University Project: Managing Workplace Equality and Diversity Issues

This report details a student project examining how organizations respond to current issues of equality and diversity in the workplace. The project begins with a comprehensive project management plan, including objectives, scope, activities, milestones, and a Gantt chart and WBS. It then outlines primary and secondary research methods, such as questionnaires and interviews with employees, and the analysis of wellbeing initiatives in other organizations. The report presents findings, including a business case justifying recommendations for implementing wellbeing initiatives, and concludes with a reflective practice section, reviewing the project plan. The project addresses key issues like gender pay gaps, sexual harassment, and gender divide in leadership, aiming to create a diverse and inclusive workplace culture. The research explores current organizational approaches and suggests strategies for fostering gender equality and employee empowerment, with a focus on the role of the HR department and the importance of inclusivity in the workplace.

Running head: MANAGING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS PROJECT
Managing a Successful Business Project
Topic: How have companies responded to current issues of equality and diversity in the
workplace?
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Step 1 – Project planning...........................................................................................................2
1. Project management plan...................................................................................................2
Project objectives...............................................................................................................3
Project scope......................................................................................................................4
Project Activities................................................................................................................4
The milestones or major events or phases..........................................................................5
Activities to be carried out.................................................................................................5
Initiation.............................................................................................................................5
Planning and execution of the project................................................................................6
Gantt chart and WBS.........................................................................................................7
Step 2 – Conduct primary and secondary research....................................................................8
1. A questionnaire/ or interview questions with employees within the organisation.............9
2. Research of two other organisations to analyse their wellbeing initiatives.....................10
3. Value and benefits of addressing wellbeing in terms of improving employee retention.11
4. Good practice to build and supporting the business case.................................................12
Step 3 – Present Findings.........................................................................................................12
1. Analysis of the findings...................................................................................................12
2. The business case justifying recommendations for implementing wellbeing initiatives. 13
Step 4 – Reflective Practice.....................................................................................................14
1. Performance review with your line manager to critically reflect upon the project plan..14
References................................................................................................................................16

2MANAGING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS PROJECT
Step 1 – Project planning
1. Project management plan
Assignment Brief
A diverse and inclusive employee culture within an organisation results to equity and
diversity in workplace regardless of the business industry of the size of the business.
Irrespective of the work that an employee has to perform as their day to day activities within
an organisation, equality and diversity and sure that every person within the organisation is
treated as equal and has the same access and same opportunities within the organisation
without being discriminated about any attributes that they own (Sarvaiya and Eweje 2016).
An organisation can include diversity within itself when different people coming from
various backgrounds and cultures are placed under the same organisation due to their skills
aligning to the requirement of the organisation. In the same way the people coming from
different backgrounds, skills, knowledge, experience and other differences ensure a
productive ineffective workforce for the achievement of the unified goal for the organisation
when equality and Diversity within the workplace is maintained. Both these factors are
important for the working of an employee within the organisation, because it has been proven
previously that discrimination and being biased for any employee within the organisation can
hamper the growth of the business and productivity (Haynes 2017). Every business must
consider some legal policies and procedures to be included within the organisation for
effectively promoting diversity and equality for managing the employees within an
organisation to be in an amicable cultural development for employee resulting to the
improvement of productivity, competitiveness and opportunity for the entire organisation.
This particular business process would respond on the current issues of equality and diversity
in the workplace that is generated by gender pay gap, sexual harassment and gender divide in
leadership.

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Project objectives
The particular objective of this project is to make sure that the management of a
project for or influencing a small scale research within the organisation. The primary aim of
the organisation with the inclusion of this particular project is the inclusion of a successful
business project that would provide additional support for retorting to the issues of equality
and diversity within the environment of the workplace (Lindblom 2017). The issues would be
defined as either gender pay gap, sexual harassment or gender divide in leadership and so on.
The project would include the definition of its scope that would make the project team
members understand why the project is been conducted and what benefits it would add to the
retention of employees to the organisation and further improvement of the employee and
what culture. It would also include the activities within the project, the main milestone of the
major event or phrases for the project, the activities that need to be carried out during the
project phases, a schedule and work breakdown structure for the project, the conduction of a
primary and secondary research, presenting of the findings and with a reflective presented on
the project plan.
Therefore, the project objectives would be listed as follows:
 To create a project scope
 To list the project activities
 To prepare a mines told for the major events within the project
 To identify the activities to be carried out throughout all the project phases.
 To understand the schedule and work breakdown for the project
 To create a primary and secondary research with the help of the employees
within the organisation
 To prepare a business case
 Two list and analyse the findings
 To reflect upon the project plan

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Project scope
The project is not just be implemented within the workplace only for the sole reason
that it is fair and justified. It is also being per suit to be implemented within the project by the
development of a proper business operation and procedures bound by policies within the
organisation because it is also impacting upon the economic performance of the country
overall since the outcome of the business process is impacting country’s economic
performances at a larger scale. It is associated with growth national productivity and
economic growth and also makes sure that every person within the organisation is treated the
same (Chuang 2019). The project implementation has a huge scope as it would provide a
pathway to the organisation to showcase the entire world that the organisation does not
discriminate between the different genders within the organisation and also has no
misconduct against women for men for them to experience sexual harassment within the
workplace. This was not just ensure the brighter future of all the individual employees within
the organisation but it would have equal access for every person within the organisation
irrespective of their gender, culture on religion and also make them feel safe within the
workplace creating an amicable environment for working.
Project Activities
The project activities that are to be included for making organisation develop a
workplace that is both gender equal and includes diversity for the employees need to be
conducted in in different approaches. There would be several processes undertaken for this
project which would be implemented within the organisation without having the daily
activities that the employees usually perform (Hideg and Ferris 2016). The introduction of the
project needs to be funded for promoting the strategic activities and understanding within the
workplace. The development of the organisational approach of gender equality needs to
showcase not just in the existing employees within the organisation but also for the Human

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Resource Department and this is why there are several aspects of implementing the gender
equality and diversification strategy that can be consisting of several Parts for implementing
the ideas for the workplace environment through a project.
These activities would include the following:
 Diagnosing the current position of the organisation and its progress towards
gender equality.
 Understanding the recommended development that would suit the
development of the gender equality and diversification strategy.
 Researching and studying on the profile of the organisation to understand what
previous researchers have performed to implement such projects within these
organisations and deciphered the primary unified goal and future action
through this project implementation.
The milestones or major events or phases/activities to be carried out
There are several milestones are major events that the project activities has to carry
out step by step for implementing the cultivation of diversity and gender equality to prevent
sexual harassment and other issues like gender pay gap along with the initiation of gender
divide in leadership within the organisation. These would include the following activities
that would form the milestones that every project face has to reach:
Initiation
 Analysing the business requirements and reporting the same.
 Taking feedback from the leaders after providing them with a face to face
interaction for educating them about the Global diversity and inclusion of
gender equality within the workplace.
 Formation of Inclusion Council
 Creating inclusivity checklist for the Human Resource Department

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Planning and execution of the project
 Promoting inclusiveness by enhancing the presence of Human Resource
Department for celebrating employee differences
 Taking feedback from every individual employee to understand the
experiences that they go to everyday at work.
 Make the HR department create a knowledge gathering face to face meetings
constantly with the secondary research is that they have conducted
 Sharing of information throughout the development of strategic
recommendations
Project closure phase
 Creating a set of questionnaire for the employees within the organisation so
they can work as a respondent
 Analysing the survey responses according to the information provided by the
respondents or the employees
 Generating a strategic recommendation for implementing a proper workplace
environment that is both accepting the diversify culture and promoting
equality of all gender within the organisation
 Training the people within the organisation to acknowledge the skills of an
individual employee respective of their Gender and cultural differences
 Monitoring the business environment
 Solving any issue arising at real time
 Project closure phase after the successful implementation of the project

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Gantt chart and WBS
Figure 1: Gantt chart

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(Source: Created by the Author)

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Figure 2: Work Breakdown Structure
(Source: Created by the Author)

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Step 2 – Conduct primary and secondary research
1. A questionnaire/ or interview questions with employees within the organisation
The employees within the organisation should be brought for or an interview so that
they can present their ideas and perspective about their workplace to let a positive strategy be
implemented. Each employee would be presented with a set of open ended questions for the
interview. They would provide their own ideas and views over the questions so that their
perspective about gender equality and how the gender of a leader is perceived within the
organisation as well as how the people coming from different cultures and parts of the world
are treated within the organisation gets to be known. This is extremely important as if it also
includes the people of different genders and coming from different cultural background so
that the idea of the traditional setting of the organisation is gathered. This would create a
Window for implementing the project so that the requirements of the organisation in
understanding which strategy would be best to implement can be known.
The interview questions can be depicted as below:
 What would you think about the generic mission and vision of the
organisation?
 How do you think the organisation treat the diversity within the organisation
and how does it brings value?
 What do you think that you organisation does to make sure that everybody
within the organisation feel important and included?
 Can you share any incident within the organisation that would represent its
acceptance of gender equality and diversity?
 How gender aware and diverse is the executive and decision making team?

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 How leadership is viewed within the organisation and how do you think that
the leadership is committed for implementing equality in gender to bring in
diversity?
 If there is a female leader within the organisation, how is the perspective of
other employees towards the female leader and working under their influence?
 How do you think does the recruitment efforts of the organisation supports the
gender equality and diverse culture?
 Do you think that the implementation of gender equality and Diversity
program project within the organisation would add value to the overall
outcome?
2. Research of two other organisations to analyse their wellbeing initiatives
In the United Kingdom, There are several organisations that are looking forward for
the implementation of gender equality within an organization along with employee
empowerment of all the genders within their organisations and also trying to promote the
inclusion of by making sure that the HR department reaches out to every country and select
skilful employees based only on the alignment of their skills to the requirements of the
organisation.
The organisation of United Nations called UN Women is an entity that promotes
gender equality and empowerment of women as a dedicated strategy within their agency.
This agency essentially accelerates the progress of understanding the needs of women all
around the world. The primary focus on the areas of the following aspects:
1. Inclusion of women in leading places, participate in programs that require
women to read and get benefited equality (Baker, Ali and French 2019).