Diversity in the Workplace

Diversity in the Workplace

Diversity in the Workplace

Diversity in the workplace is important and has legal recognition as of the 1960s when the United States prohibited discrimination against gender, ethnicity, race, religion, and national origin. Diversity in the workplace is increasing in today’s organizations from the rapid shifts in demographics from globalization, development, and education (Wylie, 2004). Today, the average company is seeing a job market that is flooded with more women, minority groups, disabled, lesbians and gays, and elderly workers. However, diversity is not limited to these parameters as there are many characteristics that when combined make people different or similar (Sonya, 2008).

Diversity is important for organizations today; it not only improves the business image of the organization, but also offers employees and the company tangible and intangible benefits. Fostering workplace diversity leads to the fulfillment of mutual respect in the company. This is because employees learn to work in teams or groups consisting of workers with differences (Sonya, 2008). Creation of workplace diversity leads to cooperation in the company’s work environment. It is difficult to realize an ideal environment from the partiality for conflicts by diverse workforces. Diverse workforces often exhibit positive and negative conflict from the differences in competencies, skills, knowledge, and personal differences. However, an organization that creates workplace diversity through diversity awareness and diversity management programs gains the benefit of higher quality and production from the workers’ ability to respect others and their differences (Wylie, 2004). In addition, the company’s performance improves from the increase in production and knowledge from a diverse team with different viewpoints and will also offer a larger service range to consumers.

To achieve the benefits of diversity in the workplace, management needs to create diversity...