Introduction
Workforce diversity has turn out to be a vital concern in business especially during this twenty first century. Diversity in labor has emerged due the flow of information that has resulted individuals containing different experiences and perspectives. The managerial team has to behave in a way to accommodate this diversity in addition to many other positive behaviors to increase productivity. The government as a business identity is therefore supposed to put up a labor force that will reveal the prosperous diversity of its country. The US government has not been blind in this and in order to maintain high quality production several actions have been incorporated in the workforce.
Government institutions in US embrace on diversity despite the fact that they do not aim at making profit. This is majorly due to the fact that the population is composed of different cultures that are supposed be served by a common government. In addition to diversity producing high revenues from production it also ensures quality products as well as reducing inefficiency, both of which increase consumer and employee welfare respectively. Therefore the government institutions have chosen some practices to attain workforce diversity based on factors that affect the success of it. These factors may include management obligation and commitment, complete engagement of the members of staff, well planed missions and objectives, diversity linkage to the objectives of the organization. A combination of these factors bring about complete usage of diverse ideas present in the workforce of the institution and hence raise productivity, efficiency and quality at no or minimal additional cost.
Leadership commitment is the first step in accommodating diversity in an organization. It is the manager’s responsibility to administer change and a change to better productivity of labor results by motivating employees. The best way to motivate workers has been discovered as involving them in decision making an act that encourages diversity. Workers tend to feel safe and secure in their jobs when their participation in decision making is appreciated. To achieve this, managers have to commit their time and resources to gather information from employees. The US government has achieved this objective in its institutions by holding town hall meetings where the employees give their views or even informally visits workers’ cafeteria and gathers information as the employees argue and to some extent the manager contributes to the motion to gather more information. Moreover when reference is made from one point, it increases the chances of obtaining biasness which undermines the effort made by various parties to achieve fairness. Therefore once the management has foreseen that diversity is effective, signals should be sent to employees in an effort to get their reactions mostly through speeches, training programs websites, and intranet among many others.
In an effort to initiate diversity in US, many organizational heads support diversity and have fully invested in it. Some organizations have permanent staff members of high integrity and work under the human resource department assigned duties of watching over the infusion of diversity in the business daily actions. The significance of diversity is emphasized by creating an office of diversity that is entitled to produce a representative in every board meeting in addition to working hand in hand with the human resource department. The offices are concerned with handling of grievances forwarded by employees who may feel the their right have been overlooked. Moreover in signing contracts with other companies the office is entitled to produce a diversity statement that has to be signed as part of the contract.
The inclusion of the diversity statement ensures that their labor force actually represents the rich diversity in the US community as well as enjoying the competitive advantage accruing from diversity. The motivation of employees to provide their diverse views to be used in management can be majorly derived from giving them the opportunity to do so and thus the manager can handle it. However the leaders have also been motivated to fully commit themselves to diversity as it is not only a responsibility but also requires self driven interest. These has been achieved by holding awards that make out to successful managers in diversity and title them as champions then later use their experiences as an exhibit in efforts to encourage others to adopt diversity. The annual Diversity Distinction in PR awards made at least each year is a good example. The award is given to managers who have successfully implemented diversity in their organizations to motivate others to follow the same course.
The involvement of employees makes diversity to be functional in a firm. In addition to benefiting the company diversity makes the workers life better both at work and at home since they feel part and parcel f the organization and as equals. Due to the fact that diversity makes the employee feel the ownership of the institution by not only contributing to the decision making but also being given the opportunity to work on the department that he is well conversant with, all employee thus attains maximum satisfaction at the workplace. Moreover , workforce diversity is a world issue and its implementation brings about the feeling to the employee that the workforce is up to date. The employees, employer administrators and other units in the institutions are diverse in the way they view different issues and thus their interaction makes the place a learning centre in which one can acquire different knowledge on daily bases in his lifetime. This implies that in addition to how employees involvement adds to diversity success, the measure of the satisfaction they acquire from the work place can be used to evaluate the success of diversity. Therefore the leaders tend to get the employee feedback as a measure of diversity. A manager will know how his strategies in the issues of diversity are working by getting complaints or compliments from employees.
In most government institutions informally collect information through cultural diversity audits. From the audits the management might think about educating workers on intercultural communication in an effort to ensure complete flow of information by eliminating cultural communication differences. Internet can also be used as an informal method of collecting the feedback. Internal websites are commonly used in which employees put across their opinions as well as getting informed about diversity in chat rooms. Rarely used but also relevant is the feedback hotline where employees reach the administration for diversity matters. Different institutions use different sizes of samples to collect the feedback ranging from getting several managers from different departments, in others the chief executive officer carries out round tables with employees. The most effective is interviewing the whole population electronically especially when the feedback of every employee makes a big change.
Diversity can be adopted in any institution but its benefits will only be seen after linking it to the strategic plans of the organizations. Consequently, planning for diversity is also a critical issue in the achieving effectiveness. Therefore, as the organization plans design and put into practice new programs as a result of diversity inclusion in planning the way these initiatives are positioned will determine the success the plan. This implies that in addition to commitment of employees and managers the planners should forecast on the readiness of the agency to progress depending on the current cultural conditions and any other barriers present in the system. On this basis the management should commit themselves by firstly assigning the necessary resources. Moreover the well trained personnel should be used as decision makers and if possible recruitment of the personnel should be on experience bases.
The federal government has tried its best to initiate workforce diversity with its start point at non diverse economy of the past. This has been supported by federal agencies by showing their commitment in improving the workforce to attain the best ever. In addition, the justice department has showed relentless efforts that are aimed at curbing hostility as far as diversity is concerned through heavy penalties to defaulters and other fines to the organizations involved with this unethical behavior. We can say that the motivation for federal institutions to get involved workforce diversity is by seeing the benefits that others have attained from it. As an effort of encouraging diversity and maximally benefiting from it every organization is encouraged to share its benefits as this builds and maintains diverse and high quality labor force.
References
Luther Catherine, Ringer Catherine, Naeemah Clark (2011). Diversity in U.S. Mass Media. John Wiley & Sons. Print.
Fern L. Johnson.(2000). Speaking Culturally: Language Diversity in the United States. London: SAGE publishers. Print.
Naylor R. Larry(2001). Problems and issues of diversity in the United States. Greenwood Publishing Group. Print.
