Workplace Diversity: Benefits, Challenges, and Management Strategies

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of workplace diversity, defining it as the inclusion of individuals with varied characteristics, cultures, and experiences within an organization. It highlights the advantages of a diverse workforce, such as increased innovation, improved problem-solving, and enhanced international opportunities. The essay uses examples to illustrate how diverse teams can positively impact customer relations and global market penetration. However, it also acknowledges the disadvantages, including communication challenges and potential discrimination. The role of managers is emphasized as crucial in navigating these complexities, fostering inclusivity, and ensuring that each employee feels valued and supported. The conclusion underscores the overall benefits of a diverse workforce for organizational growth and global expansion.

Running head: WORKPLACE DIVERSITY
WORKPLACE DIVERSITY
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WORKPLACE DIVERSITY
Introduction:
Workplace diversity can be defined as the culture of work that exists when different types of
people work in an organisation. All these individuals usually have vast amount of
characteristics, culture and experiences which often vary from each other. Each and every
individual of the organisation shows characteristics of workforce diversity that mainly
includes the different parameters like race, ethnicity ability, gender, age and different types of
skills and abilities that are usually present in the individual depending upon their own cultural
and societal backgrounds. An organisation which encourages a wide diversity of people
working together is often benefitted because they are capable of bringing great
competitiveness along with Innovation and the people working there shows great skills that
help in resolving different complicated problems in different manners. All those
organisations which usually encourage the diversity in workplace help in developing
opportunities for themselves with new ideas and also gets a greater scope of increasing their
International opportunities.. Although it has a large number of positive impacts but it also
has different negative impacts. Managers often play a very important role in handling the
positive as well as the negative aspects and this domain will be discussed in the following
paragraphs.
Advantages of diverse workforce:
Often organisations employee a diverse workforce as it provides many advantages. a diverse
workforce usually helps in implementing positive impact on customers sales as well as profit
to the organisation. the recruiters of a company usually increase talent of the people working
in the organisation by recruitment of them through the process of relevant qualifications and
their experience in different fields rather than just searching the limit 2 gender age as well as

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rays which are not very much important to the role. Organisations who want to make profit
on the Global scale can be benefited from the different language diversity which are exhibited
by their diverse work force.
An example can be provided to make the situation clearer. Those employees who are from
Japanese background will provide more benefit to the company if the company wants to
make profit in the Japanese market. This is because the Japanese employees can easily
communicate with the Japanese market and provide better outcomes as they are well aware of
the culture and the likings of the people in Japan. in such a scenario it would be more
beneficial for the workers of the Japanese background to communicate with the Japanese
culture rather than implementing a westerner to participate in the same business deal.
It often becomes important for many organisations to implement the culture of diversity in
workforce so that each and every employee can understand each other and respect each others
cultural background. This will help in creating a great working environment which will bring
great reputation for the company on a global scale. Moreover when people from different
backgrounds are working together they are able to display different traditional working styles
which might bring benefit to the organisation and at the same time they will be able to
provide new ideas that might be beneficial for the company.
This can be again supported with the help of an example. Let us assume a scenario where a
store manager moves from UK to that of Australia and his idea of running a business is
totally different from the basic current idea of running a business. Previously the store
manager used to believe on the idea that he would order products from the manufacturer only
according to the demands of the consumers. In the new cultural scenario he came to know
about a new idea where he now fills up the entire shop with newer products irrespective of
the demands of the consumers that automatically helps in developing attention of the

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consumers and the consumers come in huge numbers just out of curiosity and attention.
These had increased his sell in the past few months in comparison to the sell he used to do
from the traditional method of selling products. Here the storekeeper is mainly benefited
from the cultural change and gained a new idea in Australia which he never followed in
United Kingdom
Disadvantages of diverse workforce
One of the most important negative aspects of diverse workforce is challenges faced by
different workers in their communication skills. Different workers coming from different
backgrounds have their own language as their mother tongue which might not be English and
therefore they might face a huge amount of difficulty in getting accommodated with the new
language in the new land. Moreover even if they speak English, they might have differences
as different developed Nations have their own form of speaking English. These can often
lead to different issues such as miscommunication, confusion, frustration and similar others.
It might result in loss of productivity as well as different other issues like conflict at
workplace.
This can be simplified with the help of an example. It might happen that a manager gives a
particular walk to the employee by discussing the requirement of the assignment but the
employee understands the details of the assignment differently as he could not understand the
language of the manager. However, such a situation may develop tension between the
employee and the manager and ultimately the productivity of the organisation will be
hampered.

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Organisations recruit diverse workforce in the company without planning proper strategy to
handle the different issues which might be faced by the different people in the working area.
As a result, discrimination problems arise among the work force which increases tension
creates negative feelings about each other and also at the same time causes the development
of a blame game that also hampers the productivity of the workplace.
This can be simplified with the help of an example. If an organisation has recruited a large
number of Asian people but have not developed a proper scheduled plan for providing them
good benefits according to the practice of their culture, it might result in development of
negative feelings among the workers against the the organisation as they would feel that their
self respect is affected. Hence HR department should be very careful in developing a
strategic plan for the management of the diverse workforce.
How is this relevant to the role of managers?
Managers often play a vital role in the workplace because they are considered as the leader of
the teams. They have to develop a proper knowledge about each and every worker’s thought
process, the style of working and their morals and virtues. Managers need to work with every
employee after developing an idea about the both positive and negative aspects. They have to
support employees who lack skills or who have language barriers. The leaders have to
maintain the fact that each and every employee should feel that their voice is heard to the
organisation and that their situation is appreciated by the organisation. Moreover diversity in
the workplace also helps the managers to come with new ideas and patterns of achieving
Unity in their team. The managers need to provide direct opportunities to each and every
diverse employee so that with the better performance of every employee, company’s
productivity gets increased.
Conclusion:

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Working with a diverse workforce always brings out positive impact on the organisation. It
is seen that the number of benefits are greater than the number of disadvantages faced by the
organisation when they try to maintain a diverse workforce. Hence every organisation should
try to implement search workforce if they have the aim to expand globally and become a
reputable name in the field of business.