HRM Consultancy Report: Diversity and Employee Engagement at Schwartz

This report, prepared by an HR consultant for the Schwartz Group, addresses the critical issues of diversity and employee engagement within the organization. The report begins by defining the concept of diversity and its benefits, emphasizing the importance of creating an inclusive organi...Read More

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
MANAGEMENT
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Executive Summary
Current study has established that diversity amongst employees work concurrently with
enhanced employee engagement. Diversity and engagement together are an important
balance. However, if personnel be unsuccessful in depending on their employers, diversity
single-handedly cannot raise engagement between the employees. Nonetheless, when trust is
augmented to the equivalence, it raises the level of engagement. Companies who tend to
overlook these aspects often experience low employee engagement and high attrition. In
organizational context, creating an inclusive culture is highly beneficial in capturing the value
of diversity. For organizations employing diverse employee base facilitates it to utilize a
broad array of talent and expertise. Investments in diversity policies underwrite a tactic of
continuing value creation by generating as well as supporting individual and organisational
resources. Global and regional demographics change along with continual development of
organization tends to be contingent on attracting as well as retaining employees. embracing
inclusion in diversity strategies could be viewed as imperative for companies not only to
focus on attracting employees but also underline approachable attitude towards the recruited
employees. RBV advocated that continued competitive advantage draws high feasibility
where administrations hold the managerial competences to distinguish. Investment in
diversity training will set up suitable employee behaviour which will add to the strategic
goals of the company and increase the chances of disabled employees to engage with the
company. Under social exchange theory, high-performance work systems are likely to show
emotions and feelings. Engagement facilitation incorporates range of elements which
includes job design, training and development and social support. The following report has
been prepared by a HR consultant to be presented for the upcoming Board Meeting
addressing diversity and employee engagement in the Schwartz Group in the UK.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................4
Concept of diversity...............................................................................................................4
Benefits arising from embracing a diversity strategy............................................................4
Practical recommendations for the implementation of diversity in organizations.................5
Diversity Programs Link with Strategic Plans...................................................................5
Creating Diverse Organizational Climate..........................................................................6
Advancing from diversity branding to inclusive branding................................................6
Diversity training development and performance management............................................7
Concept of Employee Engagement with Key Dimensions....................................................8
Potential business benefits arising from adopting an employee engagement strategy..........9
Practical recommendations for the implementation of engagement strategy in organizations
................................................................................................................................................9
Engagement Facilitation Strategy....................................................................................10
Employee engagement and performance management....................................................10
Establishing Sense of Purpose and Support.....................................................................11
Conclusion................................................................................................................................11
References................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction
Employee Engagement is a current issue which has long concerned employers. No
organization has identified a relevant resolution for it. Irrespective of this, current study has
found that diversity among employees work simultaneously with improved employee
engagement. Diversity and engagement together are an influential blend. If organizations are
accounting employee commitment without taking into consideration workplace diversity, it is
only seeing part of the picture. However, to considerably expand employee engagement
necessitates evaluating diversity as well as inclusion in the organization. As per studies, trust
is considered to be a significant part of the connection between diversity practices and staff
engagement (McCuiston, Wooldridge and Pierce 2004). That is, if employees fail to rely
upon their employers, diversity alone cannot elevate engagement among the employees.
However, when trust is enriched to the equation, it upsurges the level of engagement. Thus,
building trust and reliance with employees necessitates surpassing diversity practices to
utmost inclusion for all staffs at the organization. According to Nkomo et al. (2019),
recruiting employees from only minority sections will not raise employee engagement.
Moreover, diversity and inclusion must be entrenched into the entire organization as well as
the whole employee development in lieu of all employees. Companies who tend to overlook
these aspects often experience low employee engagement and high attrition. The case study
of Schwartz Group has revealed that the company has been overlooking diversity which has
led the domestic division of the company to employ 66% of women employees whereby only
33% of them are managers. The company has also been experiencing declining levels of job
satisfaction. Sickness absence levels have augmented with staff citing hours along with the
pressure of achieving targets as reasons due to low employee engagement. The following

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report will be prepared by a HR consultant to be presented for the upcoming Board Meeting
addressing diversity and employee engagement in the Schwartz Group in the UK.
Discussion
Concept of diversity
The concept of diversity entails acceptance and respect for the complete range of
human attributes in socio-ecological, historical as well as ethnic contexts along with the
consideration of each individual, community and societal group which has distinctiveness of
distinguishing one from the other (Kirton et al. 2016). The concept of diversity does not
imply to aspects of equality, inclusion or pluralism, yet in a separate concept having its
individualistic set of values, principles and practicing ideologies. In organizational context,
creating an inclusive culture is highly beneficial in capturing the value of diversity.
Benefits arising from embracing a diversity strategy
Espousing diversity strategies deals with distinct welfares for corporations as well as
the workforce related to resolution of employment shortages, better product innovation,
improved marketing openings in addition to a restored corporate image. For organizations
employing diverse employee base facilitates it to utilize a broad array of talent and expertise.
These lead to creativity and innovation (Shen et al. 2009). Furthermore, businesses mostly
require emulating communities and cultural patterns they work in order to comprehend as
well as expect the diverse needs of their clients. As per Hickey (2017), major companies in
Britain have been informed that absence of diversity in meeting room tends to obstruct
administration strategies to raise employment with non-EU nations after Brexit. Additionally,
the report mentions that although there has be an upsurge in the ratio of non-white employees

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in the upper levels of FTSE 100 corporations, there still remains a glass ceiling at the upper
levels of management.
However, organizations must acknowledge the fact that embracing diversity will
represent the most imperative business profits by expanding the access of new labour pool
along with the propensity of magnetizing as well as retaining supreme workforce from
diverse backgrounds along with improved marketing avenues by accommodating more
demands and needs of diverse clientele and improving customer services. Investments in
diversity policies underwrite a tactic of continuing value creation by generating as well as
supporting individual and organisational resources. In addition to knowledge capital, these
are considered as core intangible resources employed by corporations in an extensive range
of subdivisions to inaugurate competitive advantage as well as to create value. Furthermore,
amalgamating the diverse skills and understanding of ethnically diverse workers together can
enormously value the corporation by firming the receptiveness as well as efficiency of the
team to acclimatize to the altering situations. As per 2001 report of Human Resource
Management and Fortune magazine, diversity initiatives advantage corporations’ bottom line
as well as support them uphold a competitive edge. Furthermore, diversity embedded
organizational culture can improve creativity and performance (McCuiston, Wooldridge and
Pierce 2004).
Practical recommendations for the implementation of diversity in organizations
Robust diversity management offers organizations with competitive benefits in the
market. Nkomo et al. (2019) have noted that global and regional demographics change along
with continual development of organization tend to be contingent on attracting as well as
retaining employees who offer varied views and are competent enough to comprehend the
diverse backgrounds of clients and communities they serve. In order to implement diversity,
organizations must develop and influence their diversity programs and strategies.

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Diversity Programs Link with Strategic Plans
One of the keys to the continuing achievement of a diversity program is to advance a
diversity strategy by means of similar measured goal-setting procedures utilized in order to
frame traditional business-related objectives. According to Shen et al. (2009), strategic plans
around diversity must integrate measureable goals with specific timelines for attaining
standards and assessing development which will consequently offer direction and promote
action by staffs.
Creating Diverse Organizational Climate
Employee retention is vital to reach goals of goals of diversity initiatives. Effective
ways of retention rely on creating exclusive diversity committee constituting of members by
representing all aspects of the organizations personnel, rather than solely focusing on top
hierarchical executives and reassure active participation of leaders of the organization. By
drawing relevance to these factors, it is vital to note that the CEO of the Schwartz Group
must empower the diversity committee to develop diversity statement which will align with
company’s strategic goals and will facilitate the organization to set up initiatives in focusing
on the current pay gap between men as well as women in the UK whereby average gross
hourly pays of ethnic marginal staffs in London are around 21.7% lower as compared to
white workers. Furthermore, diversity strategies can further throw light on Schwartz Group’s
lack of diversity in its Domestic division. Also, at the corporate division around 80% of
employees and 90% of managers are white British.
Advancing from diversity branding to inclusive branding
Shifting from diversity to inclusion is vital for branding strategy. By drawing insights
from former studies, Kahn (1990) has noted that embracing inclusion in diversity strategies
could be viewed as imperative for companies not only to focus on attracting employees but
also underline approachable attitude towards the recruited employees. Inclusive branding

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raises the query concerning to the degree to which organizations employ diversity branding
and tend to shift from diversity towards inclusion branding. At this juncture, it can noted that
the Schwartz Group can use inclusive branding to stress upon their training activities in
relation to diversity prior to underlining ways in which the environment and the
organizational culture of Schwartz Group can incorporate and benefit from these differences
(Jonsen et al. 2019).
Diversity training development and performance management
Considering the case of Schwartz Group’s lack of diversity in its current
organizational impacts of training, it is vital to draw relevance to resources-based view
(RBV) and behavioural perspective. Under RBV, diversity training will aid in linking
expertise and knowledge of staffs with business aims, consequently leading to competitive
advantage. According to Alhejji et al. (2016), RBV advocated that continued competitive
advantage draws high feasibility where administrations hold the managerial competences to
distinguish and achieve the prolific openings that outlay in diversity training possibly will
deliberate on human resources. On the other hand, behavioural perspectives have conjectured
that varied business strategies necessitate diverse role patterns from staffs to elevate their
productive realization. Furthermore, it posits great precedence on the part of staff behaviour
as intermediary between business approach as well as organizational performance (Beardwell
and Thompson 2017).
Meanwhile, the role which leaders could be playing in continuing the absence of
development of employees can be by not increasing their performance ratings. Finseraas et al.
(2019) have illustrated insights ways in which line managers advanced the task of achieving
diversity performance agenda within their gross appraisals, majority exhibit high confusion.
These confusion involved actions to reduce lack of diversity activities and rooting diversity
management within their perspective (Greene and Kirton 2011).

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By emphasizing on the case of Schwartz Group, behavioural perspective will help the
CEO to comprehend by what means investment in diversity training will set up suitable
employee behaviour which will add to the strategic objectives of the company and increase
the chances of disabled employees to engage with the company. On the other hand, Alhejj et
al. 2016) argued that irrespective of several periods of equality legislation as well as declared
obligation to equal avenues, there tends to exist a systematic marginalization in the
recruitment as well as selection process. Thus, companies require assuring that employment
policies as well as practices offer developmental chances, career development, and decline in
work–family struggle as well as mentoring for deprived groups (Saks and Gruman 2014).
Jonsen et al. (2019) by drawing insights from former research have noted that managing
diversity in recruitment and selection process can balance positive action policies and
different engagement policies as well as rehearses to address the letdown of organizations in
promoting women as well as ethnic and cultural sections into upper stages of administration.
Concept of Employee Engagement with Key Dimensions
Employee Engagement has attained substantial recognition in the last 2 decades. Still
it remains conflictingly explained and conceptualized. Employee engagement refers to
affirmative, affective-motivational condition of high dynamism linked with increased levels
of dedication in addition to a robust emphasis on work. Engagement has three key
dimensions related to emotional engagement, cognitive engagement and physical
engagement. According to Shuck and Wollard (2010), when staffs show great engagement
they are likely to bring varied aspects of cognitive, emotional as well as physical attributes to
their performance. However, in order to be wholly engaged, employees must exhibit their
whole selves within the parts which they are performing. On the contrary, when individuals
tend to be disengaged they tend to decouple their personalities from their assigned work roles
(Breevaart and Bakker 2018).

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Potential business benefits arising from adopting an employee engagement
strategy
Employees considering their work as a calling show higher propensity to partake in
job crafting as work primarily centralizes their lives. Similarly, organizations by embracing
employee engagement strategy will show greater inclination to dynamically change their
employment demands to optimize their performance (Bakker, Albrecht and Leiter 2011). At
this juncture, it is vital to note that, the Schwartz Group by adopting staff engagement
strategy can retain employees with high psychological capital and self-esteem. However, it
has been argued that while engaged employees do not necessarily tends to be workaholics,
they possibly will become so involved in their work that they struggle in professional and
personal lives. According to social exchange theory, people in a social exchange linkage are
typically perceived as emotional entities that attain information and cognitively process it and
subsequently judge related to the nature and pattern of exchange with organizations. Bakker
and Albrecht (2018) have noted that under social exchange theory, high-performance work
systems are likely to show emotions and feelings which enable employees to characterize
their emotional aspects to their exchange associates or organizations even in global context
(Huang, Ma and Meng 2018). By evaluating the case of Schwartz Group it has been noted
that workgroup initiatives like CREW can be employed by the CEO with institution of
comprehensive policies that assimilate engagement into resolutions vis-à-vis performance
management as well as career development.
Practical recommendations for the implementation of engagement strategy in
organizations
Contemporary Organizations have been adopting engagement management model outlined
with an aim of producing increased stages of participation as a originator to raised levels of
performance.

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Engagement Facilitation Strategy
Engagement facilitation incorporates range of elements which includes job design,
training and development and social support (Saks 2019). According to Saks and Gruman
(2014), performance management underlining engagement comprises of two‐way
conversations and contracts regarding the point to which staffs can get employment
opportunities which are intended to optimize engagement (Albrecht et al. 2015). At this
juncture, it can be noted that the Schwartz Group’s CEO can adopt facilitation as engagement
strategy to increase opportunity levels for disabled category that constitute of only 1% in the
current workforce. Furthermore, as per JD-R theory, work engagement tends to develop when
staffs are encountered with stimulating job calls according to high job capitals (Schaufeli et
al. 2009). Meanwhile, Truss et al. (2013) in light of previous studies have mentioned the
association between employee voice and engagement based on social exchange theory.
Through data collection of 2310 staffs in 2 UK based companies; affirmative linkages
between supposed employee voice, the employee–line manager connection, reliance on junior
managers and engagement have been found. Thus, CEO and managers of the Schwartz
Group must focus on endorsing distributive justice, procedural impartiality, and interactional
integrity as well as offer staffs with an opening to express their opinions during engagement
management discussions regarding their determined financial objectives.
Employee engagement and performance management
With proper management, performance management methods possibly will have
affirmative impact with directly leveraging staff participation and downstream attitudinal and
organizational outcomes (Bakker and Demerouti 2008). Comprehensive studies have noted
that coaching as well as development procedures. However, Bakker, Albrecht and Leiter
(2011) have argued that in relation to performance management, increased levels of
performance might effectively be attained by enabling the situations which stand-in and

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promote engagement. In regards to training as well as development and offering staffs with
suitable job capitals, it will be beneficial for the Schwartz Group to train staffs in optimizing
their personal capitals which voice their opinions in improving the stringent personal targets
designed for each employee which is resulting in high sickness absence levels at their
Corporate unit (Albrecht et al. 2015).
Establishing Sense of Purpose and Support
As per organizational practice, it has been advocated that two key drivers of job
engagement have been related to skill variation and POS whereby the latter shows high
significance to work engagement. Meanwhile, other antecedents have been significant to
engagement which claimed that organizations that deliver as well as demonstrate support,
precaution and concern for their workers as well as their well-being anticipate greater levels
of job and employee engagement (O’Connor and Crowley-Henry 2019). On the contrary,
Truss et al. (2013) have argued that while disengagement tends to be concerning for
individuals, they link to deteriorated wellbeing and consequently produce low level
performance. By drawing insights from additional sources, it has been noted that increased
levels of involvement also tends to be equally challenging whereby the outlays of elevated
work participation for workers require greater focus that thye have been attaining until now
(Akingbola and van den Berg 2019).
Conclusion
To conclude, if organizations are considering employee engagement without seeing
workplace diversity, it is only bearing in mind part of the picture. Organizations must
acknowledge the fact that embracing diversity will represent the most imperative business
profits by expanding the access of fresh labour pool. Combining the diverse skills and
understanding of ethnically diverse workers together can enormously value the firm by

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setting the accessibility as well as efficiency of the team to acclimatize to the fluctuating
situations. Schwartz Group must authorize the diversity group to mature diversity declaration
which will bring into line company’s tactical goals. Schwartz Group can use inclusive
classification to stress upon their training accomplishments in relation to diversity. RBV
promoted that relentless competitive advantage draws in elevation possibility where
managements embrace the decision-making capabilities to differentiate and achieve the
productive openings. Under social exchange theory, high-performance work systems are
likely to show emotions. Global as well as regional demographics change along with
repetitive development of organization tends to be depending on drawing as well as holding
employees. Performance management emphasizing engagement encompasses of two‐way
conversations and contracts vis-à-vis the point to which staffs can get employment prospects.
Schwartz Group must focus on endorsing distributive justice, procedural impartiality. In
relation to performance management, increased levels of performance might effectively be
attained by enabling the conditions which substitute and promote engagement. Disconnection
tends to be concerning for individuals, they link to worsened security and subsequently yield
low level performance.

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