In the 19th century managers thought of the work force as an undifferentiated mass composed of identical individuals. Typical of this thinking was Taylor’s notion of scientific management, which was popular early in this century. All workers were to be motivated, trained, and rewarded in the same way. These assumptions worked as long as workers had little education and power. But today’s workers are more educated, have more power, and demand to be treated as individuals. Treating workers as individuals often includes showing special respect for their culture. This means that managers must become more sensitive to cultural differences; they can no longer assume that universalistic theories of management, which ignore culture, are applicable.

If the workplace is to be diverse, what should we expect? There will be some advantages and some disadvantages. On the positive side, there is evidence of greater creativity in heterogeneous work groups, as well as the capability to screen for decisions that would offend particular cultural groups. For instance, General Motors would not have had so much trouble selling the Nova in South America if someone had detected that “no va” (“does not go”) is not the best name for a car in that part of the world. On the negative side, cultural distance results in low attraction, poor communication, lack of coordination, and stress. The above cultural differences and their negative results call for a need to manage diversity in the workplace. As human resources manager, you should approach the diversity issue through leading.  Plans – and the organisation and staff that result from them – are useless without the function of leading and supervising subordinates. The leading function, simply stated, is getting the employees to do the things you want them to do. The diversity management function must be performed in the face-to-face manner of assigning tasks and issuing instructions, transmitting goals and objectives, requesting co-operating, asking for ideas, or otherwise communicating directly with employees. All the same diversity in a workplace should be managed in a way suitable to all in the organization.

Managing Workplace Diversity

Managers communicate for much reason – to motivate, inform, control, and satisfy social needs.  Motivational communication serves the function of influencing the behavior of organisation members.  Communication also serves a control function.

Communication that controls serves the purpose of creating order in an organisation, so that multiple goals and tasks can be pursued.

Communication, as an exchange of meaning, is bounded by culture. The exchange is also dependent on how it is encoded and decoded by the individuals. During the encoding, an idea is translated into a message represented in symbols and language; then during decoding the message is translated into interpreted meanings. This means that the message must be encoded in a form that the receiver will recognize, but the symbols and language used for encoding depend on cultural background, which varies from person to person. As a result of the above, managers need to understand that senders and receivers from different cultures may encode and decode their messages differently, leading to breakdowns in the communication process. These difficulties may arise between persons from different geographical or ethnic groups in the same organisations, country, as well as between persons from different national cultures. A common problem in cross – cultural communication is ethnocentrism, the tendency to consider one’s culture and its values as being superior to others. Very often, such tendencies are accompanied by an unwillingness to try to understand alternative points of view and take seriously the values they represent. This attitude can be highly disadvantageous when trying to conduct the day – to – day business of the organisation and maintain effective working relationships with persons from different cultures. Managing diversity will help to achieve the required results.

Managing diversity in the workplace is more than just an acquired skill; it is “a way of thinking. It involves creating an environment that allows all employees to contribute to organisational goals and experience personal growth. The key is to help employees reach their full potential by creating an environment that will allow the workforce to be motivated and productive and ultimately, be beneficial for the organisation. The objective of managing diversity is to match the workforce to the customer base and the profile of the community. Managing diversity approach and by building on best practice, fostering leadership around equality, promoting cultural change, and improving user involvement and community engagement would help managers to motivate the work force. Managing diversity at the workplace is not simply a question of concerning oneself about the ‘number’ of individuals of different groups in the organization. It should be a semantic change of ‘equal opportunities’, although attempting to ensure that the workplace is integral to valuing diversity.

The focus is not wholly or primarily about groups. This does not mean that organisations with diversity policies should avoid analyzing the outcomes of organisational behaviour in terms of how these affect different groups.  To Irish Consulting Group of U.K., it is hard truth that we are still operating in a society where inequalities based on race, sex, age, disability or sexuality remain barriers to the full realization of individual talent and fulfillment. In a broad sense managing diversity could be regarded as an organisational response to rapid cultural and sociological changes.  Internally, HR managers should manage diversity by focusing on encouraging a climate at the workplace where all employees feel that they are valued and that they contribute to the organization and its development. When the assertion above fails, employee turnover becomes a norm. Likewise, in the external environment, the organization should be flexible and alert to changes occurring in the wider community in which it operate.

Finally, we must be aware that managing diversity is not something that can simply be announced or integrated into the culture of the organisation. It is more likely to be a process that would encourage and develops an attitude that regards employees as ‘us’ rather than “us” and “them”. To be successful, managers should have to produce behaviors that clearly show a positive frame minds and views the diversity as an asset to the organisation as a whole that is welcomed in the organisation to help each individual.

Reasons for Managing Diversity:

The significant demographic changes occurring in our communities, organisational restructuring and current “cry for fairness” require organisations to review their management practices and develop new and creative approaches to managing people to ensure high levels of performance and customer service. Demographic changes in the workforce: Highest ever levels of employment participation by women, including women in leadership and decision making positions; a significant percentage of the workforce with dependent children or ‘career’ responsibilities; increased number of dual income families; changes in the family structures of employees; an aging workforce; high levels of cultural and linguistic diversity; significant changes to organizations as a result of downsizing and outsourcing; impact of globalisation and technology on work practices; trend towards longer hours to business and knowledge work cry for the need in regards to diversity training and management in order to avoid employee turnover.

Advantages of Managing diversity

When employee diversity in the workplace is valued and a planned approach to managing diversity is taken, significant organisational benefits flow: more effective personal/ interpersonal communications; improved team functioning and performance; increased creativity and innovation; greater capacity for problem solving; enhanced equality of opportunity; improved staff health and well being; reduced absenteeism and high staff morale; recruitment and selection from a wider talent pool; increased ability to attract and retain valued employees; improved service and client satisfaction; and, positive community image. Finally, to ensure accountability, Bobby Siu four steps for managers will help to make diversity programs: to make sure that objectives are clearly defined; to select valid indicators; to use appropriate measurement tools; finally, should interpret results properly.

In closing, people are identical in as much as they share the same general physical and mental characteristics.  At the same time, each individual is a unique product of genetic and environmental influences. Likewise, organisations exist and depend on various individuals to help maximize the shareholder’s wealth. Nevertheless, these individual differences have caused a diverse workforce. Through it all, managers must be able to balance both the positive and negative that diversity brings to the work place.  This could be accomplished by means of collaboration, the efforts of the organisational members or the work group to attain the organisation’s goals in an efficient and effective way through planning, organising, leading and controlling resources as well as managing workplace diversity. But above all, as a human resources manager, diversity training, motivation, compromise to attain harmony, and forming cohesive productive teams, respecting ones individuality, and inclusiveness should form part of the centre core for achieving the organisation’s goals.