons with Limited Education or Skills
- Competitive Advantage through Work Force Diversity
- Marketing
- Creativity, Innovation & Problem Solving
- Flexibility
Different Types of Diversity in the Workplace
Racial & Ethnical Groups
Mostly workers of color experience stamps about their class. At times, they confront expectations & misunderstandings based on cultural & ethnic differences.
Older Workers
A trend that is expected to continue through the year 2000, older workers as the world population is growing older. Trend of previously retirement is emerging to be reversing itself, in addition.
Gender (Women in Business)
At largest business organizations women show almost 11.9 percent of corporate officers. However, the number of women in managerial position and entry level has increased from 34 percent in 1983 to 46 percent in 1998.
Read Also: Challenges of HRM
Many women are going toward executive posts. More than 9 million women –owned businesses are present recently, up 400,000 in 1972.
In the United States the number of single –parent, nontraditional households is increasing. This trend is expected to continue because more than half marriages end in divorce. One or more children are involved mostly.
Education
Educational level of employees is another kind of diversity that is found in the work place. With regard to education United States is becoming a bipolar country, with an alarming increase in the illiteracy rate on one hand and with an increasing number of very educated persons on the other hand.
Dual-career Families
Both opportunities and challenges for the organization are presented by the increasing number of dual-career families. Some business organizations have revised their policies against nepotism to permit both partners to work for the same organizations.
Policies are developed by other business organizations to help the spouse of an employee who is transferred. When a business organization desires to transfer an employee to some other location, the spouse of employee is not willing to abandon a better post or may be not able to discover same position in the new location.
Help is offered by many business organizations in detecting a post for the spouse of the transferred employee.
Religion & Culture
The culture and religion based diversity is also enhanced in the organizations due to globalization.
Persons with Disabilities
A disability or handicap bound the type or amount of work a person can perform or make accomplishments unusually difficult.
In 1990 disabilities act of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed forbids discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities.
Immigrants
Recently the allowed level of legal immigration is enhancing. Some are only minimally qualified with little education while others are highly skilled &well educated.
Eagerness to work is one thing common in them. They have brought with them values, attitudes and mores specific to their cultures of home-country.
Young Persons with Limited Education or Skills
Especially during peak periods like holiday buying seasons, thousands of young, unskilled workers are hired each year.
Usually they have limited education, less than high school or high school. Lower skilled workers are unable to perform most of the de-skilled jobs.
Competitive Advantage through Work Force Diversity
The actual impetus to diversify the work force of organization was the legal necessity and social responsibility, for many years. It was right to do so morally ethically.
Recently various organization are approaching struggle of diversity from a business oriented, moral practical perspective. Progressively, for building competitive advantage, diversity can be a powerful tool.
Marketing
It is realize by business organizations that consumers are changing demographically, like the work force. Greater knowledge of preferences and consuming habit of the marketplace can be provided to a business organization by a multicultural workforce.
Read Also: Shifting From Personnel Management to HRM
Business organizations can be assisted by this knowledge in building market campaigns and designing products to fulfill those consumer requirements.
Competitive edge can be provided to business organization by a diverse work force in a global economy by helping understanding of other cultures, consumers and market place requirements.
Creativity, Innovation and Problem Solving
Because people from various backgrounds hold different perspective on problems therefore, work team diversity promotes innovation & creativity.
Wider base of experience diverse work groups have, from which to approach issues. They create more solutions and invent more options than homogenous groups do, when effectively managed.
Flexibility
Because successfully managing diversity needs a corporate culture that bears many various approaches & styles therefore a diverse work force can enhance organizational flexibility.
Less standardized operating methods and less restrictive procedures & policies make organization to become more flexible and effectively able to respond rapidly to environmental changes.
Diversity Management and Affirmative Action Programs
A set of tasks included in integrating diverse employees into work force and employing their diversity to the competitive advantage of the organization can refer as work force diversity management.
