Analyzing Diversity's Role in the Red Cross: A Comprehensive Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of diversity's impact within the Red Cross, a community service organization. It explores the benefits of diversity, including increased productivity and employee engagement, while also addressing challenges such as communication barriers and cultural conflicts. The report delves into the need for inclusivity, cultural safety, and competence, emphasizing the importance of valuing and accommodating diversity through various strategies like fostering effective communication and providing equal opportunities. It further examines how to build effective relationships, overcome communication barriers, accommodate client needs, and manage cultural conflicts, offering practical solutions for creating a harmonious and productive work environment. The report highlights the importance of understanding cultural characteristics, biases, and prejudices and provides methods to prevent and manage conflicts to maintain organizational consistency.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK...............................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Diversity refers to the mixture of different things which are completely separate from
each other. It works as the beneficial concept for organisation as people belonging to diverse
culture provide wide range of scope and option to company (Sandberg, 2015). The present report
is based on the Red Cross, a renown community services charity based organisation which works
for social welfare. This company was incorporated in 1941 by Royal Charter. Red Cross works
at international scale and contributes in different kind of social services like aid, migration
support, blood donation, social inclusion, community services and humanitarian law. The
company is working collaborative with huge number of workforce that works with diverse
cultured people. This non governmental company follows inclusivity policies for managing
conflicts at workplace. This report provide deep description about role of diversity and its impact
upon workplace.
TASK
Impact of diversity upon work and work relationship
Diversity plays an essential role in working environment of company. It also influences
capability of employee while performing their job responsibility and their relationship with
colleagues. In context to Red cross, the community service company is working at international
whose work is operated by people belonging to different cultures. Thus, it is really difficult for
company to deal huge work without compromising with anyone's culture. It can be said said that
there are many ways in which diversity in employees culture impact upon work and work
relationship of Red cross. These ways are defined as below:
 It helps in learning experiences for all the people working in organization.
 Increases productivity and efficiency.
 Easy adaptability of changed business environment (Prause and Mujtaba, 2015).
 Collection of new and diverse ideas and experiences makes it for company to outperform
its competitors.
 Numbers of services can be provided resulting in higher profits and customers
satisfaction.
 Lower employee turnover but conflicts may rise due to different opinions of workforce.
 Employer may face difficulties in understanding problems of each employee.
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 Difficulty in co-ordination of team work due to language barrier.
 Cultural resistance is a big challenge in which employee become redundant to change.
 Discrimination issues get higher and employees often treated unfairly.
 Training costs are increased.
Benefits of diversity
Diversity refers to concept which implies that each individual is unique personality can
be recognised on dimensions such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation etc (Kamoche
and et. al., 2015). In organizational context, it is a wide set of conscious practices that involve
understanding individual on the basis of demographic and philosophical differences. Diversity
in an entity could create benefits that are as follows:
 Improved productivity by using diverse set of skills and experiences. These can be shared
with each other which work as an assistance to each other.
 High creativity by doing work with team efforts and exposing innovation. Working style
differs person to person which bring creative ideas.
 Greater profits by following global trends with the use of language. It can provide a
strong base to operate at global scale as interaction with different people gets easy due to
language.
 Employee engagement is improved due to number of meetings with workforce, in which
personnel share their personal experiences.
 It reduces employee turnover and increase talent pool. The reason being, employees look
for company which hire manpower from diverse background.
 The increased equality to all employees encourages personnel from all backgrounds to
feel comfortable, confident which improve their performance(Bartholomaeus, Riggs and
Andrew, 2017).
Need for inclusivity, cultural safety and cultural competence
Cultural inclusion refers to laws and policies for combing best-problem solving,
creative, innovative and entrepreneurial practices. This kind of environment is created to work
with mutual respect, effective relationship and many more.
Cultural safety is primarily regarded a concept to ensure safe and healthy working
environments for employees. An employer should consider health of its workforce important and
make necessary arrangements.
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Cultural competence refers to ability to build an environment where people find it easy
to interact and understand each other and to be respectful to people belonging to different
backgrounds. The need for the above-mentioned elements are as follows:
 To minimise conflicts at the workplace(Noe and et. al., 2017).
 To attract more potential employees to join the company.
 To create harmony in society by treating each individual equal.
 To provide a suitable and desirable environment for people from diverse background.
 To co-ordinate work and mitigate barriers and difficulties in attainment of goals.
 To create a large pool for human resources, from where required employees can be hired
as and when required.
 To create an environment where each employee is given respect.
 To reduce or remove any sort of discrimination.
 To value capabilities and abilities.
 To encourage ad motivate to outperform the set standard.
Cultural characteristics, biases and prejudices
Cultural characteristics means shared set of values by a society. A society have people
from different background, who may have different opinions, ideas and choices, hence, these all
should be given importance.
Bias can be described as a tendency to form decisions by considering specific thoughts or
notions. This makes a person to commit mistakes or errors in judgements so formed.
Prejudices refers to incorrect behaviour towards a person or group of person. It is a
dislike without any reason towards a particular group.
It is necessary and important for individual to be self aware and competent in order to
perform their tasks efficiently(Smith, 2015). One must stand and raise his voice against any
circumstances which may impact negatively. Everyone should provide the best solution to their
clients or customers. When it comes to biases, which is a human nature, in which a person has
the ability to make mistakes, however, employees must take utmost care and carry work in order
to mitigate the level mistakes and errors that may occur.
How diversity should be valued and accommodated
The individual perception and experience may affect the performance of an organization
in different ways. It may impact its assets and growth. As more and more companies are
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expanding their businesses in multiple countries which increases diverse workforce in the
organization(Zastrow, 2016). Hence, it is important to evaluate value of diversity. Valuing
diversity mean creating equal employment opportunities to all irrespective of gender,
nationality, race, religion etc. Accommodating diversity mean modification of policies,
practices, attitudes and behaviours that may discriminate a group of person or even an individual
on the number of basis.
It can be valued and accommodated in the following ways:
 Inclusion: An organization must make it a part of its strategic goals to hire workforce
from diverse background.
 Create a work environment: In this, employer must make sure and work towards
making an environment that is free from any bias, harassment. Each employee is given
equal respect.
 Effective culture of communication: Communication mechanism should be
implemented effectively in which one must listen to others problem and consider their
opinions by giving values and providing solution on a fair basis.
 Equal opportunities: Each employee should be given equal opportunities irrespective
their background. Further, there should not be any barrier to explore such opportunities.
 Appreciation of contributions: Each employee must be encouraged to bring their own
perception and ideas (Conrad and Gasman, 2015). Further, each personnel shall be
rewarded and appreciated for their contribution.
How effective and mutually beneficial relationships can be built with work mates, clients
and client's families
Creating relationship at workplace is very important as employees spend majority of their
time with their colleagues. Further, a healthy and good relationship increases efficiency of
employees which provide positive impact on business. Moreover, workforce find it comfortable
to work in an entity which create an amicable environment. The ways in which effective and
mutually beneficial relationship with workmates, clients and client's families are as follows:
 Encouraging employees to give suggestions and opinions about various activities and
operations of organization which will provide a sense of belongingness to employees.
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 Understanding and valuing personal problems of a personnel and provide appropriate
solution which will solve it (Jones and et. al., 2016). Further, sympathy can must be
shown.
 An effective flow of information by keeping them transparent. Moreover, not a single
information or data should be hidden and must be accessed by all employees.
 Encouraging everyone working in the organization to create a positive and supportive
work culture. This can be achieved by forming a synchronization with each other in team
and overall.
 Informal environment often help in building a contact with employees so that mutual and
friendly relationship can be created with clients and their families.
How to overcome communication barrier
Communication is a key to success of an organization. A message sent by sender must be
such that it is understandable by receiver. However, an organization employing diverse
workforce may face various language barriers. Red Cross can remove communication barriers in
the following ways:
 Elimination differences in opinions: A company must hire right person for the
right job, who has required skills and capabilities. Further, he must be able to
understand the language spoken by majority of people working in organization.
 Use of simple language: A easy language with clear words and simple meaning
must be used and words giving uncertain and ambiguous meaning must be
avoided) (Wen and et. al., 2015).
 Active listening: One must listen to other attentively. Listening helps in
apprehending the message in the same sense as of sender. One must ask questions
when the other person has finished his part.
 Simple organizational structure: The structure should be simple which is easy
to understand by each individual working in the organization. The simple the
structure, the effective the communication.
 Avoid information overload: The work must be assigned according to skills and
capabilities of each employee. Further, leader must provide guidance which will
make sub-ordinates to work within prescribed time.
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How the individual and cultural needs of clients can be accommodated and respected
The cultural needs of individual from diverse background should be respected. This gives
a confidence in public and investors in the company (Bell and Adams, 2016). The ways in which
individual and cultural needs of clients can be accommodated and respected are as follows:
 Awareness about cultural background, experience, attitudes, values of individual. It is
important to form an understanding and correct biases must be formed that will benefit
for long-term.
 Education oneself is important to increase knowledge about differences of culture, social,
psychological, political etc.
 Recognition to ethnicity and culture of client's have positive impact on their behaviour
and perception.
 Respect must be given to client's beliefs and values along with spiritual and religious
values.
 Information and messages should be provided in a language fathomable by receiver i.e.
client. It reduces any misconception and wrong intention.
 Whatever information is to be transmitted, it must be in writing together with enough
supplements and explanations.
 Elimination of prejudices and practices that may cause discrimination in workplace.
 Clients must be assisted to aware about their own norms of culture which are applicable
generally as well as in organization(Ellis and Epstein, 2015).
Methods used for prevent, overcome or manage cultural conflicts
Disputes are inevitable and it is just impossible to remove them from arising again in
future. When an organization employ diverse workforce, it is likely to cause conflicts. Further,
these must be resolved promptly in order to maintain consistency in organizational activities. The
techniques that may used to manage or overcome them are as follows:
 One should not have assumption that disputes involve people of different cultures.
 A through explanation about the process which would be used to resolve dispute must be
made (van der Walt and de Klerk, 2015). Further, it must be made in a language that is
intelligible by everyone.
 A draft must be prepared about the steps which will be taken and translated into language
of all parties.
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 Interpreters must be provided to make it feasible to understand.
 Respect must be given to each employee's point of view and opinions.
 The various culture at work place must be highlighted and fast understanding of cultural
events must be made.
 Proper investigation must be made by using body language, emotions and problem
solving techniques.
Strategies for improving self and social awareness
1. One must Learn about behaviours other people that may cause impact negatively.
Further, modification must be done to behaviour according to situation to have positive
experience and impact.
2.Take ownership and apologise for rude and bad behaviour and errors and mistakes
made.
3.Ask others for their honest feedback about the of interaction. One must accept the
negative feedback along with the positive (without getting defensive) and make changes
accordingly.
4.Be aware of you body language. Non-verbal communication is more important than
what you have to say. Positive body language will benefit your interactions with other
people (Thyer, 2017).
5.Learn to listen with genuine interest. Fight the urge to respond immediately and really
listen to what the other person is trying to say.
6.Accept that improving your social skills is not an overnight process. Trying to improve
or change too many things at once will be counter-productive as you will feel so
uncomfortable that you may suffer an emotional hijacking.
7.Maximize your positive personality traits and use them to your advantage when
interacting with others.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it has been concluded that work and work relationship is
important to maintain a healthy and amicable working environment at workplace. Diversity is
always have positive impact at workplace and employees with different background must be
hired in companies. This increases productivity, profitability and efficiency. Further, conflicts
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must be avoided through methods that may provide appropriate way to resolve. Moreover, social
awareness is important in global market so that company can do its business easily in multiple
countries. Along with this, the power of language must be understood.
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REFERENCES
Books & Journals:
Sandberg, S., 2015. Lean in-Women, Work and the Will to Lead.
Prause, D. and Mujtaba, B. G., 2015. Conflict management practices for diverse
workplaces. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly. 6(3). p.13.
Kamoche, K.. and et. al., 2015. The dynamics of managing people in the diverse cultural and
institutional context of Africa. Personnel Review. 44(3). pp.330-345.
Bartholomaeus, C., Riggs, D. W. and Andrew, Y., 2017. The capacity of South Australian
primary school teachers and pre-service teachers to work with trans and gender diverse
students. Teaching and Teacher Education. 65. pp.127-135.
Noe, R. A., and et. al., 2017. Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage.
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Smith, D. G., 2015. Diversity's promise for higher education: Making it work. JHU Press.
Zastrow, C., 2016. Empowerment Series: Introduction to Social Work and Social Welfare:
Empowering People. Cengage Learning.
Conrad, C. and Gasman, M., 2015. Educating a diverse nation. Harvard University Press.
Jones, T., and et. al., 2016. School experiences of transgender and gender diverse students in
Australia. Sex Education. 16(2). pp.156-171.
Wen, H., and et. al., 2015. Fluorinated Alcohol‐Mediated SN1‐Type Reaction of Indolyl
Alcohols with Diverse Nucleophiles. Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis. 357(18).
pp.4023-4030.
Bell, L .A. and Adams, M., 2016. Theoretical foundations for social justice education.
In Teaching for diversity and social justice (pp. 21-44). Routledge.
Ellis, W. F. and Epstein, K. K., 2015. Tactics and strategies for breaking the barriers to a diverse
teaching force. Diversifying the Teacher Workforce: Preparing and retaining highly
effective teachers, pp.139-150.
van der Walt, F. and de Klerk, J. J., 2015. The experience of spirituality in a multicultural and
diverse work environment. African and Asian Studies. 14(4). pp.253-288.
Thyer, B. A., 2017. Social learning theory: Empirical applications to culturally diverse practice.
In Human behavior theory (pp. 133-146). Routledge.
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