Workplace Diversity And Stereotyping: Essay On Importance And Preventive Measures.

Workforce Diversity and Stereotyping

Discuss about the Work Place Ethics for Skillset and Cognitive Styles.

While the traditional notion of workplace diversity may refer to representations of various races, gender and religious backgrounds, today’s concept of workplace diversity is all-encompassing. ¹ Apart from these variables, considerations are also made on age, personality, education, skillset, cognitive styles, and background among others.  Companies that are focused to establishing a diverse work benefits from harnessing a pool of individuals with unique qualities. They view combination of differences in workplace as a potential growth rather than opportunities for conflict.

As time goes on, workforce diversity is becoming an important tool due to various reasons. One of these reasons is that it makes employees to have various opinions and perspectives. When staff members of different backgrounds and experiences come together, they bring different perspectives, hence leading to effective solutions and approaches to different problems that may impact the success of an organization.

Workplace diversity is also known to create innovations. ² When performing duties with colleagues of different backgrounds, skills and working styles, creative ideas can be developed from bouncing concepts from each other. Creative innovations enables an organization to attain a competitive advantage because consumers always wants to be associated with firms that develop unique and high quality goods and services.

 The other importance of workplace diversity is that it enables organizations to grow a pool of talents.³ when companies encourage diversity, they attract wide range of potential candidates to their vacancies because the applicants views them as more progressive and unbiased. When this happens, the management gets a chance to select an exceptional candidate.

Workplace diversity refers to the variety of differences among employees in an organization. Some of the features which define diversity in an organization comprise of; races, age, cognitive style, education, social status, tenure, cognitive style, religion among others.⁴ Diversity in workplace means establishing an inclusive environment that accommodates all differences among the employees, embraces their strengths and provides opportunities for all staff members to attain their full potential.

Diversity involves how individuals perceive themselves and their counterparts. ⁵Valuing diversity allows all employees to contribute their unique experiences to the workplace and can have positive influence to not only internal activities and relationships, but also to the consumer experience and other stakeholders.

Stereotype on the other hand refers to the beliefs and assumptions which employees have concerning their colleague’s culture, race, gender, or sexual preferences. ⁶ These type of assumptions and beliefs lead to discrimination or other factors which can be harmful to the performance of an organization. Stereotyping stems from prejudice, and is an unjustified negative attitude based on individual’s group or class acquired either through past personal experiences or preconceived wrong beliefs. It includes having an attitude, opinion, perception, or certain belief concerning a person or a group.

Corrective Actions

Just like stereotypes are harmful and dangerous in day to day life, they can easily impact morale and productivity in organizations. ⁷ Varying degree of stereotyping occur in organizations irrespective of having high level of awareness and acceptance of diversity. Employers should always ensure that they do not perpetuate stereotypes while trying to discipline those who practice it.

Taking corrective actions to resolve negative impact in organizations plays a significant role in running a successful business. One of the factors which might lead to negative impact which can result from stereotype in organizations is underperformance. ⁸ In most cases and especially where employees do not understand the importance of valuing workplace diversity, the issue of discrimination arises because of various reasons like gender, religion, education, race among other factors. When these happen, some employees end up not performing as expected because they tend to develop a feeling that does not allow them to dedicate their efforts fully for the success of an organization.

To correct this issue, it is fundamental for the management to take proper disciplinary actions to employees who discriminate others because of the differences they have. The disciplinary action should be aimed to not only assisting the person to change but also to making others learn a lesson.

Another negative impact which may result is high employee turnover. When an organization is dominated by stereotypes and lack of understanding how diversity can be utilized to add value to workforce, employees tend to quite jobs from time to time because of not having an environment that allows them to work well. ⁹ Managers should advise all employees to accept each other irrespective of their differences. The management should always hold seminars from time to time to assist employees in understanding why they should appreciate each other irrespective of their differences.

Low productivity can also be a negative impact in an organization when employees fail to accept diversity in the right manner. When employees fail to dedicate their efforts fully for the success of an organization because of various factors that impact their morale, the chances of decreased productivity are always high. Stereotypes and lack of perceiving workplace diversity in the right manner impacts employee perception towards work, which in turn impacts the amount of units which he/she can produce in a day. To resolve the issue of low productivity, the management should encourage team work and advise all employees to appreciate the differences that exist among them and use them as an opportunity for learning new things.

Preventive Measures

Employee underperformance can have a significant impact to an organization. ¹⁰ To survive in the competitive environment, organizations must have employees who are committed to ensuring their organization remains competitive. To prevent employee underperformance, it is advisable for the management to assist all staff members in understanding that the differences that they have can add value to their organization if they are utilized for the purpose of learning from each other. Companies can also prevent this impact through appointing at least one of the senior leaders to be responsible for monitoring institutional fairness.

To prevent high employee turnover resulting from stereotyping in an organization, the management should educate all employees concerning how regular recruiting and training costs an organization in terms of money and time. Letting the employee understand that appreciating one another irrespective of their differences can serve a significant role in improving employee retention can also assist in minimizing the impact of high employee turnover rates.  Educating organizational leaders concerning how stereotypes, especially that are unconscious influence hiring and evaluation decisions can also assist in preventing this problem. Focusing equally on establishing an inclusive organizational culture that encourages diversity can also aid in preventing regular resigning due to stereotypes in workplace.

The type of perception which employees have towards work and their colleagues determines the level of productivity in an organization. ¹¹ The manner in which employees relate to each other also determines the level in which an organization is able to produce in a particular period. To prevent the issue of low productivity in an organization because of stereotypes, the management should encourage the essence of teamwork and group employees of different backgrounds and characteristics together. This will assist the employees to realize that they can attain the best by working together irrespective of their differences.  

The management should also play a key role in showing the essence of equality among all employees. When assigning tasks, promotions, and other things, they should do them in a manner that shows that all staff members are equal. ¹² Demonstrating organizational commitment to diversity through strategic plans, mission statements and other communication to all staff members can also assist in preventing the issue of low productivity which result from stereotypes.

Conclusion

By implementing the corrective and preventive actions, an organization can look forward to experiencing various outcomes. One of these outcomes is good performance from the employees. When employees feel the sense of being appreciated in an organization, they commit their efforts towards attaining organizational goal. Positive performance from employees adds value to an organization because it assists it to attain its goals and objectives.

High employee turnover rate has a significant impact to an organization because it makes the management to keep spending a lot of money in recruiting and training new employees. Implementing the corrective and preventive actions can assist an organization to retain its staff members and hence save the cost of hiring and training processes. Employee retention is fundamental because it assists an organizations to avoid spending a lot of money and time in recruiting and training new employees. Avoiding high turnover rates also enables firms to keep experienced and employees who are familiar with different aspects of the organization like culture, processes among others.

Implementing corrective and preventive measures can also make the organization to expect high productivity. This is because preventing factors which negatively impact employee’s attitude towards work will always make them to see the essence of committing themselves towards attaining the best for the organization. When employees feel that they are appreciated in an organization regardless of the differences which exist among them, they feel proud to be associated with the company and commit themselves towards assist the company to attain its short and long term goals.

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