Effective Strategies For Working With Deaf Individuals, Diversity Policy For Workplace, Adjusting To A New Environment, Six Qualities Required To Succeed In Australian Workplace, Mentoring To Promote Gender Equality Essay.

Strategies for Assisting Deaf Individuals in the Workplace

Carefully read through each question posed.  Reflect on your learning unit and your own research.  In your response, you should use terms and phrases that you defined in your previous assessment. In order to fully demonstrate your knowledge in this area of study, you should aim to present 180 words for each response.  A minimum of 150 words for each response is required.

Please note: Where the word count is not met, your submission will be returned to you for re-working.

1. Your practice has just employed a dental assistant who is profoundly deaf.  As you are the senior assistant at the practice, your manager has asked that you mentor this person to ensure their smooth transition into the business.  While you have mentored other new employees in the past, you have never experienced working with a deaf person.  What strategies will you use in order to reflect on your own beliefs and values and ensure that the new person receives all the assistance they need?

2. Your practice has made a commitment to embrace diversity, and management is eager to demonstrate how they are promoting and acknowledging difference.  Your supervisor has asked you to attend a diversity meeting with other team leaders and would like your input about what to include in a diversity policy.  Outline the types of inclusions that should be in that policy.

3. Imagine that you have been transported to a place in the world where the culture, language, traditions, values, beliefs and practices, food, dress, gender roles, religious beliefs, individual rights, family roles, and child rearing practices are completely different to your own.  You are required to live in this place for six months without any contact with your home or family.
Describe how you might feel and what would you miss most.  What assistance would you like from your new community to help you settle in and feel safe?  Describe how you might translate this self-reflection to your work with customers and colleagues from a culture other than your own.

4. A new trainee has begun working at your practice.  He has only recently arrived in Australia from a country that expects women to behave very differently to the way women behave here.  He holds those attitudes, and this has resulted in a number of incidents where there has been friction between him, other staff, and customers.  When his manager has a discussion with him, he responds positively and understands that he needs to modify his behaviour in order to continue working at the centre.  Outline at least six qualities that the trainee could embrace in order to achieve success.

5. Your manager recognises the value of inclusion and mentoring and has asked you to become a mentor to the new trainee from the scenario in Q.4.  The manager believes that you are a hard worker with excellent interpersonal skills.  What are the positive effects that the manager believes will result from this pairing, and how will you go about mentoring the trainee?

6. Allira is a Murri woman.  She enjoys sharing her culture with customers and colleagues and feels proud that she has contributed to a better understanding of her people.  She is an active member of her community and both contributes to and participates in a range of social and cultural activities.  Allira has been granted a week of special leave to assist in planning activities for Sorry Day.  The practice manager becomes extremely concerned when he hears two employees discussing the unfairness of Allira being granted special leave for Sorry Day.  “I don’t know why they have Sorry Day anyway.  It’s time they moved on!”

Why should the practice manager be concerned about this discussion from a business, legal, and ethical perspective?  What would be a more positive and worthwhile response to Allira attending Sorry Day activities?  What information could the practice manager provide?

7. Describe in your own words the meaning of ‘marginalised’ when it applies to groups of people.  What do you see as potential needs of these groups?

8. Q.1 looked at the scenario of a practice employing a dental assistant who happens to be profoundly deaf.  What types of resources are available for this person to ensure that their needs are met, and what is available for all employees of the practice to ensure that they have an awareness of those needs?

9. What can you see as some of the influences and changing practices in Australia and their impact on Australian society’s diverse communities?

1. The strategies that are required for assisting the deaf person in the workplace is to provide him equality among the workforce and also to make sure that the person does not suffer any form of discrimination for the physical incapacity that the person has. A person who has the capability of understanding the language that he is comfortable in communicating with should be engaged near him and the other people should also be trained with a basic sign language training course. The person should be given the job which requires minimum customer handling so that he can do his job diligently without any form of bullying or laidback behaviour from the clients or other staff. He even can be employed at a position to help the other deaf customers who come to the clinic which in turn will boost up his confidence and make him feel important among the workforce.

2. Diversity is to include people from various groups and ethnic backgrounds together without any form of discrimination. The inclusions that can be in a diversity plan are as follows –

· To include a potential workforce applicant plan with considerable amount of women, handicapped and socially backward classes.

· To create an environment that promotes courteous and fraternal environment in the office premises

· To celebrate and respect each of the customs of the employees and give due importance in the course

· To make sure that there is no discrimination or bullying among the employees of the office

· To include people from every race and ethnic origin to promote the sense of diversity in culture in the office

· Ensure unity among the people of the organization and to give power to every person based on their efforts and skills

· Promote woman empowerment in the office with due effect

· Not tolerating any sort of sexist or racial remarks in the office and a strict no tolerance for the same

3. If I am to be placed at a place that has a completely different environmental setting than mine, it is very natural for me to feel misplaced at first and feel homesick. I will feel confined to a place that has nobody to understand my beliefs and practises which can also make me feel odd at times. The thing that I will miss the most is of course my own family and friends. Other than that, I will miss my food and the culture that I am used to.

I will like my new community to provide me with a cordial behaviour and provide me time to understand their values and customs so that I can adjust with their culture. They should also try to understand my culture and views and help me get adjusted accordingly. This will make me feel settled in and safe in the new place. I will translate this self-reflection to my customers and colleagues by means of effective communication through a common language or through writing.  

4. In order to achieve success, the employee needs to employ the below six mentioned qualities to get used to the different set of lifestyle that Australia has for women –

Types of Inclusions in Diversity Policy for Workplace

i. He should be more tolerant to the new culture and understand that every country has their own set of values that the people follow which can be different from his native place.

ii. He should have liberal views about women and their role in the society.

iii. He should be more aware about the laws of equality that makes women as per to men without any form of discrimination.

iv. He should communicate more with the employees from different ethnic backgrounds and culture to have an idea about the various views and attitudes that the other cultures hold.

v. The social role play should not be limited to the kind of work one can do. He should be made to understand that if a woman can cook, so can a man which does not limit either of the two to get involved in other forms of activities including working.

vi. The culture and the society of Australia should be compared to his native land that will help him understand more about the difference in thought process and thereby the societal gap.

5. As a mentor, I will try to understand the culture and thought process that the trainee holds which will help me to understand his viewpoint and the type of concepts he has for women and their job roles. After that, I will try to make him understand the different aspects that the society holds for both the genders which needs to be changed. He should be made aware of the different forms and viewpoints that the people from other cultural background holds so that he can have a greater view of the society and widen his knowledge. At the end, I will make him meet women from different backgrounds so that he can talk to them on a personal basis and get rid of the clichéd views he has about them. My manager believes that my association with the new trainee will bring a positive change in him in his attitude which will make him more liberal and equal in terms of treating the feminine gender.

6. As a manager, the discussion between the two employees can evoke a sense of concern on the basis of business, legal and ethical perspective. On the legal basis, if Sorry Day is not in the listed leave of the company, then the manager can be charged of unfairness and bias nature for his granting of the special leave. This can hamper the reputation and the company policies in the employees. Even other employees can demand such special treatments on their cultural holidays. From a business perspective, the manager should be worried about the lack of unity the employees hold and the loss of business can be caused due to the absenteeism of an employee and the paid leave that the company has to bear. Ethically, the manager should be worried about the lack of respect the other employees have for Allira and her culture. A more positive and worthwhile response to Allira should have been to participate in the cultural activity and even understand the value and reason for conducting such a day. The manager could provide the employees with the employees with the history and the implications for observing such a day in the calendar of the community.

7. When a set of people who are more in number in a particular community treats the other people as peripheral or unworthy, then that group of people is termed as marginalised in respect to the major community. The group of people are treated as marginalised when they are less in number compared to the other groups both in terms of facilities and the worth given.

The potential needs of the groups is to gain equality and exclude discrimination in the society. The government and the other organizations can play a vital role in the process and can make them feel safe and at home at a country which lacks their own culture and people. The people of such a kind of community needs proper handling and also adequate policies and subsidies both in terms of education and employment facilities. The importance of the people should be felt to them and should be made less vulnerable to the other social order.

8. If one of the dental assistant are deaf, then a number of special facilities are to be given to the employees to make sure that particular employee feels safe and secured amongst all. A particular training session should be held by the organization that should help the employee mix with the other people and should let the other people about the needs that he should have. A sign language training should be done so that he can get the basic facilities from the other colleagues without a hassle. The resources that should be available for the deaf people include employing a person that can act as a communicating source between that person and the general people of the organization. A strong anti-discrimination policy should be upheld to make sure that the employee feels safe and not vulnerable amongst the people who have hearing capabilities. All the employees should be made sure to give him respect and adequate courtesy to make him feel like any other employee.

9. Since the time, Australian society has faced major changes and has major influences from all over the world to make it one of the developed and well-accepted societies in the present decade. The theme of multiculturalism has affected the society and the country has registered a massive influx of population from all over the world due to either learning or work purposes. The racial practises have also changed making it one of the countries that have minimum racial discriminations. Sometimes the effect of racism is seen in the society with sprouts of dispute among the diverse communities of Australia but majorly, the government has succeeded in making it one of the zones where people from various parts of the globe come and settle impacting the diverse communities in a very positive manner. The society of Australia has experienced various changes like involving communities all over the world and making a society with maximum population and tolerance is one of the basic and worthwhile changes of the recent times.