Diversity is celebrated in the management literature for more than 2 decades. This is certainly an important element that we need to focus, especially as our corporations are becoming global and also domestically pan Indian.
The essential tenet of diversity is - each individual is unique, and needs to be recognized for the individual differences. Diversity is all about creating a safe, positive, and nurturing environment for people with differences. It is about celebrating the rich dimensions of cultures, thoughts and practices, contained within each individual rather than just tolerance of differences. Diversity is beyond tolerance.
Diversity also refers to human qualities that are different from our own and those of groups to which we belong; we tend to employ / support / like stereotypes and that is where we lose the advantage of different thinking, different perspectives and some where we tend to do the things in same old ways that we are comfortable with.
The importance of having Diversity can’t be undermined. It has several advantages, some of them are reflected below”
1. Multiplicity of thoughts brought to the table leading to better decisions
2. Multiplicity of experiences and knowledge from the different facets of the society leading to out of the box thinking and changes in the paradigms
3. Varied relationship networks, different contacts and connections, etc. these can be leveraged for organizational success.
4. Ability to attract best talent – not confined to a particular group. This is achieved by our ability to spread the net much wider.
5. Customers need to be understood well, products and services have to be created that support the customer needs. If in the marketing and product development groups we have people who represent the customer base, this is best achieved.
6. It can enhance the organization's responsiveness to a diverse world of customers, improve relations with the surrounding community, and increase the organization's ability to cope with change.
7. Diversity leads to improved creativity in the organization.
8. A diverse workplace offers more than exposure to employees from different cultures and backgrounds. Employees learn from co-workers whose work styles vary and whose attitudes about work vary from their own.
Dimensions of Diversity:
Diversity has multiple dimensions, some examples are given below:
- Gender
- Sexual preferences
- Nationality, ethnicity, religion, caste etc.
- Age – Gen Y, X, people in 50s, senior citizens in 60s, etc.
- Educational qualifications
- Pedigree – Quality of education, which campus you belonged to, etc.
- Close to owner’s family, not close to owners, etc.
- Political and social lineage, etc.
- Persons with physical disabilities
- Hierarchy: Owners, Leaders, managers, supervisors, workers etc.
- White collared workers, blue collared, etc.
It is important to minimize / eliminate biases and ensure right people are hired and in the process we achieve a good mix of people from various diverse backgrounds. Typically the workforce should represent the social demographics, customer base, the environment, the markets that a corporation addresses and several such factors.
Diversity has to be supported by Inclusive environment and team work:
Absence of “inclusive environment” and nonexistence of efforts to create strong teams, generally leads to completely dysfunctional behaviours and divisive environment. This happens mainly because people from similar backgrounds / interests, tend to come together due to obvious comforts and tend to create close groups / cliques.
Biases that exist in the people as well as within the leaders tend to keep the otherwise meritorious people away from them. Non inclusive environment may show some of the symptoms stated below:
- Non inclusive behaviors get reflected in multiple forms such as:
- Formation of cliques, coteries around the leaders,
- Though adequate delegation of authority may exist, the feeling of empowerment goes away
- Strong political environment, One-upmanship,
- Favoritism, nepotism, prejudices and biases of all types get exhibited leading to cynicism, skepticism and feeling of distrust,
- Common interest negative groups get formed who remain unaligned to the organization,
- Prevalence of a strong informal hierarchy that leads to person centric organizations rather than organizations cantered around the structures, processes and systems, etc.
Some Characteristics of the Inclusive culture:
Good leaders ensure an inclusive culture is created, some characteristics of inclusive culture are:
1. People feel valued and are respected for who they are.
2. Celebrations / recognition / respect exhibited for various backgrounds
3. Existence of Policies and processes that support people from different backgrounds and cultures.
4. Participative environment wherein;
a. Free flow of thoughts are encouraged,
b. An environment where easy conversations exist,
c. Debates and differences are encouraged
d. People are heard, they can freely express themselves.
5. People are allowed to blossom – Meritocracy rules and not personal biases.
6. Leaders are close to the people, empathy and team work exists.
7. Deliberate efforts are made to ensure everyone in the organization is engaged.
Team work has to be encouraged:
Leaders ensure healthy teams are created. Some characteristics of good team:
1. Team always has a leader
2. Roles are well defined and right people are hired for each role
3. Common norms and values are established
4. Success is celebrated
5. Atmosphere in the team is more relaxed, informal and friendly
6. Setbacks and failures are rigorously reviewed and corrective actions are initiated.
7. Participative decision making is encouraged
8. Goals and targets are mutually created and people work for the same in a collaborative fashion. Focus is on outcomes.
9. All team members feel valued and are recognized for the contributions, skills and capabilities they bring to the table.
10. Disagreements are dealt with in a healthy manner thru discussions and reasoning.
11. Strong lines of communication exist.
12. The criticism has a constructive flavour; it is oriented toward removing an obstacle that faces the group.
13. Full alignment to common goals is considered as critical.
To sum up:
Diversity on for the sake of diversity can become dysfunctional. It is better not to have diversity rather than have one without the supportive environment. If we want to get the best out of diversity a lot needs to be done to create an inclusive environment and team work. This applies to both the corporate life as well as society.
Disclaimer: Images in this post are downloaded from Google images.
Disclaimer: Images in this post are downloaded from Google images.
