University Assignment: Diversity in the Australian Workplace Analysis

This assignment delves into the multifaceted aspects of diversity within the Australian workplace. It begins by identifying key cultural and religious groups, highlighting their differences and the sources used to gather information. The assignment then explores anti-discrimination legislation, outlining the key concepts and laws designed to protect individuals from harassment. It further examines the benefits and drawbacks of a diverse workforce, considering factors such as age, abilities, and cultural backgrounds. Practical solutions, such as reasonable adjustments for employees with disabilities, are also discussed. The assignment includes real-world scenarios of workplace discrimination, and explores the benefits of cultural diversity to the Australian economy. The second part of the assignment focuses on a case study involving workplace discrimination and provides recommendations for addressing the issues, considering legal and ethical considerations, and suggests steps for resolving the situation, including communication strategies and compliance with relevant legislation such as the Racial Discrimination Act and the Human Rights Commission Act.

Running Head: DIVERSITY IN THE AUSTRALIAN WORKPLACE
DIVERSITY IN THE AUSTRALIAN WORKPLACE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1DIVERSITY IN THE AUSTRALIAN WORKPLACE
PART ONE:
1. Australia is a country where many cultural groups live side by side and work together.
Two cultural groups of them are Chinese and Vietnamese, and two different religious
groups are Islam and Catholic Christian.
Two key differences between Chinese and Vietnamese people –
Chinese people always focus on the option that is best for their family. Whereas,
Vietnamese people always focus the option that is best for the entire community.
Chinese people tend to respect women less than men. Whereas, Vietnamese people
respect women as well as men.
Two key differences between Islamic and Catholic Christian people –
Islamic people are very much focused on respect of their religious views. Whereas,
the Catholic Christian people are less related with their religious views.
Islamic people do not believe empowerment of women. Whereas, the Catholic
Christian believe in gender equality.
2. The information regarding the question no. 1 is researched on the web and found out
by studying these websites given below –
https://stream.org/key-difference-between-christianity-and-islam/
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1440783315621167
3. There are several laws regarding discrimination in terms of federal, state and territory
laws in the country to protect the Australian citizens getting harassed. The Australian
Human Rights Commission has given restrictions against discriminations under some
acts given below –
The Age Discrimination Act 2004,

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The Racial Discrimination Act 1975,
The Sex Discrimination Act 1984
The Age Discrimination Act 2004 –
This act of law protects every Australian from facing discrimination in terms of age and
discrimination based on employment, education and access to the premises, services, disposal
of land and facilities, accommodation and services, also in the administration of
Commonwealth laws and its programs, and also in the requests for information.
The Racial Discrimination Act 1975 –
This act of law protects every Australian from discrimination in terms of race, national or
ethnic origin, their immigrant status, their employment, the provision in terms of goods and
services, their right to form trade unions, buying land and housing and also in availing other
accommodations.
The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 –
This act of law protects every Australian from discrimination in terms of their sex, marital or
relationship privacy, their pregnancy or potential pregnancy, their breastfeeding and family
upbringing and their responsibilities, their sexual orientation, and the intersex status of the
nationals. Under this Act, Sexual harassment also prohibited as well.
4. Having diversity in workplace in terms of different age and different abilities can
benefit an organization as experiencing crossover of skills by having the assistance of
each other in the workplace. Having a variety of skills due to different age groups can
benefit the employees to learn more from each other benefits the company as well. It
also helps to innovate new ways as different cultural people of different age groups

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work differently, therefore everyone can learn new ways of solving a hard work in
easier way possible.
Having a diverse workplace can also lead in hiring over qualified employees
in the job profiles. The multicultural employees can also cause different types
of opinions that may result in delaying of job objectives. A diverse workplace
can be a big issue of not having trust among employees. Last but not the least,
diversity in workplace causes a major problem in the communication among
the employees.
5. Two Reasonable Adjustments for employees with disabilities in the workplace are as
follows –
The Company can offer the employees with disabilities a flexible work hour’s shift to
help them in the working environment with their suitable timings, to get the best out of
them.
The Company can offer telephone typewriter phone to help employees with hearing or
speech impaired disabilities to make the workplace better for them.
6. I’m aware of some discrimination around the workplaces an employee suffers from.
Two foremost of them I heard the most are as follows –
Racial Discrimination – Employees in the Australia faces this discrimination in their
workplace most. The employees belong from outside of Australia, or the indigenous
people face this kind of discrimination from the native workers, who are bullied based on
their racial background or skin colour.
Gender Discrimination – Employees in workplace face this kind of discrimination based
on gender. This is mostly faced by the women in workplace, whereas they face many

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difficulties in the workplace due to their gender. This discrimination should be eradicated
as all human beings in the workplace should be treated with same possibilities.
7. Having a workplace consists of diversity and good communication skills among all
can benefit the company. Having a clear, transparent and absolute communication
skills among the co-workers, supervisors, managers and executives unveils a new
opportunity in the workplace to work for betterment of themselves and the
organizations as well (McGann et al., 2016).
8. Two ways in which the cultural diversity in workplace benefits the economy of
Australia are as follows –
Diversity in Workplace has emerged as a new of running organizations focusing on the
migrant population. That is the main positive way to contribute to the economy by having
multinational companies and their employees to work in the Australia and contributing to the
economic development of the country.
Cultural Diversity has provided a new form of developed tourism industry to perform
towards a niche and cultural tourism sector to make it broad and have a desire to discover
new and varied cultural experiences are contributing to the economic development of the
country (Buchanan et al., 2018).
9. Social Justice is a concept of having a fair and equal means of possibilities,
opportunities and social privileges to fulfil their roles as an individual to give and
receive what they are promised from their duty for the movement of social justice.
Gender – The social privilege of constructing concepts of masculinity and femininity are the
appropriate justice needs to be served in the diverse workplace to get the best out of the
organization and contribute to the Australian economy.

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Racism – The social privilege of prejudiced thinking and thoughts and discriminatory actions
on a person who comes from a different race and belong from different country are judged on
the basis of their skin colour are the one who needs to be served justice (Buchanan et al.,
2018).
PART TWO:
1. Hong should take care of the considerations related to Racial and Human Rights Cultural
Considerations and Sensitivities to take into account when communicating with the staff
members and the employers. Some of the sensitive cultural discriminations are based on race,
age, sex and the wage differences created by the racists.
2. Hong should be aware of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, before taking the problem to
the employers. (Preston, Birch and Timming, 2019). Therefore, she can stand against the
ground of one of the café owners, who has a racist mind-set to make disparaging remarks
about an employee based on the skin colour of him.
3. Hong should make a document of the complaint as an e-mail body. In case the employers
deny all the allegations made by the employees and threaten them to lose their job. Hong can
promptly inform about the harassment and discrimination to the Human Rights Commission
of Australia to get the issue resolved.
4. Yes, Hong should speak to each of the team members individually to gather information
about the incident that happened in the past (Buchanan et al., 2018). Hong should record all
the information she will get from the employees and compare the information of them to
understand that if all of the employees’ information has authenticity (McGann et al., 2016).

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5. The staff members’ work performance have been affected after the incident took place, as
he is in deep shock and fear of losing job.
This will affect in his performance in serving customers through his behavioural
expressions. Customers may think him as ill-mannered staff and then never visit the café
again, this will affect the business as well (Cai and Liu, 2015).
6. The employers are breaching Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986, Racial
Discrimination Act 1975 and Fair Work Act 2009 by giving lower wages to the employees
and also having passed a racial comment to one of their employees make them violate the
rules of Human Rights of Australia.
The Australian Human Rights Commission manages the that law.
References:
McGann, M., Ong, R., Bowman, D., Duncan, A.S., Kimberley, H. and Biggs, S., 2016. A
Gendered Analysis of Age Discrimination among Older Jobseekers in Australia (No.
WP1601). Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School.
Agu, J., Lobo, R., Crawford, G. and Chigwada, B., 2016. Migrant sexual health help-seeking
and experiences of stigmatization and discrimination in Perth, Western Australia: exploring
barriers and enablers. International journal of environmental research and public health,
13(5), p.485.
Buchanan, Z.E., Abu-Rayya, H.M., Kashima, E., Paxton, S.J. and Sam, D.L., 2018. Perceived
discrimination, language proficiencies, and adaptation: comparisons between refugee and
non-refugee immigrant youth in Australia. International journal of intercultural relations, 63,
pp.105-112.
Priest, N., King, T., Bécares, L. and Kavanagh, A.M., 2016. Bullying victimization and racial
discrimination among Australian children. American journal of public health, 106(10),
pp.1882-1884.

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Bastos, J.L., Harnois, C.E. and Paradies, Y.C., 2018. Health care barriers, racism, and
intersectionality in Australia. Social Science & Medicine, 199, pp.209-218.
Preston, A., Birch, E. and Timming, A.R., 2019. Sexual orientation and wage discrimination:
evidence from Australia. International Journal of Manpower.
Cai, L. and Liu, A.Y., 2015. Wage differentials between immigrants and the native-born in
Australia. International Journal of Manpower, 36(3), pp.374-396.
Nahm, D., Dobbie, M. and MacMillan, C., 2017. Union wage effects in Australia: an
endogenous switching approach. Applied Economics, 49(39), pp.3927-3942.