Diversity Management: Understanding the Concept
Civil Engineering & Research Associates (CERA) is a Sydney based company and is engaged in civil engineering, planning and smart structure. CERA is moving towards development by joining hands with many construction companies and Universities. They are expanding globally to expand their operations all over the world. CERA is looking forward to make best policies and strategies for competitive advantage and become socially responsible.
Diversity Management is the process of recognizing and giving importance to the individual differences and skills. This is the concept of accepting and respecting each individual in an organization. These differences can be on the basis of race, gender, socioeconomic status, age, physical qualities, political or religious beliefs and any other ideologies. Diversity Management means to examine these differences and treat them with safe, positive and nurturing environment. It is a process of understanding each employee with tolerance, with moving on to embracing each other. This is a concept of giving equal opportunity to each employee.
History – Understanding Diversity Management helps to understand the concept better. It gained recognition in USA in 1980s. This appeared when President Ronald Reagan forced everyone to pursue equality and affirmation actions in the USA. He persuaded US firms to engage them in equality to take competitive advantage. Diversity Management was made as a legal constraint for all firms. In fact, he spread the message that promotes diversity not because it’s legal, but because it is good for business. From then onwards researches started to test the hypothesis and made many researches to test the benefits of diversity management for business and how it can make it successful.
Diversity management has various benefits in an organization. Firstly, diverse employees will give variety of opinion while handling customer complaints. When different ideas of different people come together, they give creative solutions to satisfy the client. Diversity will help the company to customize the client needs and satisfy them to gain competitive advantage in the market. Secondly, diversity increases productivity when different talents work for a common goal. Thirdly, diversity helps to resolve the issue in a very creative manner as there are many diverse minds coming together to operate and make a decision (Andrade, 2010). Fourthly, diversity management will help to feel included which with attract and retain talent, this appreciation will bring competitive edge for an organization. Diversity brings synergy in teams and increases communication skills which is profitable for everyone Applying proper diversity management process will help to reduce wasteful litigation expenses too.
Benefits of Diversity Management in an Organization
Gender diversity has increased performance and now more and more women are coming in leadership roles. Women have more analytical and coordination skills than men and they possess them with much ease. Women in senior positions help to manage diversity in a better way. Women are higher on the scores of social sensitivity. Guy Higgins commented that performance is improved in cognitive terms and there should be a change in the differences that we see people. He recommends hiring 50% women if a company wants to promote diversity. As per the research conducted, Mckinsey Global Institute has concluded that diversity relates to performance in an organization. Lack of gender diversity in a company leads to below par performance in 366 companies (Heskett, 2015). With diverse leadership, companies tend to become more successful. When comparing management styles of women and men where it was found that both have their own qualities and excel in different areas. Women, however, have a good decision making process and are able to manage diverse background people in a better way. Hence, it has been concluded that women’s participation is important in an organization. Even if they are not given senior position, they can hold a good position in organization for overall better performance. CERA should make sure that they employee at least 30% women and give good rewards and positions to women with better skills. This will lead to overall motivation, coordination and a better environment within the organization.
The diagram presented by Kramar in the year 2014, it is evident that Diversity management is a strategic decision where Managers put their effort to develop it. Organization’s values, culture are the inputs into the diversity management process. All goals, mission, vision, strategy is aligned towards diversity management. All similarities and difference in organizations are analyzed to achieve the goal of diversity. All legal aspects, economic conditions are fulfilled to give the desired results of diversity equality with desired culture. This effort and process of diversity management will help to enhance performance of an organization. I personally agree to this process and feel that an organization is filled with different characteristic people. Policies should be made by CERA so that all members are given equal treatment. Managing Diversity is a process of change in culture to gain a competitive edge and being more effective. This is a process of innovation and adapting to change effectively.
Gender Diversity and Performance
Diversity Management is important both for employees and company’s productivity. With Diversity management employees having mutual respect for each other; they perform better in teams and recognize each other’s culture, skills and qualities. Diversity and respecting each other will enable employees to understand each other’s difference and resolve any conflict occurred in their working. Diversity is good for business reputation as satisfied employees’ gives best results (Mayhew, 2017). CERA can also take advantage of benefits of Diversity Management. Respecting women and giving them equal opportunities will help company’s progress further and achieve their goals in a better way. This change in behavior of employees comes in when top leaders spend time and developing and transforming their team. This needs a lot of commitment from both employees and leaders. CERA should make interventions to help women to become better leaders and design conditions under which they can perform better. They should be motivated by giving equal work, wage increase as per performance. Inequality with women is the biggest challenge that a company has to overcome. Many women leave their jobs after they are not satisfied with policies of the company. CERA should identify such females who have talent and develop their skills for the job (McKinsey & Company, 2015). CERA can examine that are their unconscious bias in the minds of people and how policies for them will help to cure it. Example: Company can make a policy of calling mothers and taking care of them while they are on maternity leave. This will motivate women who are otherwise being biased and ignored in important tasks.
In better recruitment process and to promote diversity the organization has to design a good recruitment diversity strategy. Supporting minority classes help to make a good brand image of the employer. While recruiting, the CERA HR department should consider diverse members of the company’s workforce. Asking and encouraging for employee referrals from these diverse backgrounds will be the first strategy of promoting diversity. For external sources, Company can partner with external sources like social media groups, colleges, media outlets to promote organization as an open minded workplace to work (Smykal, 2015). CERA can attend minority members’ fairs to choose potential applicants. CERA can educate their hiring managers and talent acquisition department to take care of these issues while hiring candidates for their department. The next strategy CERA HR can perform is giving equal pay to classes in an organization. Pay given should as per their qualification, performance and experience irrespective of gender, age, color. Decisions can be made on the budgets allotted to these areas.
Strategic Decision of Diversity Management
To promote diversity, CERA can implement few policies for their recruitment strategy. Attracting and increasing workplace diversity is an important strategy to achieve competitive edge in the market. Recruiter in CERA can follow a few steps to achieve them. It is advised that Managers guide their HR staff to write a job posting more carefully. To attract diverse candidates, it is important to write good language for the job. Like words like ‘ambitious’ and ‘dominating’ attract male candidates and words like soft skills and patient attracts female candidates (Ideal, 2017). Policies offered for diversity includes flexible environment. Young generation candidates require balance between work and life, so CERA should make them flexible with their personal schedules. Women are attracted to companies which offer a flexible schedule to them, so CERA can make policies which allow women to take leave whenever they want and finish their work at home or any other day they feel comfortable. Sometimes employees’ leaves job due to distance, so CERA should offer flexibility to work at home. CERA should also begin personality assessment test while recruits diverse candidates. This is a great tool to assess motivation and personality of a candidate. This will allow them to hire a diverse workforce. CERA’ source of recruitment will also affect their recruitment for diverse candidates. Employee referrals will bring people, which are similar to them. Men usually refer each other for job while women prefer to search job through third party websites. CERA should make an attractive web page for HR to attract diverse candidates. CERA needs to strategically plan for diverse candidates by selecting the desired group up to final selection (Community Foundations of Canada, 2017).
For recruitment of these posts, different sources can be used like employee referrals, campus recruitments, third party websites etc. As one position is for an experienced employee and another for a fresher then different sources can be used by CERA.
For Senior Engineer, recruitment can be best done by employee referral and third party websites. To promote diversity, employee referrals can be encouraged from the same group of people which CERA wants to employee. Like if there is any employee who is performing very well and is a male candidate studied from ABC University, his referral can be asked as he might have somebody similar in his group. And, if CERA desires to recruit any female staff, third party websites like indeed, LinkedIn is helpful. Social Media is also a good source of job seekers these days. Cost of recruitment for employee referrals, social media recruitment is very less, however, for third party recruitment it is approx. 6000 $.
Importance of Diversity Management for Employees and Productivity
For recruiting a Graduate Engineer, campus recruitments are the best source as fresher’s are available in bulk there. However, it will be difficult for CERA to personally visit the University for just one candidate as it may lead excessive expenses. CERA can invite applications from University members and interview candidates, which are best suitable as per their diverse criteria.
While searching for a job, I personally feel that I will take advice from my family and colleagues too. In this era of social media, it is very easy to search for friends and colleagues who are working or worked in an organization where I have applied for. Even if the company is advertising well, it is important for an organization to satisfy their internal staff as they are the best marketing persons for your company. An employee should be satisfied from the beginning when he joins the company by making him clear about the policies of the company up to the moment he leaves the company (Kreitz, 2007). Even when the employee leaves a company, he should be treated well and should be paid off all his dues on time without any useless deductions. This makes overall a good impression for an employee and he will be positive about the company even when he leaves. These employees or any employee currently working within a good environment will share his positive experience with aspiring candidates. Views from friends and family greatly affect the decision of joining a company. Positive feedback from existing employees again promotes diversity and recruits a person at very cost effective expenses.
The next step which is important after inviting application is selecting the right candidate to maintain diversity. There are various interviews conducted to make sure that the right candidate is being selected. There are structured interviews which uses physical ability test if the candidates use hearing instrument or is physically challenged. Focused and standardized interview is done to make sure that person has qualities for the job (Green, et al., 2008). Work samples and drug tests are done to make that the person has experience and is a good candidate for CERA’s future.
Few techniques which CERA should introduce for good selection are: Firstly, there should be a thorough reference check list. This is divided in two areas:
A) To allow the search committee to assess their qualifications and
B) to make sure that are interested in the job.
Recruitment Strategies to Promote Diversity
To standardize this CERA’s recruiting team should make sure that they ask the same questions, time allotted for equality. CERA should restrict them to draw a conclusion for a candidate at an early stage. Assumptions based on ethnic background, age, religion should be avoided. Only legal information should be asked before hiring a candidate. CRA’s team should be clear that which topic is not allowed to be discussed with the candidate. Structure interview will help to minimize the personal bias in an interview (Guilherme, Keating, & Hoppe, 2005). This personal bias can have a negative effect on candidates being interviewed. A good candidate can be dropped due to this. Common interview bias like Halo effect, horn effect, and stereotyping, non-verbal bias should be explained to the interviewer so that this can be avoided by them during the interview (University of Lowa, 2017). An interviewer should physically challenge candidates about how would they perform their work, his abilities, skills but he should not ask how the person got physical challenged, how much leave, he will require for his condition to be treated and don’t help the candidates unless he asks for. Interviewing disable candidates is challenging and anything can hurt them during the interview.
Selection techniques like standardization, cognitive tests, and structured tests cannot be much useful for candidates who are technically sound with no disability. Although they may feel hurt by these procedures, but it the role of talent management to open up with these candidates during the interview and discuss with them about the long term vision of the company related to diversity management. When these candidates will come to know about CERA’s vision, then will feel proud that they are going to join a reputed company with a strong vision and values for employees (European Commission, 2012).
Thus, we can conclude that CERA should make above mentioned policies on recruitment and selection to bring diversity in their workforce. Diversity increases productivity and bring creative solutions into the business to satisfy their clients. CERA must train their selection team to recruit the best employees with hurting their sentiments. Proportion of women and minority class should be increased keeping in mind their skills, making other factors stable.
Conclusion
Workplace diversity is an opportunity for CERA. By ensuring the diversity at the workforce, is helps for the strategic development of the goals. CERA should place some strategies, so that the company can improve diversity in the workplace. Competitive advantage can be achieved with the aid of diversity management which will automatically help the company in getting positive effects.
References
Andrade, S. (2010, March 26). 6 advantages of Workplace Diversity. Retrieved from https://saharconsulting.wordpress.com/2010/03/26/6-advantages-of-workplace-diversity/
Community Foundations of Canada. (2017). Diversity at Work: Increasing diversity through improved recruitment and hiring practices. Retrieved from https://hrcouncil.ca/hr-toolkit/diversity-recruitment.cfm
European Commission. (2012). Implementation Checklist for Diversity Management. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/justice/discrimination/files/checklist_diversitymanagement_en.pdf
Green, K., López, M., Wysocki, A., Kepner, K., Farnsworth, D., & Clark, J. (2008). Diversity in the Workplace: Benefits, Challenges, and the Required Managerial Tools. University of Florida. Retrieved from https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/HR/HR02200.pdf
Guilherme, M., Keating, C., & Hoppe, D. (2005). Diversity Management. European Commission. Retrieved from https://www.ces.uc.pt/icopromo/documents/05%20-%20Centro%20de%20Estudos%20Socais,Coimbra%20-%20Diversity%20Management%20Workshop.pdf
Heskett, J. (2015, November 04). Why Does Gender Diversity Improve Financial Performance? Retrieved from https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-does-lack-of-gender-diversity-hurt-performance?cid=spmailing-12393206-WK%20Newsletter%2011-4-2015%20%281%29-November%2004,%202015
Ideal. (2017). Workplace Diversity Through Recruitment – A Step-By-Step Guide. Retrieved from https://ideal.com/workplace-diversity/
Kreitz, P. (2007). Best Practices for Managing Organizational Diversity.
Mayhew, R. (2017). Why Is Diversity in the Workplace Important to Employees? Retrieved from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/diversity-workplace-important-employees-10812.html
McKinsey & Company. (2015, November). A CEO’s guide to gender equality. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/a-ceos-guide-to-gender-equality
Smykal, E. (2015, December 08). 6 Metrics to Improve Your Diversity Recruiting in 2016. Retrieved from https://www.jibe.com/ddr/6-metrics-to-improve-your-diversity-recruiting-in-2016/#sthash.8OZf2pUK.dpuf
University of Lowa. (2017). The Selection Process. Retrieved from https://diversity.uiowa.edu/selection-process
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