Valuing Diversity in the Workplace

854 Words2 Pages

Managers continuously strive for organizational improvements both financially and throughout the workplace. I believe it is important for Managers to value the diversity in the workplace by recognizing their workplace composition, and the cross-culture differences and similarities.

Valuing diversity in the workforce can assist a manager or an organization in developing and utilizing all of the human resources available. Valuing diversity can be defined as, “valuing the vast differences between people within an organization.” Our text defines valuing diversity as: “means putting an end to the assumption that everyone who is not a member of the dominant group must assimilate.” In today’s work environment the workforce may consist of numerous employee’s with various ethnic backgrounds and ages. These diversities give an organization the opportunity to obtain new ideas or alternative solutions to a complex problem. Organizations that value diversity tend to have more creative, motivated and productive employee’s. The employee’s feel more valued and tend to have less interpersonal conflicts and have a greater sense of teamwork. An example of a Company that expresses the importance in Valuing Diversity would have to be Home Depot. If you view the following link: https://careers.homedepot.com/cg/content.do?p=divinitiatives Home Depot openly expresses their Value on Diversity. During an interview with a Human Resource Manager at Home Depot he openly stated how they value each employee by acknowledging that within the workforce there is a vast diversity in culture, age and knowledge. At times management rely on this diversity to acquire solutions to complex problems. Valuing Diversity is an essential step to creating a stronger relationship between the employees and the organization.

Recognizing the workforce composition in an organization is important because there can be various races, sexes, and ages within the workplace. Certain people can be accidentally insulted if not properly informed of cultural behaviors. Culture is defined as, “is the set of shared values, often taken for granted, that help people in a group, organization, or society understand which actions are considered acceptable and which are deemed unacceptable.” An example of how important acknowledging culture in the workforce would be comparing Thai and American Culture. In the Thai Culture people tend to speak low tones, never touch another person’s head, and never point with their feet or show the bottom of their feet to another individual. Feet are considered spiritually as well as physically the lowest part of the body.

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