CERA: Business Rational and Diversity Management Strategies Report

This report examines the business case for diversity management at Civil Engineering & Research Associates (CERA). It analyzes the organizational background, focusing on the company's commitment to innovation and sustainability, and its need for a diverse workforce. The report discusses the key elements of diversity management, including age, ethnicity, and gender, emphasizing the importance of transparency and stakeholder involvement in policy development. It outlines the benefits of diversity management, such as improved communication, better decision-making, and enhanced corporate social responsibility, while also addressing potential challenges, like communication barriers, accommodating disabilities, discrimination, and ethnocentrism. The report concludes with recommendations for CERA, including developing a diversity management framework and implementing inclusive policies to maximize the benefits of a diverse workforce.

Running Head: DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN CERA
The business rational for Diversity Management: CERA
Student’s name
Name of the Institute

DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN CERA
Executive Summary
The objective of this report is to discuss the case study of CERA (Civil Engineering &
Research Associates) . This report would present the case of diversity management for CERA.
The case study presents that Mark French is the head of the company and he is pretty much
convinced with the business case of diversity management. However, he needs a bit more
convincing about the use of diversity management. This report discusses the business case of
diversity management for CERA. The report analyses the key strengths and weaknesses of
diversity management of CERA. The report concludes that Mark French should definitely try to
option of diversity management and it is important that he should consult various internal and
external stakeholders before implementing any specific strategies of diversity management in the
organization.

DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN CERA
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................................4
Organizational background and the case of diversity management for CERA...........................4
Analysis – Business Case for Diversity Management....................................................................5
Benefits of diversity management........................................................................................................... 5
Challenges of diversity management for CERA.................................................................................... 7
Way forward for CERA.............................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................11
References.................................................................................................................................................12

DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN CERA
Introduction
One of the key roles of human resource management functions is to ensure that all the
employees within the organization can work effectively. The human resource managers have to
create a platform where different employees can work with high productivity levels. Today,
organizations are under pressure to improve efficacy levels. The competition is high in the
industry and it is not easy for organizations to be ahead of the competition. Amidst this, one of
the key agenda of organizations is to get the best talent from the market. It is still easy to get the
best talent; however, it is difficult to retain the best talent. The talent management can be
effective within the organization only when employer does not differentiate employees on the
basis of caste, creed and culture. The policies and guidelines around diversity management
ensures that organizations can provide a platform where all the employees get equal and fair
treatment. The objective of this paper is to discuss the case of diversity management for CERA.
A brief organizational background and the case of diversity management for CERA can be
discussed as:
Organizational background and the case of diversity management for CERA
The organization, Civil Engineering & Research Associates (CERA) believes in the
culture of innovation and sustainability. The company was established in the year 2007 and since
then it has been able to establish a good position in Australian market. The direction or the
company, Mark French, has always believed to recruit best talent from the market. The company
has a team of qualified and high performing consultants who are the backbone of the company.
The employees of the company are encouraged to think out of the box to come up with
innovative solutions for its clients. This paper would analyse the business rational of diversity

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management for CERA with the objective to convince Mark French for increased focus on
diversity management. The paper would discuss the arguments in favour of diversity
management and it could be used as arguments to convince Mark French towards diversity
management.
Analysis – Business Case for Diversity Management
Mark French wants to ensure that the company can profitable in long term. The objective
of the company is to create a niche for itself so that it has a set of loyal customer base. There are
various elements of diversity management that any organization should consider. The key
elements of diversity management for CERA would be age, ethnicity, gender, race, physical
ability of employees, income, education, religious status, personal status of employees, etc. It is
important to mention that overall diversity management is the combination of all the above
elements. The integrated approach with the focus on all the above elements would actually help
the organization to get the best out of employees. It is also important that Mark French should be
transparent about its policies of diversity management with its employees. In fact, the
management of CERA should include various employees and staff while developing and
implementing the policies of diversity management. The cost-benefit analysis of diversity
management would also help the organization to take risk free decision. The first step for Mark
French would be to understand the key benefits of diversity management. The benefits of
diversity management for CERA can be discussed as:
Benefits of diversity management
Diversity simply means differences. Diversity at the workforce means differences in the
characteristics of the people in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, marital status,

DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN CERA
people with physical disability, people from underprivileged communities to name a few. When
so many different people come together to work for a single goal of the organizations, issues are
bound to occur however there are no dearth of research articles stating the benefits of effectively
managing and exploiting the differences among the people for the growth of an organization.
Thus, there has been a growing interest in this area and more and more organizations are
changing their hiring habits so as to make the workforce as diverse as possible. Not only this, as
per the law in UK in April 2018, larger organizations, having more than 250 employees, has to
publicly disclose the salaries gaps based on the gender and this initiative has greatly improved
the public awareness of importance of diversity and inclusion initiatives at the workplace. In the
same scenario, if any organization is having huge differences between the salaries of men and
women, it will really be going to devoid itself of talented people of a group with lower salaries.
On the other hand, organization that do not have much pay differences among the genders will
definitely be attractive for all the groups and thus able to retain its talent in an effective manner.
With this initiative, government is determined to promote the equality and inclusion among the
organizations.
Also, today organizations are becoming global and deals with suppliers and customers of
different countries. Thus, it makes sense for the organizations to have diverse workforce so that
they can be effective in dealing with the diverse customers. In order to deal with the intangible
issues and complexities of having a diverse clientele, it become necessary to have a
heterogeneous workforce that can generate rich ideas as well as bring amalgamation of cultures,
nationalities, thoughts and demographics. If the company is expanding into global markets, it
must hire local people and increases the diversity because local people will help the company to
align in new culture as well as refine and improve its strategies so as to make the local sense

DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN CERA
(Hunt, Layton, & Prince, 2015). Local people will prefer to join the organization only if it has
diversity and inclusion policies in place.
Another reason to have diverse workforce is that the cognitive diverse teams solve the
complex problems faster as compared to the similar people as per the Harvard business review
report by bringing large number of perspectives in to a discussion and evaluating the ideas more
holistically (Tapia, 2017). Also, diverse teams able to make better decisions at a faster rate also.
Such workplaces that have diverse workplace can also boast about its corporate social
responsibility and use that to improve its image and brand in the market. This in turn will attract
the talent from all the walks of life because people will feel that the differences are truly valued
and accepted in such organizations (Hodge, Murata, & Lieberman, 2017).
Challenges of diversity management for CERA
Although diversity entails a lot of issues at the workplace, still the interest is growing
very fast and more and more organizations are increasing their investments for effectively
managing the diversity due to its benefits (Kakabadse, et al., 2015). If it is not managed
effectively, it will create chaotic workplace leading to conflict everywhere, formation of groups
and defeating the entire purpose of having a diverse workforce and therefore it has to be
managed effectively. Some of the common challenges associated with diversity management are
discussed below:
Communication: As part of the its diversity management policy, organization often hires
immigrants who are not comfortable in English and this really hampers the productivity due to
lack of effective communication among team members (Downey, et al., 2015). It also
demotivates the existing employees of the organization because they are the ones who have to

DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN CERA
face communication challenges on daily basis. Organization can give the basic language training
to immigrants to ensure that they can communicate effectively.
Accommodating people with disabilities: Sometimes organizations unknowingly hire the
people with disabilities to increase the diversity without making appropriate arrangements for
them. Physically disabled people needs ramps, special restrooms or it can be any other special
equipment requirements (Farndale, et al., 2015). Thus, it is a big issue and organization must
make appropriate arrangements.
Discrimination: It is about the unfair treatment based on the person’s class, age, race, sex or any
other attribute. Though it is strictly prohibited in all the organizations, it is difficult to stop this
practice at subtle level when people practicing discrimination knows that they can get away with
it and no one can have caught them (Downey, et al., 2015). This really demotivates the
employees and will create negative atmosphere. For example, there is often a cold war between
old timers Vs newcomers in many of the organizations where if the management and leadership
positions consist of old timers and they will not allow any newcomer to take up the management
position irrespective of the talent (Oswick, & Noon, 2014). Apart from it, Old timers often
demotivates the newcomers saying their new ideas won’t work in the organization as they know
the organization from long time. Similarly, many experienced people discriminate the young
workforce and do not accept their ideas simply because they are not much experienced (Barak,
Findler, & wind, 2016). This will again bring a tension among different groups and is one of the
biggest issue in diversity management.
Ethnocentrism: It is one of the biggest challenge of diversity management. In this, people view
their own group or culture as the center of everything and judge other cultures using their
standards, preconceived notions and culture (Bruya, 2017). If something is wrong in the

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particular culture but acceptable in another culture, still people will view that as negative in
judging the other culture.
Compromise with Merit: This is the biggest issue in the diversity management when the
existing employees started thinking that the HR initiatives of diversity and inclusion at the
workplace have ease the norms for entering into the organization (Sabharwal, 2014). This impact
the existing employees because they think that the new employees coming from diverse
backgrounds are not talented enough but have been recruited only to increase the diversity at the
workplace. This will really impact the existing employee morale as they find it difficult to
collaborate with someone they don’t think is deserving.
Way forward for CERA
Though diversity management is very important for the organization however the
potential benefits will not begin to surface simply because of greater workplace diversity.
Workforce diversity has to be managed, tolerance for an individuality has to be increased,
changing the traditional mindset, creating the culture of inclusion and commitment to respect and
value the differences among the employees. It is a slow and gradual process and requires change
in people centered policies, hiring process, appraisal, revisiting payroll policies, identifying
diverse trainings needs, identifying constraints of the people and making appropriate revisions
around the same. Thus, the most important step for the organization should be to develop a
framework for diversity Management. The framework should consist of all the requirements,
policies changes, new steps and enforcement of the policies.

DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT IN CERA
Under each bucket, CERA can list down the key objectives and way to achieve. For
instance, under requirements, organization can mention investment needed for this initiative of
diversity management (Dobbin, & Kaley, 2016). Investments may comprise of training needs
for the people who are from non-English speaking nation, infrastructure needs for ramps and
special toilets for disabled people, sensitization training for each employee of the company so
that he/she should know the various cultures and think from overall perspective, equal
opportunity and inclusion training as well for everyone.
Under policies changes, CERA should capture the key areas where it needs to change its
existing policies Like hiring process, pay differences, appraisal, training to name a few. For
instance, organizations who just focus on referrals for selection may be closing the doors for
increasing the diversity because people generally refers their friends and families from a similar
culture (Cotttrill, Lopez, & Hoffman, 2014). Thus, organization has to change its hiring policy.
Also, if there will be too much difference in salaries of men and women or newcomers and old
comers, it will demotivate the people. Similarly, performance appraisal should also be as much
transparent as possible so that people will feel fair treatment.
Under new steps, CERA can define new policies like reasonable accommodation policy
for disabled people, work from remote location for new mothers, and so on. Though, it is a tough
task and not possible to formalize each and every process, but organization can do it gradually on
a need basis.
Finally, CERA also has to create a platform where people can raise complains about
discrimination in an anonymous manner. Organizations must have zero tolerance policy for the
defaulters or those who do not respect the organization policies and must take appropriate actions
against them (Benschop, et al., 2015). In order to ensure that the system is not abused, it is also

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important to appoint the ombudsman who can closely monitor the concerns raised and take
action only if the concerned person is found guilty. This will foster the culture of trust,
collaboration, inclusion in the organization and it will also attract the talent from the different
cultures. Apart from this, all the initiatives have to be supported and practiced by the top
management and only then these will become the culture of the organization in a long run.
Conclusion
With the above discussion it can be said that diversity management must be practiced by
CERA. It is recommended that Mark French should develop a team to implement the diversity
management policies within the organization. It is also important that the senior management of
CERA should collect inputs from various employees before developing any specific policies of
diversity management. The inclusion of employees would bring a feeling of self-belongingness
among employees.

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References
Barak, M. E. M., Findler, L., & Wind, L. H. (2016). Diversity, inclusion, and commitment in
organizations: International empirical explorations. Journal of Behavioral and Applied
Management, 2(2).
Benschop, Y., Holgersson, C., Van den Brink, M., & Wahl, A. (2015). Future challenges for
practices of diversity management in organizations. Handbook for Diversity in
Organizations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 553-574.
Bruya, B. (2017). Ethnocentrism and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Philosophy. Philosophy
East and West, 67(4), 991-1018.
Cottrill, K., Denise Lopez, P., & C. Hoffman, C. (2014). How authentic leadership and inclusion
benefit organizations. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 33(3),
275-292.
Dobbin, F., & Kalev, A. (2016). Why diversity programs fail. Harvard Business Review, 94(7),
14.
Downey, S. N., Werff, L., Thomas, K. M., & Plaut, V. C. (2015). The role of diversity practices
and inclusion in promoting trust and employee engagement. Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 45(1), 35-44.
Downey, S. N., Werff, L., Thomas, K. M., & Plaut, V. C. (2015). The role of diversity practices
and inclusion in promoting trust and employee engagement. Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 45(1), 35-44.