The Australian Multicultural Foundation ( Amf )

Diversity is a wonderful asset to an organization and brings with it many benefits. Employees bring in their own personal experiences and knowledge to the team (Burns & Kerby, 2012). Having diverse teams allows for the possibility to fix a problem or perfect a process by using different employee’s experiences and past knowledge to find solutions. A diverse workforce can drive economic growth and capture a greater share of the consumer market (Burns & Kerby, 2012). With diversity as a core value, the recruitment pool is widened to find the most qualified candidate and reduces employee turnover as a result. An organization can be highly competitive with a diversity initiative by adapting to a changing environment (Burns & Kerby, 2012).

The purpose of this paper is designed to introduce, educate, and promote diversity within your company. Your company will be shown the merits of diversity and how diversity within your organization can be a benefit. This paper will be broken down into three main areas: Benefits of Diversity, Challenges of Diversity, and Recommendations for an effective diversity within your organization..

In recent years, diversity and inclusion have emerged as an essential business practice. Why are diversity and inclusion so critical to organizations nowadays? Do they really help organizations achieve better results? Why is it a unique issue in the 21st century workplace? To answer these questions, organizations should look into factors such as globalization. Globalization increases interactions around the world and diversifies the profile of the workforce, which also contributes to the changing composition of the current workforce. While globalization offers extensive opportunities for organizations, it also imposes many challenges that require new responses. Organizations are not only looking for ways to effectively manage a diverse workforce but also to leverage it to achieve better outcomes.

Diversity in the organization can affect the employees and their behavior in many ways. The effect can be positive and negative in the same time. The positive effect is, it will wider employee knowledge, skills, and attitude which will allow the organization to become more competitive globally. Higher diversity of employees mean higher diversity of knowledge, skills and abilities. Sharing experience inspires innovative thinking (Claudia Quaiser-Pohls, 2013, p. 41). Today in the modern workplace, most organizations will have

Diversity has been a hot-button topic for many of today’s companies. Diversity programming and initiatives are regularly implemented by organizations of all types and sizes. As it relates to an organization’s human resources operation, diversity will continue to be an ever-changing term as the work towards equitable treatment for all continues.

This paper is the first part of a training manual that will help employees to have a better understanding of diversity in the work place and how to act towards different diversity issues that may arise in the workplace. It will also give current statistics and recent trends of the demographics in the United States as well as the forecasted trends. Also included will be a rough outline of the entire contents of the manual and the table of contents for the manual.

Diversity acknowledge that people are differ in many ways, such as age, gender, social status, disability, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity and culture (Kossek, Lobel & Brown, 2005). Nowadays, diversity has increasingly become the most valuable aspect of HRM areas. Develop countries such as Australia and New Zealand hold multicultural workforce as one of the most important dimension of diversity, where there are a large number of international migrants with different cultural backgrounds (Shen, Chanda, D’Netto & Monga, 2009). Studies from McLeod, Lobel and Cox (1996) and Wilson & Iles (1999) point out that a diverse workforce has a better-quality solution to brainstorming task, display more cooperative behaviour, and can raise organizational efficiency, effectiveness and profitability. Hence, utilization of diversity allows organization to increase the organization cooperative behaviour and competitive advantage (Cassell 1996). However, in groups where people from different cultural and ethnic background are working together, differences may occur in management styles, attitude towards hierarchy, approaches to group work, and ways of expressing

It is very important for leaders and managers to embrace a diverse workforce. Because diversity could possibly add influence to the market share, and could widen the talent in the recruitment process for the organization. In addition, the organizations could benefit from the various perspectives and experiences; for example, different races, gender, and age groups within the workforce. However, a diverse workforce might also be challenging; for instance, leaders and managers may spend too much time in promoting

Diversity is what makes people different, not just culturally but in human differences. Having a multitude of differences in the workforce gives an organization the ability to use many ideas to reach a common goal. A person could say that a diverse group of people together in one room can accomplish greater achievements than a room filled with the same types of individuals. Managers understand the concept of diversity, and how important diversity is to the success of a company’s ability to implement programs that continue to develop a harmonious and diverse workplace. The recognition that diversity is a reality in the workforce has generated an enormous amount of activity over the years among leaders in business, government, and civil

According to the University of Oregon (1999), diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. Diversity is needed in all businesses and organizations. The reason diversity is needed is because different perspectives are needed to look at all the issues in an organization. Diversity gives a fresh look at problem solving and this is where creativity happens. In order for diversity to thrive it needs an atmosphere of acceptance and respect. This paper will look at four definitions of diversity and its audiences from: Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), University of Edinburgh, Havering London Borough Government, and Wal-Mart. This paper will also describe the author of this paper’s view on diversity and compare and contrast this definition

The general line of reasoning is that if we learn to incorporate each other’s diverse traits and characteristics in the workplace, we can then use these differences to foster an innovative environment, which will give the company a competitive advantage over the competitors that do not accept workforce diversity. According to the Allied Academies International Conference, “Diversity is rapidly becoming a common practice among companies due to the increasing number of minorities entering the job market today. As these groups become more prevalent throughout companies, upper-level employees are facing numerous challenges when determining what changes must take place to create a positive working environment for everyone. Management is responsible for the development and implementation of effective policies directly relating to diversity to ensure the acceptance of minorities into the workplace and to aid in minorities’ success through equal opportunities and treatment.” (Marcia L. James, 2001, Academy for Studies in International Business Proceedings)

In the modern world, workforce diversity has developed to be among the most imperative elements. Many organizations including Apple Inc. and all over the world have employed diversity managers to help develop effective workforce diversification (Podsiadlowski et al., 2013). The increased interest in workforce diversity is not surprising. As organization move to develop organizational structures including teams and groups as well as multinational workforce, effective communication within diversified workforce becomes

Organizations have been becoming increasingly diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. This diversity brings substantial potential benefits such as better decision making, greater creativity and innovation, and more successful marketing to different types of customers. But, increasing cultural differences within a workforce also bring potential costs in higher turnovers, interpersonal conflicts, and communicational breakdowns. The utilities of diversity training and the essential managerial skills required for effectively managing diversity will also be discussed.

In response to the growing diversity in the workforce around the world, many companies have instituted specific policies and programs to enhance recruitment, inclusion, promotion, and retention of employees who are different from the privileged echelons of society. The privileged groups may vary from one country to the next. The workforce of the world is a dynamic environment, and in order for this dynamism to be put to use for the benefit of organizations, they must develop an effective strategy for managing diversity. Global Diversity Management refers to the voluntary organizational actions that are designed to create greater inclusion of employees from various backgrounds into the formal and informal organizational

Diversity in workforce “include, but are not limited to: age, ethnicity, ancestry, gender, physical abilities/qualities, race, sexual orientation, educational background, geographic location, income, marital status, military experience, religious beliefs, parental status, and work experience”(Thomas 1992). Diversity in the workforce is initially perceived as a response toward the increasing diversity of the consumers in the market (Agocs & Burr, 1996). From there, it has been observed that capitalizing on existing differences among the employees provide benefits to the organization. Diversity in workforce fosters and encourages