Equity and Diversity: An In-depth Project Report on Workplace

This project report provides a comprehensive analysis of equity and diversity in the workplace, emphasizing their importance in fostering a positive organizational environment and enhancing employee performance. It delves into various aspects, including the significance of equity and diversity, examples of supportive behaviors, indications of gender pay gaps, and factors influencing these behaviors. The research employs a positivism philosophy with a deductive approach and exploratory research design, utilizing secondary data collection and thematic data analysis. The report also addresses cost, access, and ethical considerations, along with limitations and merits of the research methodologies. Ultimately, the study aims to provide recommendations for improving equity and diversity within organizations, particularly focusing on On Fire Marketing, and reflects on the research process and outcomes, highlighting the relationship between the research method and the achievement of objectives.

EQUITY AND DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE
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Abstract
Equity and diversity are two major parts of the organisations to maintain the workplace
environment in the perfect way to increase the efficiency of the performance of the
employees. In this context, the equity and diversity of the workplace is explained in perfect
way to have proper view. With the help of qualitative approaches, sufficient amount of data
has been collected from different sources. Apart from this all the objectives of the research
project has been fulfilled to accomplish the project in the best possible way. On the other
hand, several recommendations is given to increase the equity, diversity and to reduce the
different types of discrimination from the organisations.
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Table of Contents
Task 1: Project Proposal.............................................................................................................4
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Chapter 1....................................................................................................................................4
Aim.........................................................................................................................................4
Objective................................................................................................................................4
Research Question..................................................................................................................4
Rationale................................................................................................................................5
Chapter 2....................................................................................................................................5
Literature review....................................................................................................................5
Chapter 3....................................................................................................................................6
Research philosophy..............................................................................................................6
Research approach.................................................................................................................7
Research design......................................................................................................................7
Data collection and sampling method....................................................................................7
Data analysis method.............................................................................................................7
Ethical consideration and timeline.........................................................................................8
Summary....................................................................................................................................8
Task 2: Project Report................................................................................................................9
Introduction................................................................................................................................9
Cost, access and ethical issues...................................................................................................9
Data collection.........................................................................................................................10
Discussion on limitations, pitfalls and merits of the research methodologies.........................12
Discussion and conclusion.......................................................................................................13
Outcome of the research project..............................................................................................15
Relation between the research method and outcome...............................................................15
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Research outcomes to meet the objectives...............................................................................16
Recommendation......................................................................................................................17
Reflection.................................................................................................................................18
Summary..................................................................................................................................18
Reference list............................................................................................................................19
Appendix..................................................................................................................................23
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Task 1: Project Proposal
Introduction
In an organisation, equity is very important as it provides equal access to opportunities
without any discrimination. Diversity means the variation among employees in terms of
background, knowledge, dexterity and experience with a positive value. Therefore, a team
with equity and diversity will produce a greater result for the organisation (Giunta, 2020).
This report will aim to highlight approaches to comprehend the behaviours regarding equity
and diversity using appropriate data analysis and data collection method with a reference to
On Fire Marketing in Oldham.
Chapter 1
Aim
The report aims to understand the effect of behaviours regarding equity and diversity like
differences in the gender pay gap, differences in promotional potentials andeffect of potential
positive and negative factors. Extended aim include evidences of behaviours that support
equity and diversityhelps an organisation achieving business objectives using appropriate
data collection and sampling methods with a reference to On Fire Marketing in Oldham.
Objective
The objectives of this report are
 To understand the significance of equity and diversity in a workplace
 To comprehend and find any relevant examples that support behaviours regarding
equity and diversity.
 To observe any indications of the gender pay gap, differences in promotional potential
and policies regarding maternal and parental leave in the working environment.
 To comprehend factors that influence the behaviours of equity and diversity
 To access potential negative factors that might play any role in reducing equity and
diversity
Research Question
 What is the importance of equity and diversity in the workplace?
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 What are the probable examples that support behaviours regarding equity and
diversity?
 Are there any indications of the gender pay gap, differences in promotional potential
and policies regarding maternal and parental leave in the working environment?
 What are the factors that influence the behaviours of equity and diversity?
 What could be the potential negative factors that might play any role in reducing
equity and diversity?
Rationale
Equality and diversity allow the organisation to use a wide range of thoughts, ideas and
approaches for working from the different backgrounds, experiences and identities of the
employees. Employees also get the opportunity to grow by using their full potential together
with improved decision-making; engagement and creativity, which ultimately helps an
organisation please a wide range of clients (Stewart, 2018). For instance, the IPA 2018
diversity study showed 12.4% of UK creative agency employees identified as BAME which
was 10.7% in 2017 (ipa.co.uk, 2018). This is very important for digital marketing
organisations like On Fire Marketing as clients are always looking for unique services to help
with their businesses.Along with that, equity and diversity help to build a culture based on a
diverse range of beliefs and values that is useful to augment employee engagement and
reduce employee turnover. Therefore, it is essential to study behaviours that support equality
and diversity in the workplace especially for digital marketers like On Fire Marketing.
Chapter 2
Literature review
According to Ng et al. (2020), one of the major issues which are faced by an organisation is
the process of managing an entire workforce comprise of different people coming from a
different culture. It is mentioned that CEOs often mention about maintaining diversity in the
workplace but they rarely keep their word when it comes down to implementing that
principle in their organisation. Specifically, CEOs and managers have to play a vital role in
maintaining the diversity in work culture to keep the workforce together and operate
properly. It has been theoretically stated that keeping an unbiased environment is often
fruitful to the organization but is somehow not able to avoid the concept of individual
favouritism in reality.
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As suggested by Dobbin and Kallev. (2016), it can be stated that engaging managers are often
observed to be more successful in maintaining diversity across the workforce and can also
provide an improved organizational boost instead of the prevalent EEO/AA laws which
played a very minimum role and could not make much difference in promoting the workplace
diversity. It contains a detailed study, which provides a better approach, which helps in
understanding the different variables applicable for different individual levels, which
influence the organisations' outcomes.
As stated by Mousaet al. (2020), it has been found that the female employees often received
more diversity management protocols in comparison to that of male employees, which help to
improve their working environment and encourage more female employment. It has been
observed that workplace happiness directly affects the responsibility factor in the employees
and improves the organizational citizenship behaviour throughout the company. From the
article, it can be easily stated that proper equality and diversity management protocol
promotes a healthy working relationship among employees, which benefits the organization
in aspects such as, operations and outcomes, in the future.
Chapter 3
Research philosophy
For the research based on the behaviours that support equity and diversity in the workplace,
positivism research philosophy is taken under consideration. Positivism philosophy relies
upon only real facts and the truths that are scientific and based on proper evidence and
research on the topic. This philosophy helps to reach out the core facts and evidence that need
focus and uncovers results of truth based experiments that are unique and fact-oriented
(Ryan, 2018). Positivism philosophy, in detail, deals with the statistical and strategic analysis
that brings out the research logic with its positivist approach. Though positivism entirely
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depends on realistic knowledge, a wide range of circumstantial facts must be taken under
consideration, which gives an extra hazard of following this philosophy.
Research approach
For the research based on the positivism philosophy, research will be carried in a deductive
approach. The deductive approach is very much feasible when the available time for the
corresponding research is less, but the research must be carried out based on circumstantial
observation. Deductive research approach sums up the methods of basic assumption,
researching based on proper evidence and giving conclusion based on a variety of research
scenarios (Zalaghi and Khazaei, 2016). This research method deals with a premise, which is
assumedthe truth, and then situational examples are taken to prove the logics true and
conclusive. Though younger learners face problem to understand the research approach at its
core this approach is always used to avoid risk on research.
Research design
To conduct this research evidently, the exploratory research design is been taken under
consideration. This research design process is mostly based on the exploration, despite giving
conclusive or firm solutions corresponding to the research questions (Van Dun et al., 2017).
Exploratory designing makes clear the clouded research problem that is been conducted by
the subjects. The basic motive of this research is to identify as well as to clarify the proper
purpose of the subject under focus, determining various theories and in-depth facts. However,
exploratory designing method does not provide proper conclusive facts but gives a better-
detailed idea about the subject.
Data collection and sampling method
In this study, a secondary mode of data collection will be considered. The reason is research
objectives and questions are focused on a general process of equity and diversity assessment.
The major advantage of the secondary collection could include access to multiple statistical
data to create a funnel-like analysis from a general perspective to alignment with the specific
company undertaken. A minor limitation is this is a Boolean sampling technique that
extensively focuses on keywords, which might reduce the quality of secondary data.
Data analysis method
In this context, we will be applying the thematic data analysis, which works on the principle
of processing qualitative data and analysing certain common factors from an indefinite set of
transcripts.One of the major positive aspects of such analysis is that it can be done on
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unsupervised data and does not require a prevalent trained algorithm to figure out the new
factors from the data set. It only has a minor drawback because it becomes a bit difficult to
implement it properly (getthematic.com, 2020).
Ethical consideration and timeline
It has been kept in mind that none of the rules and regulations has been violated while
preparing the documentation and all the references have been provided as per the required
conventional format. The job would be executed within tenure from 9th September 2020 to
21st October 2020.
Summary
Equity and diversity play a major role in accomplishing organisational business objective
especially in terms of digital marketing, which is evident in the literature review. Therefore,
an analysis of such behaviours indicating equity and diversity by implementing thematic data
analysis with Boolean sampling technique will give valuable insight into the matter.
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Task 2: Project Report
Introduction
Equity and diversity are two important aspects of any organisation in order to maintain the
workplace environment in the best possible way. Equity is about providing equal opportunity
to every person who is involved in the organisation. On the other hand diversity is another
factor which should be adopted by the organisation to enhance the skills, resources and
competitive advantages in the organisation. Equity and diversity is including different types
of factors which are culture, opportunity, equal access, and different types of rules and
regulations. In that case the importance of equity and diversity in the workplace will be
analysed and evaluated on the organisation, On Fire Marketing. Apart from this the data
collection approaches are very helpful to collect ample amount of data to analyse the impact
of the equity and diversity in the workplace on the respective employees of On Fire
Marketing. There are different types of approaches of data collection, which will be very
effective to the researchers to collect data from different sources to accomplish the project.
Cost, access and ethical issues
Equity and diversity is very important to organisations like On Fire Marketing in order to
maintain the workplace environment in a perfect way. In that case different types of cost is
involved in the process of maintaining equity and diversity including implementation of
equality, diversity and workplace discrimination policies and the cost of providing
appropriate training session to the Employees about equity and diversity (Sharma, 2016).
Therefore the organisation should be investing a sufficient amount in order to establish a
perfect structure of equity and diversity in the workplace.
According to Mazibuko and Govender, (2017), diversity and ethics among the people in the
organisation is very effective at increasing the creativity, innovation, problem solving skills
and efficiency of the performance of the employees. In that case ethical behaviour is very
important for the employees of the organisation to maintain in order to have expected. On the
other hand, ethics includes different types of rules of moral values which should be adopted
in a perfect way to have efficiency in the decision-making processes. It has been observed
from different types of studies that, behaviour of the employees should be ethical to the
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organisation to increase productivity on a large scale and to maintain the workplace in a
perfect way in the On Fire Marketing.
Data collection
Qualitative Data Collection
(Thematic Analysis table refers to Appendix 1)
Theme 1: Importance of workplace diversity to manage employee’s performances
There are several kinds of operations and experimenting that has been undertaken by several
organizations from time to time to observe which process increased the employees’
performance the most. Out of those several organizational experiments, the one that showed a
significant change in an employee’s performance was the introduction of a heterogeneous
work culture that included several employees from different cultural origin to be brought
under one roof and make them work using their own style. Not only such a step improved the
performance of the employees by each but also promoted an environment that encouraged
improvement of the employees by adapting to different working techniques brought in by the
people of different cultures. Such kind of work place diversity benefits the organizations as a
whole and let them adapt to certain new approaches to their operational functions occurring
in their firm (Li et al., 2020). The minor drawback to maintaining a diverse workplace within
an organization is that it keeps the possibility of a backfiring as the people coming from
different community and different cultures may not be able to align themselves with the other
employees and may often lead to the creation of a conflicting environment throughout the
working premises.
On Fire is a firm that mainly deals on the digital marketing aspects of different organization.
Hence maintaining a diverse working environment becomes extremely crucial as digital
marketing involves promoting websites in different area with different cultures. For such
purposes it is important to have a keen understanding of the mindset and the community
culture of the location where intend to target their audience for the promotion of the site
(onfiremarketing.co.uk, 2019). Maintaining a diverse working environment provide this firm
with insights of various different communities as the workplace is usually filled of people
from different cultures and communities.
Theme 2: Relation between CSR and HRM in managing workplace diversity
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The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies and Human Resource Management
(HRM) department play an extremely crucial role in workplace diversity. They have to setup
certain guidelines and policies that can direct the employees to maintain certain disciplines
within the workplace to promote a healthy working environment. The CSR maintains the
main objectives to setup up policies that becomes the rulebook of an organization and enlists
the proper etiquettes that are required to be followed by an employee towards other
employees indifferent of their cultures or communities while operating within the
organization. On the other hand, Human Resource management department remains
responsible for promoting healthy working relation within the employees. On fire, digital
marketing is known for deploying efficient HRM department and has shown considerable
improvement in working diversity over the years (Starostka-Patyket al., 2016).
Theme 3: Nature and scale of racism in the workplace
The organizations foothold in its operating business market is because of several factors, one
of which is employee’s work performance. It has been observed that employees become
extremely demotivated in their workplace that hampers their entire performance. One of the
several reasons personal favouritism is one of the biggest factors that impacts an employee’s
performance. And this personal favouritism is most prevalent in multiple organizations not
only just in United Kingdom’s but also throughout the Europe. Personal favouritism may
occur because of several reason but the most common and most observed factor for such
biasness is because of racism (Ozturk and Berber,2020). It has been observed that in multiple
Multi National Enterprises (MNEs) as well as the small-scale industries is aware of the fact
that racism exists within several hierarchies of the organizations and yet they tend to ignore
such work culture or take no major steps to prohibit such practices.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have come to the decision of
establishing some major rules and strict measures that will control the problem of racism in
workplace occurring throughout UK. According to the Equality and Human Rights
Commission (EHRC), it has been said that legal aid cuts will be reversed, so that employees
can bring in all the discrimination cases without any kind of hesitations. Fines for employers
and repeat offenders will also be implemented as of 2019. The problem of racism is
comparatively higher in organizations with large employee base. The Trade Union Congress
(TUC) conducted a work survey in Manchester and it was observed that from five thousand
people 70% of people who are from ethnic minority encountered racial harassment whereas
60% of them have been subjected to unfair treatment because of race (brighthr.com, 2020).
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