Promoting Diversity and Inclusiveness in the Workplace: A Workshop for Ansarada Team Leaders

This article discusses a workshop designed for Ansarada team leaders on promoting diversity and inclusiveness in the workplace. The workshop includes group discussions, debates, videos, quizzes, case studies, and role plays. The article emphasizes the importance of diversity and inclusiveness in the workplace and how it can benefit the organization and its employees. The article also discusses the different dimensions of diversity and how managers can harness them to create a productive environment where everyone feels valued.

Running head: ASSESSMENT 3
Emotional Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence and Diversity
Student’s name:
Name of the university:
Author’s note:

1ASSESSMENT 3
Ansarada is a private organisation and it works in the technology industry as it is a global
provider of virtual data rooms. Ansarada was established in the year 2005 and it has it
headquarter in Sydney. Ansarada has more than 150 employees and the CEO of the organisation
segregates the employees by a different team. There are around 12 team leaders within the
organisation who will be the participants of the workshop. The topic of the workshop will be
‘promoting diversity and value of inclusiveness’.
Part 1
Brief introduction of Promoting diversity and value of inclusiveness
There are mainly three dimensions of the diversity, organisational dimension, external
dimension and internal dimension. Primary and secondary dimensions of personality may be
used as the source of discrimination or the advantage. There may be implicit bias towards the
individuals who are more physically attractive as this is the primary dimension and the second
dimension is associated with the dominant values of the organisation (Cottrill et al. 2014).
Within the organisation, the managers can pay attention towards all the three layers of the
diversity with the goal of using similarities and differences. All the employees must be provided
values as being valued is the key aspect of the employees’ satisfaction within the organisation.
Complexity in recognising the personalities based on diversity can be moved in and out of the
primary and secondary diversity dimension. From the organisational perspective; diversity
within the workplace can be searched on the premise which can harness the non-visible and
visible diversity dimensions that can create a productive environment so that everyone within the
organisation can feel valued and talents of the employees should be utilised and objectives of the
organisations must be met.

2ASSESSMENT 3
Downey et al. (2015) stated that inclusion can be defined in which all the members of the
organisations feel valued and welcome for who they are and what they bring to the organisation.
Within the organisation, all the stakeholders can share a high sense of fulfilled and belonging
mutual purpose. In addition, inclusion is not only the end but also it helps to manifest deeply and
broadly that felt a sense of connectedness. Inclusion can be experienced by all the stakeholders
of the organisation and customers, executives, managers and contributors all are part of the
inclusion. Inclusion is the intrapersonal; issue as this is associated with the reasoning, self-talk,
decision-making and attribution. The diversity process can facilitate opportunities that help to
increase cross-boundary creativity and collaboration. Within the organisations, gender diversity,
cultural diversity and age-related diversity are important.
In Australia, many aborigines live in Torres Island and they show the ability and
willingness to be a part of the organisation. As opined by Ozturk and Tatli (2016), diversity
allows exploration in a positive, nurturing environment and safe place and it means that people
can nurture and surpass the tolerance issue to ensure the value of the difference. Each of the
employees brings a diverse set of perspective, life experience and work. The energy of diversity
can unleash difference types of advantages reaped when these difference of individuals assist the
organisation to implement the diversity policy. In order to suspend the bias and to create
informal and formal space; social interaction is very important. This social interaction must be
person-based rather than identifying the group based individual relationship. Shared identity can
be brought through bringing the entire organisation together (Barak 2016). Inclusion process can
help to embed the groups and it is the process of integrity within the larger group that constitute
the whole. Within the organisations, employees with a disability must have special provision.

3ASSESSMENT 3
Diversity, as well as inclusion, is the sizeable challenge for the organisations; treating the
employees in the fairway and nurture the challenge can heal this.
Part 2
Practical Activities of the Workshop
The workshop will be designed for 5 days and each day; the session of the workshop will
be for 2 hours. There are 12 leaders within the organisation Ansarada and 12 team leaders will be
the participants of the workshop. The team leaders of the organisation Ansarada will be
performing different activities in the workshop.
For the workshop, the topic is decided as ‘Promoting diversity and the value of
inclusiveness’ and the target audiences of the workshop are the team leaders of Ansarada. Once
the workshop is finished; the team leaders will know about the application of diversity and value
of inclusiveness. In Australia, the value of diversity and inclusiveness is important as many of
the employees belong from the different ethnic background.
The objectives of the workshop are:
 To define diversity and inclusiveness within the workplace
 To promote diversity in the workplace
 To raise personal awareness regarding diversity and inclusiveness
Group discussion:
The group discussion sessions will be divided into two parts; diversity and inclusiveness.
12 team leaders will be segregated into two parts; six team leaders in each group. Each of the
group will be provided topic on either diversity in the workplace or the inclusiveness. The group

4ASSESSMENT 3
will be given the time of 15 minutes; they need to discuss on the topic. When one team will
discuss; another team needs to listen to this. On diversity; the participants will be shown slides
where dimensions of the diversity will be given. Therefore, the participants will discuss the
relationship among the three dimensions of the diversity. Within the discussion, the participants
can raise the question diversity-related issue and how the diversity issue can be managed. In
addition, during the discussion on the inclusiveness; the group members will be given three
definitions of the inclusiveness and they need to use their own words to discuss about
inclusiveness within the workplace. In another group discussion session; the group members will
be given some of the diversity issues; the group members need to tell the audiences; what they
will do in each of the sessions with argument.
Debate:
Ansarada is an Australia based IT organisation; Ansarada has many of the employees
who belong to the multiethnic group. In case of the debate; the team leaders will be divided into
two groups. Each of the group will have six group members. The debate sessions will be of half
an hour. During the debate; the group members will be given a topic. In group; the HR manager
and the CEO of the organisation will see if the team leaders can reach unanimously any decision
on which the topic is given. There will be three debate sessions; the first topic will be gender
diversity and inclusion, the second topic will be cultural diversity and the third topic will be age-
related diversity within the workplace. The HR manager and the CEO will not judge the team
leaders if they are wrong or right in their discussion; they will judge on the matter of opinion so
long the team leaders can justify their position.
Videos:

5ASSESSMENT 3
For the purpose of the workshop; I have collected three videos based on the diversity and
inclusion. The participants of the workshop will be shown the videos and after watching the
videos; they will be asked what they learn from the videos. There will be interactive sessions;
where each of the team leaders will express their feelings based on the videos. The first video
will be based on ‘Empowerment Model' where multiple ways of increasing cultural diversity are
described from the managers' perspectives. Each of the team leaders will be asked to describe at
least 2 ways of increasing cultural diversity. In another video, the process of diversity and
inclusiveness will be shown in an Australia based organisation. In another video; a documentary
will be shown to the team leaders based on the age-related diversity. Diversity initiatives can be
taken in many ways; recruitment interventions, retention strategies, development programmes,
external partnership, external communication, awareness training and dedicated staffs and
infrastructure. The team leaders will be allocated with one of the initiatives to recognise at least
three ways in which the initiatives can be used for the purpose of the diversity management and
promotion.
Quiz:
In order to make supportive and inclusive environment; the team leaders should have
knowledge of diversity and inclusion. The organisation needs to successfully modify the hiring
and recruitment process to reach a more diverse audience. Therefore, the organisations can take
the strategies of diversity training, monitoring and the workplace culture as part of supporting the
diversity. The participants of the workshop will participate individually in this quiz session. The
quiz sessions will be more of ‘rapid-fire’ round. The host of the quiz will ask questions based on
the different aspects of the diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Each of the team leaders

6ASSESSMENT 3
will be asked 10 questions. Each of the questions will have four options; the participants will
listen to the options and will answer accordingly.
Case studies:
In maximum organisations, diversity and inclusion are approached with bottom-up and
top-down strategy. The aim of the organisation is to engage all the employees at all levels. The
host of the workshop will tell stories of implementing the diversity and inclusion and stories will
be shown in projector also. The participants of the workshop will listen to the case studies stories
of diversity and inclusion. There will be two case study sessions; in the first case study; the topic
will be employees with disability. The host of the workshop will discuss five employment
strategies that can help the employees with disability. The five strategies are fostering
inclusiveness, promoting benefits with a disability, improving the recruitment process,
improving leadership and offering reasonable adjustment. The team leaders will be given one of
the strategies to discuss to share their discoveries. Another case study topic will be sexual
orientation of the people within the workplace. The case study will show facts and statistics
within the organisations about sexual orientation.
Roleplay:
In each role play; there will be two participants. Therefore, overall six role play sessions
will be done. Each of the roleplay; the group will be given a topic and the two participants need
to enact based on the topic. The topics will be associated with organisational diversity and
organisational performance.
Part 3

7ASSESSMENT 3
Final Comments
The participants of the workshop will be the team leaders of ansarada. The team leaders
will know the diversity vision and goal within the organisation and they will feel the connection
to the overall strategies and objectives of the business. The team leaders need to commit to the
process by making out the process of diversity impacts on the role. The team leaders will get to
know the relevance of actively engage the diversity effort and the team leaders can start the
mentorship to focus on the diversity and it requires the commitment of time to represent the
valuable opportunity for professional as well as personal development. The team leaders of
Ansarada can conduct the employee engagement survey and ask the employees to respond
openly and honestly. Through this survey, the team leaders and the management will know the
employees’ expectation regarding the diversity. Diversity management is very essential as it will
help the management to get the employees from diverse background with skills. This workshop
has the target to make the team leaders culturally competent and the team leaders can learn about
various culture, religion, race and background of the colleagues. The workshop will make
understand the team leaders to treat the employees in better way and learn to understand different
needs of the employees. Most importantly, the team leaders of Ansarada will be respectful
always and diversity will exist always. The team leaders and management will take the diversity
principles within the organisation to make the workplace better for each employee. This
workshop will bring the positive change in the organisation and each of the employees will be
spokesperson for the diversity issues. The team leaders will welcome the ideas shared by the
employees and diverse employees will definitely bring the creativity within the organisation.
This workshop will focus on the continuous improvement of the diversity and inclusiveness.

8ASSESSMENT 3

9ASSESSMENT 3
Reference List
Barak, M.E.M., 2016. Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. London:
Sage Publications.
Cottrill, K., Denise Lopez, P. and C. Hoffman, C., 2014. How authentic leadership and inclusion
benefit organizations. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 33(3),
pp.275-292.
Downey, S.N., Werff, L., Thomas, K.M. and Plaut, V.C., 2015. The role of diversity practices
and inclusion in promoting trust and employee engagement. Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 45(1), pp.35-44.
Ozturk, M.B. and Tatli, A., 2016. Gender identity inclusion in the workplace: broadening
diversity management research and practice through the case of transgender employees in the
UK. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(8), pp.781-802.