Managing Diversity in The Workplace

Employees are the basic building blocks of any organization’s visions and goals and their behavior directly results in the success or failure of a predetermined strategy. Behaviour is simply what is said or done. These outcomes of behavior include performance, quality, service, satisfaction, personal growth and naturally relations with others.
Individuals are similar in many ways but human behavior is essentially complex due to organizational, personal and individual variables. These variables will subsequently affect an individual’s behavior. Management should however embrace the challenges faced when obtaining organizational objectives and accept that certain psychological attributes of individuals are difficult to change. The manager should then attempt to influence the behavior and not necessarily modify.
Individuals differ according to various such as: demographics; attitudes; abilities and skills; personality; learning ability; values; beliefs; perception and individual needs and their motivation. The smart manager will need to be aware of his beliefs and situations towards his staff and the impact of this behavior towards others. The manner in which management behaves towards staff members should always encourage a positive response that should spread virally throughout the organization.
Diversity management is key to organizational growth and cultural intelligence should be cultivated to enforce your competitive edge. Managing a diverse workforce from the perspective of ethnicity and age, as well as country of origin, remains a concern due to a changing world and generational differences. This shift in management focus is further motivated by the increasingly mobile labour market arising from globalization trends.


Managing Diversity in The Workplace