Action Research Project
Introduction
Different organizations face challenges in their daily operations. The common types of issues organizations are bound to encounter cash flow, competition, and revenue growth. On top of these challenges, institutions also struggle with human resource management problems. Human resource management includes job design and analysis, workforce planning, training and development, performance management, compensation and benefits, or legal issues. This research is going to focus on identifying a human resource problem and providing specific organizational development strategies to resolve the issue at hand.
Problem identification
The first step of dealing with any issue in an organization is identifying the problem. The primary concern identified in the organization is diversity in the workforce. The organization does not embrace a lot of diversity in the employment of its employees, whereby it is clear that the majority group of employees in the organization are whites, male workers, and there is no incorporation of people with disabilities. The institution needs to try and employ a diverse workforce to enhance an enabling environment in the workplace. The aim of creating an environment of acceptance and equal opportunities for everyone is essential. By identifying the issues and variations among employees, the management can examine specific diversity issues to know which changes they need to make to address the problems.
Literature review
Diversity
Diversity has become a primary evolving idea in most organizations, either through explicitly focusing on an individual or a contextual basis. During the 1970s, diversity in workplaces involved female minorities in the society, but this concept shifted overtime. Diversity was viewed based on age, disability, sexual orientation, social class, nationality, race, or religion. Therefore, it has a classification in terms of an individual’s personality, internal traits, external and organizational traits. The personality category includes the person’s skills or abilities. Inherent attributes focus on race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Culture, religion, or marital status made up the external characteristics, while the organizational traits included workers’ positions, departments, or unions (Suharnomo, Wahyudi & Wikaningrum 2017). Many organizations adopt diversity in the employment of their workers, and there is a need to manage the diverse workforce to bring out positive outcomes.
Management of workforce diversity
Organizations can be successful in managing diversity if the initiative to create, manage, and value a diverse workforce gets total support by the top management. The management should get this assignment by linking the concerns for diversity to the human resource management decisions during recruitment to have a successful diverse workforce. The organization should also build an enabling environment to accommodate more diverse people in the workforce. Employees’ performance should also be clear and objective without any bias of any worker. Management should look at both good and bad behaviors that have to be based on performance feedback discussions involving a diverse workforce. The strategy employed in managing must have the will of the human resource, strength, and the organization’s culture (Agolla and Ongori 2007).
According to Collings, Wood & Szamosi (2018), there is no specific definition that can include all the traits that a diverse population can offer in the workforce. It is also evident that there are no efforts that bring diversity in working organizations. There has been an increase in women and other minority groups in the employment industry, with minority youth being employed, gays, lesbians, and even bisexual people. They have become an essential part of the workforce. There has also been a distinct increase in the number of people living with disabilities entering the workforce. Management of workforce diversity cannot be based on a single strategy to resolve all diversity problems or to manage diversity at workplaces successfully. One of the essential management plans for diversity stands to be diversity training for organizations to enjoy the fruits of employing a diverse workforce. Proper management of diverse employees will result in advantages in the organization.
Advantages of having a diverse workforce
According to Martin (2014), organizations that embrace diversity will have a binding energy among their employees. They will have varied network contacts with employees who are diverse in carrying out different roles and tasks. Embracing diversity will simply mean accepting that variations are not absolute but are variables that enable the organizations to carry out its activities effectively. Individuals’ differences add to perception and talent heterogeneity that help find perfect solutions for any specific situation. From Martin’s study, it is also evident that a diverse organization will also help in operating in a diverse market with a diverse customer base. It also assists in dealing with cross-cultural challenges as the organizations undergo globalization. It will be a sufficient benefit to the organization because most businesses have missions of expanding their operations to the rest of the world. Diverse workforces in business organizations also lead to the reduction of operation costs brought about by reduced worker turnover rates.
Having a diverse workforce will also bring competitive advantages that arise from better decision making, high creativity levels, and innovation. Such organizations tend to be useful in the processes of interaction and their performance levels. The results, however, will come in place after the employees have time together for some time. Creativity and representation levels can also improve by employing diverse employees. Business strategies can enjoy superior services from this kind of workforce due to the deep understanding of the consumer wants. With the current shift from the goods market to more service markets, there will be a need for effective communication between people to record positive returns, and it can be attained by employing a variety of employees who understand the market. The advantages of diversity will require the development of various strategies to resolve this problem in organizations that are not diverse.
Proposed strategies to curb the diversity problem
The organization has a diversity problem in the type of workforce it employs; it is evident from the high numbers of male workers and white employees in the organizations. From the literature review, it is crystal clear that a diverse workforce has to be embraced because of the benefits it comes with for the entire organization. Therefore, it is vital to have strategies that are going to resolve this issue in the organization. The organization can opt to attain strength through unity to resolve the issue of employee diversity. When employees have the knowledge of other colleagues unique abilities and background, they can take these variations ta accomplish a specific goal in the organization. There will be unity among every employee since everyone will know the extent to which their colleagues can perform a particular task and embrace cooperation in the organization.
Secondly, it will be wise for the organization to empower its staff members by offering diversity training programs. The training will help them to adopt in the creation of a more inclusive workforce concerning the minority groups in the society that are under-represented in the institution. The employees can get education on creating a culture of respecting and tolerating their colleagues in the workforce. The training will help prevent prejudice on anyone when a new employee is brought on board. Outsourcing can also help employees deal with communication problems and avoid cultural clashes among them (Cornelius 2020).
Another strategy to resolve diversity issues is for the organization to develop corporate guidelines. The organization can formulate laws that govern the recruitment process to reflect an inclusive nature in the company. They can also provide policies that touch on harassment and discrimination in the organization. It should be so clear that any act of harassment and discrimination will face a hefty penalty for anyone who tries performing such activities. The organization can also adopt executive buy-ins to assist in the creation of a top-down culture of inclusivity.
The organization can also decide to use the strategy that brings out an accommodative mood among all employees. The different cultures people have should be accounted for together with their personal views and requirements. For example, there are those employees who are quite religious and have prayer schedules, which they follow strictly. Therefore, it is crucial that the management acts in an accommodative manner that enables them to maneuver through their praying schedules without making others uncomfortable easily. People living with disabilities also require flexibility in their schedules to attend to medication for their chronic illnesses.
Finally, the institution can look at ways that it can avoid unconscious prejudice. The company can outsource specialists to analyze the condition of diversity in the workplace thoroughly. The evaluation can then be used to identify specific blind spots or strategies that can undermine the employed inclusive workforce. From done studies, it is clear that people with ethnic-sounding names have to send many applications before getting a call-back as compared to people with white-sounding names. It is, therefore, essential to use blinded applications to evaluate potential employees. The best strategy to be used is to cooperate with diversity awareness training, establish corporate guidelines, and avoid unconscious prejudice. These strategies are mainly focusing on preventing the occurrence of a problem and strict penalties in case of undermining the policies put in place. They are, therefore, going to be effective in the resolution of the diversity problem in the organization.
Resources required
For diversity issues to be resolved, some resources have to be used to assist in resolving the issue. The organization will require finances for training and sensitization programs for employees. There will also be a need for more specialized human resource management officers who will assist in the development of a new recruitment procedure for new and diverse employees. The recruiting system should also undergo an upgrade to incorporate the new recruitment policies, such as blinding applications in the system, to avoid discrimination during the entire process.
Timeline
It is not easy to come up with a diverse workforce within a single day. It is, therefore, going to take some time, and a gradual procedure will be employed to resolve the issue. It is because many factors have to be considered before hiring someone else; the cost factor of recruitment and training of new employees has to be taken into account. The professional qualifications of the staff also have to be considered. The timeline for resolving the problem can hence be approximated to be two years with a regular evaluation of the recruitments done semi-annually to analyze the proceedings made in the number of diverse employees recruited in the organization.
Anticipated resistance
Bringing diversity into the workplace is also not going to be an easy task; it is going to face resistance from some of the already existing employees. These employees are going to feel threatened that the policy of employing a more diverse workforce is going to cost their jobs. Individuals at the lower ranks are anticipated to show the highest levels of resistance because they feel if there is anyone who was going to suffer in the layoff of workers is going to be them. It is essential to motivate them that a proper way is going to be used and their rights as employees will be considered to avoid bias in the recruitment procedures.
Potential benefits
The potential benefits of resolving this matter and employing a diverse workforce is innovation and creativity in the organization. A more diverse workforce is going to bring about innovation and new ideas in the institution that will assist in problem-solving and attaining the organization’s goals and missions. People have different capabilities and characteristics. When these traits are brought together, a bigger picture is attained, and the entire organization benefits in such a way that it can even diversify its services to different customers because of the diversity in the organization’s communication.
After implementing the strategies, the organization can use an annual report system that reflects the underrepresented people in the workforce in the different ranks. Titles and levels in the company can also be used as an evaluation procedure. For example, in a case where two individuals have similar experience and education, the management should have interests in knowing if they get the same payment and titles. It is important to have such information because blacks and women sometimes get underpaid even if they have similar qualifications with other employees.
Access to special projects or treatment should also be analyzed. The organization might be having special projects it carries out for its employees, such as access to further studies for various employees. These projects should be given a keen eye to establish whether everyone has access to it or if it is only a selected few who can access them. There should be equal opportunities among everyone to bring a sense of equality. Equality will result in a sense of inclusivity because everyone will feel accepted for who they are within the organization, and there will be no discrimination.
Suggested evaluation
Some evaluation procedures have to be employed to evaluate if the strategies aiming at resolving the diversity issue have been effective. The organization can decide to have a regular check on the recruitments done at a specific time after the implementation of the strategies. It will enable the management to know whether the human resources are employing the techniques put in place to ensure diversity in the organization while also catering for the quality of staff members. The employees can also undergo regular evaluations to determine their take on the new measures put in place and identify how staff members relate to while at work. Employee evaluation will be used as a test technique to determine if the new strategies are positively or negatively impacting the organization.
Conclusion
Even after in-depth talks about workforce diversity, misconceptions still exist in various business organizations. Most definitions fight for inclusion but do not give a provision for the variations between functional and societal diversity. Such differences place organizations in a state of jeopardy and confusion, and sometimes most diversity management strategies fail because of lack of consistency in the definition of diversity. Diversity is an essential matter in any given institution to employ. It is seen that when an organization is diverse in the types of employees, it uses in its operations, it can enjoy several benefits from such a workforce. Diversity can be embraced in many ways, such as consideration of gender, age, race, ethnicity, or even disability. Organizations should, therefore, have workforce diversity as part of their organizational requirement because it brings innovation and creativity among staff members.
References
Agolla, J. E., & Ongori, H. (2007). Critical review of literature on workforce diversity.
Collings, D. G., Wood, G. T., & Szamosi, L. T. (2018). Human resource management: A critical approach. In Human resource management (pp. 1-23). Routledge.
Cornelius, W. (2020, May 6). How to solve diversity issues in the workplace. EVERFI. https://everfi.com/insights/blog/how-to-solve-diversity-issues-in-the-workplace/
Martin, G. C. (2014). The effects of cultural diversity in the workplace. Journal of Diversity Management (JDM), 9(2), 89-92.
Suharnomo, A. Y., Wahyudi, S., & Wikaningrum, T. (2017). A systematic literature review of managing workplace diversity for sustaining organizational competitive advantage. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology (IJMET), 8(12).