Managing diversity that promotes Retention of employees

 

Managing diversity that promotes Retention of employees




Diversity is anything that makes people different from one another. Religion, age, sexual orientation, citizenship, political affiliation or opinions, military service, mental and physical conditions, personality, education, favorite sports team – all of these fall under the umbrella of diversity, which, if not managed correctly, can open the door to charges of discrimination or employee relations matters. (Robert, 2007).

Building a diverse environment and team has some challenges, but the advantages far outweigh them. Employing people with various backgrounds has the potential to give your company a leg up because it can:

  • Spark creativity with an infusion of new ideas and perspectives
  • Give you a head start on innovation because you’re drawing ideas from different types of people
  • Help you relate better to your target audience
  • Align your culture more closely with the reality of our nation
  • Broaden the appeal of your sales pitch and provide insight into client demographics
  • Improve how your team interacts with clients and the public, and increase customer satisfaction

In order to create and maintain a diverse workplace, must learn to:

  • Identify with others who are different from you
  • Be willing to take other perspectives into account
  • Be able to embrace those very traits that make us different
  • Recognize everyone’s contributions

According to above factors, how do you handle them?

Hire the most – qualified people

To begin, your objective should not be to compel a varied environment or to enforce artificial standards. Hiring the best qualified individuals, those with the appropriate education, experience, and skill set, will naturally result in a diverse workplace.

Equalize the playing field by instituting standard and equitable policies. Are you consistently documenting each interview? Are all job seekers given the same questions?

Managers may need training in the fundamentals of interviewing procedures, documentation, and what questions are and are not permissible. For instance, queries concerning an applicant's personal life, such as the number of children they have or their religion affiliation, are absolutely prohibited (Sastry, 2000).

Recruit the outside box

Finding people with diverse backgrounds and experiences might be challenging in some sectors or fields. If this is the case, search for more innovative and better ways to recruit (Ulrich, 2012).

For example, if you want to hire highly skilled female engineers, broaden your recruiting efforts to include professional groups in which they may be members. Consider attending career fairs in different sections of town or in neighboring cities.

Put your policies in writing

Ascertain that all of your personnel policies include paperwork about equity, including hiring, compensation, and advancement only on the basis of performance. The following sections of your employee handbook should cover diversity:

  • Code of conduct should outline the company’s policy toward diversity
  • Communication plan should detail non-discriminatory communication
  • Non-discrimination policy lets people know about the laws and exactly what is not allowed
  • Compensation and benefits policy
  • Employment and termination policy 



Enforce a zero-tolerance policy

In today's workplace, off-color jokes about people's peculiarities or stereotyped insults have no place. Establish rules for dealing with infractions and make it clear that they will not be tolerated (Sastry, 2000).

Encourage employees to bring any instances of this sort of conduct to the attention of management. Establish clear grievance rules and processes to ensure that employees understand how to properly report concerns and that management can respond immediately. Managers must be accountable for their subordinates.

Stay current  

Keep abreast of changing employer-related laws and trends. Be sure your human resources policies, especially those around harassment and equal opportunity, reflect the most current information (Ulrich, 2012). Remember laws vary from state to state, and they can change at lightning speed. What’s accepted this month may not be the next.

Secure executive buy-in

Executives and upper management need to be on board and model open-minded behavior. For example, they should:

  • Treat all employees with respect and not show favoritism toward a particular group
  • Act swiftly if there is a diversity breach, such as an employee making jokes about a pregnant woman’s weight gain
  • Communicate about the value of diversity at company-wide meetings

If you meet resistance, you may want to counter with a list of ways that diversity in the workplace can be good for business and a reminder of the legal consequences for ignoring it.

Conclusion

A diverse workforce is a reflection of a changing world and marketplace. Diverse work teams bring high value to organizations. Respecting individual differences will benefit the workplace by creating a competitive edge and increasing work productivity (Robert, 2007). Diversity management benefits associates by creating a fair and safe environment where everyone has access to opportunities and challenges. Management tools in a diverse workforce should be used to educate everyone about diversity and its issues, including laws and regulations. Most workplaces are made up of diverse cultures, so organizations need to learn how to adapt to be successful.

 

References

Robert, R., 2007. Role of human resource management in staff retention. International Journal of Personnel Management, Issue May (2007) .

Sastry, N., 2000. Women Employees and Human Resource Management. 1st ed. Hyderabad: Universities Press.

Ulrich, D., 2012. Future of Human Resources. [Online]
Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/07/18/dave-ulrich-on-the-future-of-human-resources/#400f3f693b0a
[Accessed 16 April 2022].

 



Comments

  1. Hi,
    It is true that the organizations should always embrace diversity to have highly engaged employees who will retain to give their best for the organization(Cloutier et. al., 2015). If the organizational culture does not treat each and every employee equally regardless of their race, religion, color, etc., the organizations will lose top talent and that will impact the organizational outcomes. mangers and the organizational HR teams plays a major role in managing diversity of the organization and it is their responsibility from the beginning of the recruitment to create a highly engaged team who respect each other to have the competitive advantage to win the challenge of surviving.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi,
    The fact that is discussed here is valid in every generation as the employee in an organization is getting discriminated for numerous number of issues in the society that will make them low self esteem to work. An organization has the capability to achieve employee retention is based on four strategies by encouraging Communication, hiring a diverse workforce, hiring appropriate skill-full employees and provide employee necessary trainings(Cloutier et.al., 2015) . According to (Davis, T.L., 2013) proper employee retention strategies will reduce the employee turnover.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi. I think Herzberg’s Two Factor theory also will help for the employee retention.Herzberg’s identified two dimensions to job satisfaction. Hygiene factors cannot motivate employees but can minimize dissatisfaction if handled properly. On the other hand, motivation factors create satisfaction by fulfilling individual’s needs for meaning and personal growth (Syptak,1999).
    Fourteen factors relating to employee job satisfaction had been classified as hygienic or motivating factors. Motivating factors increase employee job satisfaction while the hygiene factors prevent employee job dissatisfaction (Nickerson,2021).

    ReplyDelete
  4. Employees who differ from most of their colleagues in religion, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, and generation often hide important parts of themselves at work for fear of negative consequences. We in the diversity and inclusion community call this “identity cover,” and it makes it difficult to know how they feel and what they want, which makes them vulnerable to leaving their organizations.

    ReplyDelete

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