Research Paper about Workforce Diversity
Abstract
The purpose of the research study is to identify the positive impact of workforce diversity on the business environment of an organization. Recognizing the adversity and challenges of workforce diversity, the paper will discover how workforce diversity can help an organization to compete in a particular market. Realizing the factors associated with corporate responsibility, corporate policy, management practices and perceived disproportion, the research paper would bring out the effectiveness of workforce diversity regarding gaining competitive advantage for a business firm.
Introduction
Identifying the crucial factors of workforce diversity, dominant businesses across the globe has effectively utilized significant policies and management practices to ensure employee diversity for organizational strength. Meanwhile, the modern organizations operating in the global business platform are employing workforce diversity to improve the organizational productivity. As workforce diversity adds new quality, talent pool, and effective human resources from a different culture, race, religion, gender and psychological attributes, it develops the strength to any organization. Various companies operating in the global business platform have identified the importance of employee diversification and developed the workforce diversity as one of the premier management systems to compete in the challenging markets. In order to lead by examples, corporate companies need diverse quality and efficiency of the human resource to get the best opportunities count. In this very research paper, a discussion of previous literature has been produced to show how diverse workforce has delivered a competitive edge to a business organization in a particular marketplace.
Literature Review
A review of previous research can show how workforce diversity of an organization effectively manages the performance of the firm. Identifying the organizational goals and objectives, HRM of an organization can pick the best human resources to create significant workforce diversity in order to support the organizational needs. Meanwhile, employee discrimination is one of the major challenges to workforce diversity. Specifically, discrimination based on religion, race and gender can be acknowledged as critical discrimination relevant to workforce diversity. Recognizing such challenges associated to the workforce diversity management, organizations have developed efficient methods and management practices so that such discrimination can be avoided. Hence, management has utilized workplace training and corporate culture to put an end to the challenge. Having long-term goals related to employee diversity, business organizations can set effective targets to achieve in the business environment (Palthe, 2014). Corporate companies have paid more commitment to workforce assortment so that better and diverse knowledge and learning skills can be utilized to enhance the organizational performance. Considering the employee diversity management within an organization, both the negative and positive dimensions of workforce diversity have been scrutinized to control the system in favor of the organizational productivity.
On the other hand, another research can identify the concept of workforce diversity and its direct impact on the employee performance protecting employee discrimination in diverse work culture. As workforce diversity produces several opportunities for the management to enhance leadership capabilities, communication system, employee relationship, business dynamics, employee motivation factors, corporate learning, decision-making techniques and corporate culture, it would improve the overall organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and receptiveness (Gregorius, 2010). Meanwhile, in this particular way, utilizing the diverse culture of the workforce business organizations can deliver innovative business model to improve the monetary performance, comprehensive competitiveness and employee discrimination issues.
Irrespective of human race, culture, social caste, gender, religion and physical appearance, workplace diversity within an organization can provide a significant opportunity for the employees to prove their talent and confidence. Therefore, the management has paid significant attention to eliminate the employee discrimination from the system to add extra mileage to the business prosperity. Recognizing the workforce diversity power, successful business organizations in the global platform have shown their worth to their competitors. In the meantime, workforce diversity fosters uncovering of inequity to make space for every organizational human resource to demonstrate their talent and performance level (Wink, 2009). Most of the top class companies have significantly delivered workforce diversity programs within the organizational culture to set impressive results in the global business platform.
Another research perspective of previous literature can be shown to draw attention to the development of business framework due to workforce diversity culture. Identifying the essentiality of managing diversity and acknowledging diverse people’s individual value, most of the global corporate business has promoted inclusiveness of diverse employees’ belonged to different groups. Such effective management practices have delivered significant encouragement to the workforce so that the diverse workforce can work as a team to unleash impressive results (Trenerry & Paradies, 2012). Preventing discrimination from the human resources management, managers have directly led by examples to achieve successful employment diversity to attend significant competitive advantage.
Methodology
Research methodology explains the techniques used to collect data and conduct the research. Different sampling methods can be used choose the sources of data collection. The study will use random sampling technique in which the employees from the organization will be determined on a random basis to conduct the survey. It has been decided that 50 employees from the organization will be chosen to participate in the survey. The secondary sources will be determined using the purposive sampling technique in which the literature will be chosen according to the requirement of the research topic.
Two different types of data collection methods will be used in the research. The primary data will be collected with the help of questionnaires that will be used in the survey. The primary data will be gathered from the employees working in an organization. The name of the organization has not been revealed to maintain the privacy rights. The questionnaire that will be used to collect primary data is presented below:
Questionnaire for the employees:
Please choose any one of the following options:
1. Please mention your age.
≤ 20
21 – 30
31 – 40
41 – 50
≥ 50
2. Please mention your gender.
Male
Female
3. Designation: ____________________
4. From which country you belong: ____________________
5. Religion: ____________________
6. Gender of your Supervisor.
Male
Female
7. Dispute with your supervisor.
Very often
Often
Neutral
Rarely
Very rarely
8. How often do you feel lonely because you do not know the local language?
Very often
Often
Neutral
Rarely
Very rarely
9. Bad behavior of your colleague because of your cultural difference.
Strongly agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
10. There is a need to diversify the workforce to adapt localization strategy.
Strongly agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
11. Workforce diversity is good for employee.
Strongly agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
12. Workforce diversity acts as a competitive advantage for the organization?
Strongly agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
The secondary data will be collected from the journal articles, newspaper articles, books, government reports and internet sources. The secondary sources will be used to observe the theories and conduct a literature review. The literature reviews provide a path to carry on the research to find out the results of the study.
Results
The research has shown that workforce diversity has been considered as an important factor for an organization to compete in the global market. But, workforce diversity comes up with various challenges for the organization that needs to be overcome to have a peaceful working environment in the organization. The challenges are barriers of languages, variation in belief and difference in practices due to cultural diversity.
The findings of the survey show that 38% of the employees belong to other countries out of which 15% are from an Asian country. It can be seen that expatriates face problems because of language differences and in some case discrimination are made because of cultural differences. When these employees were asked about the bad behavior of colleagues due to the difference in culture, 27% strongly agreed and 18% agreed with the fact. Hence, it can be seen that there are several challenges faced by the workforce and the organization due to workforce diversity.
When we look at the responses of the participants regarding the need for workforce diversity for adapting localization strategy and effectiveness on the organizations success, it can be seen that more than 50% of the employees agrees with the fact. Along with that, the prior literature also states that workforce diversity is required for any global organization to seek success in the local market. Hence, it can be seen that workforce diversity provides the organization with the sustainable competitive advantage that helps the organization to meet the growing competition in the international platform. A diverse workforce with proper control to mitigate the challenges can help an organization to seek success in the long run.
Conclusion
At the end of the research paper, one can easily understand how workforce diversity has been one of the crucial aspects of HRM system in the modern business world. Identifying the diversity policies and commitments, global business organizations can set definite goals regarding employee diversity to deliver efficient, competitive edge to the business. Nevertheless, some of the significant drawbacks and challenges of workforce diversity must be taken into consideration so that effective diversity initiatives can be implemented. Realizing organizational objectives, global corporate businesses have preferred to hire suitable diversity consultants so that the HRM can lead to efficient diversity training agenda. Conclusively, in real world scenario of corporate business, workforce diversity can be termed as one of the most decisive points to be competent in a particular market.
References
Gregorius, H. (2010). Linking Diversity and Differentiation. Diversity, 2(3), 370-394. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/d2030370
Palthe, J. (2014). Cross-Level Cultural Congruence: Implications For Managing Diversity In Multinational Corporations. JDM, 9(1), 51. http://dx.doi.org/10.19030/jdm.v9i1.8622
Trenerry, B., & Paradies, Y. (2012). Organizational Assessment: An Overlooked Approach To Managing Diversity And Addressing Racism In The Workplace. JDM, 7(1), 11. http://dx.doi.org/10.19030/jdm.v7i1.6932
Wink, M. (2009). Towards a Better Understanding of Diversity. Diversity, 1(1), 1-4. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/d1010001
