MBA502 - Diversity: Challenges and Opportunities Workshop Plan

This project outlines a professional development workshop designed to address the challenges and opportunities of diversity within an organization. It includes a detailed plan encompassing activities such as learning about cultural and linguistic differences, communication challenges, organizational risk analysis, and practicing non-verbal communication and collaborative teamwork. The workshop is structured over eight weeks, with specific timings allocated to each activity, and emphasizes the integration of activities through issue analysis, implementation of nonverbal communication, and training sessions. The project also discusses instructions for facilitating activities, potential barriers to implementation (such as skill gaps, time constraints, and resource issues), and the importance of activity diversity to cater to different employee needs. The summary highlights the benefits of the workshop, including enhanced understanding of organizational diversity, improvement of professional skills, and strengthening of collaborative approaches within a team. It emphasizes the workshop's role in improving strategic approaches to business diversification and enhancing employee skills to handle diversity successfully.

ASSESSMENT 3
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Table of Contents
Part 1................................................................................................................................................3
Activities inclusion......................................................................................................................3
Proper timing................................................................................................................................4
Integration of activities................................................................................................................4
Instructions for activities facilitations..........................................................................................5
Barriers to implementation...........................................................................................................6
Activity diversity..........................................................................................................................6
Part 2................................................................................................................................................7
Accomplishment summary..........................................................................................................7
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Part 1
Activities inclusion
In the context of designing the professional development workshop for “Diversity: Challenges
and opportunities” some significant activities must be included in the in the work shop. It helps
in learning about the significant benefits and challenges of diversity within an organization. The
activities mainly include
 Learning of cultural difference
 Learning of linguistic differences in respect to different culture
 Determination of communication challenges due to organizational diversity
 The analysis of organizational risk in respect to cultural conflicts
 Practicing the use of non-verbal communication to maintain employee relationship
 Practicing of collaborative approach within teamwork
The above mentioned workshop activity helps in learning about the importance of organizational
diversity along with the significant challenges and benefit of it. Besides, the above mentioned
activities help in learning some significant factors including
SIGNIFICANT LEARNING
 Diversity challenges are significant threats to the ethical framework of an organization.
On the other hand, a discussion of several opportunities for diversity is a crucial step for
setting up an ethical framework for the organization.
 Cultural difference is one of the most common challenges that workplaces are facing
today. Proper implementation of workplace diversity has created a mixed culture in
workplaces that result in the cultural clash.
 Linguistic difference is the most common issue in the workplaces that observe a
workplace environment that welcomes employees from the different linguistic
background.
 Type of communication is also a challenge in a diversified workplace. Most of the
employees from the same cultural and linguistic background prefer verbal
communication, which creates a problem for people from different cultural and linguistic
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backgrounds.
 An issue analysis must be done to address the expansion of the challenges of diversity.
 Nonverbal communication should be in use in the organization to connect people from
different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
 Sequential training should be provided to the employees and managers of the
organizations on the importance of diversity to avoid diversity challenges in the
workplace.
Table 1: Learning
(Source: Self Created)
Proper timing
The entire workshop needs total 8 weeks to complete successfully by following the division of
activity and timings
Activity Timings
Learning of cultural difference 1 week
Learning of linguistic differences in respect to
different culture
1 week
Determination of communication challenges
due to organizational diversity
2 weeks
The analysis of organizational risk in respect to
cultural conflicts
2 weeks
Practicing the use of non-verbal
communication to maintain employee
relationship
1 week
Practicing of collaborative approach within
teamwork
1 week
Table 2: Allocation of time
(Source: Self Created)
Integration of activities
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Integration activities imply the tasks that are required to integrate to eradicate the diversity
challenges. Issue analysis should be the first phase of the integration where the management
analyzes the activities that create a challenge to workplace diversity. Factors that create a
challenge in workplace diversity are a linguistic problem, cultural problem, a communication
problem. Each of the issues should analyze accordingly before going to the second phase.
The second phase of integration is the implementation of nonverbal communication. Nonverbal
communication is the only way that can break the barrier of the cultural issue and linguistic
communication issue in the workplace. Nonverbal communication skill includes facial
expression, bodily gesture, and various physical activities to exchange information. A profound
understanding of nonverbal communication helps employees to develop their interacting skills,
which can support them in the final phase of integration activity.
The final phase of integration activity is arranging a training session for the employees and
managers on the importance of diversified businesses in the workplace. Trainers will teach the
importance of respecting people irrespective of their socio-cultural, economic, and gender
background in the workplace. Moreover, the training session must include practical diversity
training every week to understand the effectiveness and growth of the training session and areas
for improvement to maintain diversity.
Instructions for activities facilitations
The following steps should be sincerely adopted to facilitate all the exercises correctly:
 Proper task allocation: Proper task allocation is necessarily required to avoid problems
associated with diversity in workplaces. Tasks should be allocated according to the skill,
performance, and experience of handling people from different socio-economic,
linguistic, religious, and gender backgrounds.
 Unbiased management: the management must not be biased over any particular gender,
race, or linguistic background. Equity should be enforced in the workplace without
showing any individual preference for any specific.
 Organizational equity: Equity culture must be implemented for motivating each stage of
integration activities. Equal wage structure and performance-base pay are the most
suitable ways to facilitate integration activities to maintain workplace diversity.
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Moreover, managers must value the importance of equity in the workplace. For example,
- the wage gap, incentive gap, and promotional gap should be highly avoided. Instead, all
the employees must be considered as per their potentials.
Barriers to implementation
Barriers related to the implementation of all the opportunities described above to avoid the
challenges of diversity are as follows:
 Skill barrier: Skill barrier refers to all the skill-based problems, which are critical
hindrances to the implementation of opportunities. For example, - all the managers may
not be efficient enough to address the diversity issue adequately. The inefficiency can
adversely impact the issue analysis. On the other hand, it is almost impossible to
implement nonverbal communication for all the employees in the organization as
everyone may not have nonverbal communication skills.
 Time constraint: Time constraint is one of the most significant barriers as arranging a
training session for diversity is time-consuming. It is quite impossible to provide
diversity training to all the employees at a time. Moreover, it takes longer to implement
nonverbal communication.
 Resource issue: The training session requires a large number of financial resources,
equipment resources, and workforce resources. Monetary support must be provided to
arrange a training session for all the employees in a short period. Thus, the lack of
sufficient financial assistance can be a crucial barrier.
Activity diversity
Diversity activities may not be the same for all the employees and managers as all the employees
do not have the same diversity challenge. For example, - some employees face a cultural
problem in the workplace while some other face linguistic challenges. Thus, opportunities for
diversity activities should be different for each employee. It is essential to create a group
according to the diversity challenge before implementing any resolution for the diversity
complications.
Variety of diversity activities for employees should be as follows:
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 Employees with a linguistic barrier must be trained for a nonverbal training session.
Nonverbal communication is the only significant way of resolving the linguistic issue.
Bodily gestures and facial expressions can be a useful alternative to linguistic problems.
 Diversity training can be arranged for employees who have cultural barriers while
communicating with employees from different cultural backgrounds in the workplace.
The training session must include group discussion for enhancing relationship strength
among the employees. Trainers should advise the trainees to find commonalities among
themselves to eradicate the diversity challenge.
Hence, groups should be created according to the diversity issue to monitor and control each
challenge. Proper implementation of diversity establishes the equity and ethical standard of an
organization.
Part 2
Accomplishment summary
The entire work shop planning helps in summarizing about the significant benefits for an
individual in the context of developing its professional learning. The entire workshop is going to
enhance the understanding and knowledge of employees regarding the significance of
organizational diversity. Moreover, the workshop also helps in summarizing about the critical
challenges of diversification approach of an organization. On the contrary, it also helps in
analyzing the future benefits of diversification approach in respect to organizational performance
development. In addition, the workshop put its emphasis on the accomplishment of
diversification improvement within the organizations by following proper way and process. Part
from this, the entire workshop keeps its focus on the accomplishment of issue analysis for an
organization due to diversification. Therefore, the work shop helps individual to identify
significant diversification challenges for organization and its impact o the organizational
performance and brand image.
Likewise, it also influences the employees to improve the strategic approach for business
diversification without any issue. In addition the selected activities help in strengthening the
professional skills of an employee to welcome diversification and required challenges for an
organization successfully. The allocated time helps employees to learn and practice the activities
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which help them in future to handle the diversification functionalities. Besides, it also helps in
understanding the core concept of organizational diversity by following the cross-cultural issues
and collaboration. The workshop also helps the employees in learning about the collaborative
approach within a team work by determining its benefits and possible risks. It also helps in
improving the collaborative approach process for future along with employee respect. However,
the organizational diversification concept also helps the employees to learn how cultural
differences and their through process can be used in making innovation. Therefore, it understood
that entire workshop aims to improve the concept of organizational diversification through
employee learning for performance development in future.
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