Semester 2, 2018: Critiquing Diversity in Healthcare Organizations

This reflective essay critically evaluates the scope of diversity within the healthcare industry, exploring the benefits of a diverse workforce and the challenges organizations face in broadening diversity. The essay highlights the importance of managing human resources effectively and emphasizes how diversity can enhance creativity, improve working conditions, and ultimately benefit patient care. It discusses the impact of leadership styles, the importance of teamwork, and the need for cultural competency. Furthermore, the essay addresses challenges such as communication issues, conflicts, and the gender and generation gap, proposing solutions like employee training. The author concludes that, despite the challenges, embracing diversity is crucial for globalization, improved customer satisfaction, and overall success in the healthcare sector, providing valuable insights for healthcare administrators.

RUNNING HEAD: Resource Management
Resource Management

Resource Management 1
Topic: Critically evaluate the scope of diversity in your organisation or industry. Then reflect on
the capacity of your workplace to improve the extent of diversity in the workforce by analysing
challenges to broadening diversity within the workplace.
Diversity refers to the aspect of understanding and accepting the differences present in
individuals based on their caste, creed, sex, race, ratio etc. and working with them. In a global
perspective, an organization can grow only when they work with diversified minds. A
homogenous organization grows only in domestic environment but faces difficulty when
exposed to external international environment. Further, the purpose of this reflective essay is to
brief the reader about the scope of diversity in my chosen healthcare organization. It also
explains the capacity of the healthcare industry or organization to improve the extent of use of
diversity factor in their business by accepting the challenges and converting them into
opportunities. More details about the essay are discussed below:
I believe that employees are the biggest asset of the every organization, so before managing any
other resource it is important for the organization to manage the human resource of the company.
According to me, irrespective of aspect of diversity, it benefits every organization and industry
present in the environment. Similarly, the healthcare industry is also benefitted with the use of
diversity approach in their business (Valantine, & Collins, 2015). The healthcare industry is an
industry that regularly requires to train its employees so that they can understand the complex
situations of the clients and deal with it. Many times the employees of the company requires
experts assistance as well. Such assistance is taken from other experts that have proficient
knowledge of this field. So if the organization will hire the diversified human resource in their
business then it will ultimately solve the issues on the floor and provide better experience to the
clients as well (Betancourt, Green, Carrillo, & Owusu Ananeh-Firempong, 2016).
Diversity refers to the process of employee people in the health care organization that have
diverse features within them. Diversity ultimately increases the creative capacity of the business
and improves the working conditions as well. Further, I believe that there is strong scope of
diversity in the healthcare industry as it providing better working to people and improve the

Resource Management 2
capabilities of the employees as well. In healthcare industry, I think that the aspect of diversity
can be managed using good leadership style in business. Leadership is identified as an
impressive way that helps healthcare organizations to deal with the diversity challenges at
workplace. The aspect of diversity in healthcare industry has a great scope and impact on the
condition enhancement of the patients present in the industry (LaVeist, & Pierre, 2014). As an
impact of diversity, millennial employees are given more chances to present their opinion and
views in the healthcare organization due to which the patient care objective is kept at the first
place. In addition, according to my understanding this aspect brings a level of positive
competition within the workplace itself that influences many employees to work in an effective
way. This positive rush between the employees ultimately helps the industry to grow with a
positive rate (Williams, et. al., 2014).
So, I believe that diversity has a wide scope in the healthcare industry. If my organization is
aiming to provide employment to the people coming from rural or semi-developed areas then
ultimately, my organization is giving chances to people of that area to come and attain good
treatment from my organization as well. If people of such areas are not given chances of
employment then other people living in that areas also get deprived of such medical facilities;
because if a person from their community will work there then they will get a sense of
acknowledgement and ease to go to such healthcare centres and get treatment without any issue
(Phillips, & Malone, 2014).
I believe that teamwork is the key to the growth of healthcare industry in an external
environment. For a business, it is important for them to hire culturally different people so that the
organization increases its competencies as well. I believe that not only my workplace but every
other organization has the capacity to adopt to aspects of diversity in their business. But they do
not adopt it because the fact that diversity many times increases communication issues at
workplace. According to me, diversity is an important aspect that helps the business to grow and
expand its activities in international markets as well. Culture is very important for the business
and if people from different background come in an organization to work then one culture does
not dominate other cultures because the organization is occupied with diverse cultures (Doherty,
& Purtilo, 2015).

Resource Management 3
Cultural competency is identified as an organizational strategy to address the ethnic disparities
present in their healthcare system. The extent of diversity in a business increases the customer
satisfaction from the organization. In healthcare company, many customers do not get proper
treatment due to having minority share in the society. However, the healthcare industry should
never follow this type of practice in their business and treat every person in the right manner
(McFarland, & Wehbe-Alamah, 2014).
There are various reasons to adopt workplace diversity in the business but I believe that there are
various reasons not to adopt it from the perspective of the business. The biggest diversity
challenge at workplace is communication issue; the workforce faces lack of effective
communication at workplace. This aspect results in decrease in the efficiency of the employees
to work in organization because coordination is very important in healthcare industry and it can
only be achieved by initiating effective communication. Apart from this, the healthcare
organization faces various conflicts in their business as well (Valentine, Wynn, & McLean,
2016). Conflicts in the workforce majorly arise due to difference in the way of working of
employees. Expatriates coming from UK have different ways to practice their activities while the
employees coming from domestic environment works in different ways, resulting to which the
interest of the employees collide. Respect at workplace is an important aspect that should be
practiced by all the employees present in the healthcare industry. Nevertheless, the expatriate
employees coming from minority society feels insecure and cultural shock while working in
diverse nation and if the domestic employees do not respect them, then the organization might
face several issues at workplace as well (Grumbach, & Mendoza, 2008).
In a healthcare industry, it is important for the employees to respect each other and co-operate
with each other for the successful working of organization ad increasing satisfaction of the client
as well. Gender and generation gap is also one of the most significant challenges that are faced
by the healthcare industry on a whole. The majority section of the society aims to supress the
minority gender or section of the society. Irrespective of the work that the employees contribute
in the industry, some are being segregated from the society because of their gender. In addition,
generation gap is also a challenge that is being faced by the organizations present in the
healthcare industry (Issel, & Wells, 2017). I think that the healthcare industry is the only industry

Resource Management 4
that requires both experienced as well as millennial employees in the industry. Experience of old
employees and the talent of the millennial employees, both aspects are very important for the
business and have their equal importance. However, it is very difficult for management to align
the interest of both categories of employees together. So, the above mentioned are some of the
challenges that an organization faces while aiming to initiate diversity aspect in business. But
considering diversity as an important aspect I believe that it is implied in the healthcare
organization that they have to adopt diversity in their process. Along with challenges, this aspect
also provides various benefits as well. Also, it should be noted that the challenges of diversity are
not big enough that they cannot be solved of the healthcare organization (Popper-Giveon,
Keshet, & Liberman, 2015). According to me, all the challenges of diversity can be resolved by
training the employees with the importance of diversity in business. The management should
train the employees that diversity will help them to learn from different people and effectively
co-operate with each other to solve the problems as well. This will enhances the customer
satisfaction as well. Thus, in this way, the company can increase their capacity to grow, expand
and adopt the aspect of diversity in business (Marrast, Zallman, Woolhandler, Bor, &
McCormick, 2014).
Thus, in the limelight of above mentioned events, the fact should be noted that diversity is an
important aspect that helps business in initiating the act of globalization. Diversity in healthcare
industry helps the employees to learn from people using diverse practices and increase the
satisfaction level of customers at the same time. While adopting diversity the healthcare
organization faces various challenges that they can easily resolve by adopting the aspect of
diversity with a positive approach and training the employees as well.

Resource Management 5
References
Doherty, R. F., & Purtilo, R. B. (2015). Ethical Dimensions in the Health Professions-E-Book.
Elsevier Health Sciences.
Grumbach, K., & Mendoza, R. (2008). Disparities in human resources: addressing the lack of
diversity in the health professions. Health Affairs, 27(2), 413-422.
Issel, L. M., & Wells, R. (2017). Health program planning and evaluation. US: Jones & Bartlett
Learning.
LaVeist, T. A., & Pierre, G. (2014). Integrating the 3Ds—Social determinants, health disparities,
and health-care workforce diversity. Public Health Reports, 129(1_suppl2), 9-14.
Marrast, L. M., Zallman, L., Woolhandler, S., Bor, D. H., & McCormick, D. (2014). Minority
physicians’ role in the care of underserved patients: diversifying the physician workforce
may be key in addressing health disparities. JAMA internal medicine, 174(2), 289-291.
McFarland, M. R., & Wehbe-Alamah, H. B. (2014). Leininger's culture care diversity and
universality. US: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Phillips, J. M., & Malone, B. (2014). Increasing racial/ethnic diversity in nursing to reduce
health disparities and achieve health equity. Public Health Reports, 129(1_suppl2), 45-
50.
Popper-Giveon, A., Keshet, Y., & Liberman, I. (2015). Increasing gender and ethnic diversity in
the health care workforce: The case of Arab male nurses in Israel. Nursing outlook, 63(6),
680-690.

Resource Management 6
Valantine, H. A., & Collins, F. S. (2015). National Institutes of Health addresses the science of
diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(40), 12240-12242.
Valentine, P., Wynn, J., & McLean, D. (2016). Improving diversity in the health
professions. North Carolina medical journal, 77(2), 137-140.
Williams, S. D., Hansen, K., Smithey, M., Burnley, J., Koplitz, M., Koyama, K., ... & Bakos, A.
(2014). Using social determinants of health to link health workforce diversity, care
quality and access, and health disparities to achieve health equity in nursing. Public
Health Reports, 129(1_suppl2), 32-36.