Consider the role of HR specialist in developing and implementing diversity policies.
HRM
Managing Diversity.
Consider the role of HR specialist in developing and implementing diversity policies.
Diversity:
Before discussing Managing Diversity and HR, we need to define that what dose diversity means? When we usually think about diversity we tend to think about ethnicity and race, and then gender; however, diversity is much broader than that. Diversity is otherness or those human qualities that are different from our own and outside the groups to which we belong, yet present in other individuals and groups. According to Loden and Rosener (2001) "diversity has many dimensions which include, but are not limited to: age, ethnicity, ancestry, gender, physical abilities, race, sexual orientation, educational background, geographic location, income, marital status, religious beliefs, parental status, and work experience." (loden and Rosner .Diversity HRweb)
Galagan (1991) also points out that "Diversity refers to much more than skin colour and gender. It can encompass age, race, religious affiliation, economic class, militarily experience and sexual orientation." CIPD report,Diversity: Stacking up the evidence (Anderson and Metcalf 2003) , put all these different types of diversities into three basic groups which are
. Social category diversity such as age, sex and race,
2. Informational diversity such as knowledge, education, experience, tenure and functional background, and Value diversity which includes differences in personality and attitude.
Diversity and idea of managing diversity both are complex as every human is different than the others.(ANDERSON, T. and METCALFE, H. 2003)
We all have different attitudes and different people behave differently sometimes even though they are experiencing the same situation. But just to make it simple we tend to categories people and put them in different groups. Mostly categorising people into groups gives us the idea that how should we deal with them and what to expect of them in a certain situations, but in complex situations people of same group might act differently and that is where challenge of diversity management gets bigger and important. Though
diversity is a recognised fact legally and law requires every organization to be free of discrimination. The most important document in U.K regarding this is the Race Relations Act 1976, supported by the 2000 Race Relations (Amendment) Act which introduced positive duties on public authorities to promote equality of opportunity and good race relations. Law might be very clear but if we see at the practices, there is still a lot to be done to get rid of racist behaviours, through education at all levels.
As a concept, diversity is considered to be inclusive of everyone. In many ways, diversity initiatives complement non-discrimination compliance programs by creating the workplace environment and organizational culture for making differences work. Diversity is about learning from others who are not the same, about dignity and respect for all, and about creating workplace environments and practices that encourage learning from others and capture the advantage of diverse perspectives. (WWW.ILR.COM )
MANAGING DIVERSITY:
organisations started to realize that the idea of melting pot was not very successful especially when multi-nationals started to expand themselves globally,in late 80's . Legislation in different countries has also made it a necessity for organizations to start employing people from those different groups which were usually ignored just on the basis of gender, disabilities or race. R. Roosevelt Thomas (1991) defined managing diversity as a comprehensive managerial process for developing an environment that works for all employees. In his view managing diversity means enabling every member of your workforce to perform to his or her potential. It means getting from employees, first everything we have a right to expect, and, second, if we do it well- everything they have to give.'.(r.r thomas.. Byond race and gender) Many writers argued that the fast pace changes in the field of technology and the changing dynamics of business and politics are very important reason due to which many multi-national organizations started to value diverse work force, managing diversity is not just about employing people from different groups of society, the basic and difficult task for any HR specialist is to set up a policy which enables an organization to employee people those who are capable to do their job and are not of any one particular group, affirmative action or positive discrimination is mostly seen as a tool to bring diverse workforce into an organisation. Danger which arises with the idea of bringing in diversity into an organization through affirmative action is the "number game". Many people argue that organizations sometimes employee people just on the basis of their so called diverse back ground and start ignoring some talented applicants, Kirton & green say that the term managing diversity just 'reflects a business oriented catch phrase' for employer-led initiatives designed to value workforce diversity, and which is more concerned with utility than justice. This statement dose not explain that what dose Justice means according to Kirton & green? We can not really say that bad practice or inability of some organizations to put theory into practice means that diversity is not concerned with justice and its just a business oriented catch phrase. The question is that what do we mean by "justice"? In any social issue you cannot come up with a formula which is universal and which can be proven 100% true in different situations, as the definition of justice can be different for different people. So it is more important for any organization to deal with all the stakeholders in such a manner, where all of them feel comfortable and at ease with whatever policies are being adopted. HR has to be aware of the fact that diversity management is not only about hiring people from different backgrounds but HR also has the responsibility of managing them in a way where all of them can perform to their potential and feel valued. Positive discrimination or affirmative action might be a good idea to bring in a diverse workforce but it is not daiversity management itself. Most of the multinational and many national organizations have a certain level of diverse workforce due to demographic changes and legislation. It means that diverse work force is almost inevitable. Lack of good diversity management means conflict, high turnover and bad image of organization. A very important issue for HR department is that most of the organizations do not have much diversity at decision maker's level. An organization can only get the competitive edge if it has diversity at decision makers' level even if an organization is diverse in its makeup, but all the decision makers are of one group, such diversity can not add much value. We see that there are many problems when we try to address the issue of diversity at the higher level, Root cause of these problems is mainly our social and educational system, in which minorities do not have the chance to educate their children to the highest level. If we take the example of U.K we can see that university education is seen as an investment and its no longer free, so how is it possible for student from poor background to get university education? In order to give every one a fair chance policy makers must come up with some new strategy. May be the old system of student grants was a good idea. An organization can not hire a plumber to teach physics, same is with managers if most of degree holders are of one particular group one can only hire from that pool of degree holders. Diversity at the highest level can only be achieved if our system of education is producing a diverse pool of degree holders, so it has to be politicians and society itself to recognise the real issues and take corrective measures. Political correctness takes care of almost everything but when it comes to the real issues we do not see any progress. If we want to bring diversity at the higher level into any organization in such a social situation, then may be affirmative action has a role. One can argue about its effects that it is, in many ways unjust for people of majority groups and we should hire people only on the bases of merit, but question for HR department is that, is it always better to hire the "most qualified" person all of the time? Sometimes it might be a good idea for a company to hire at the bases of race, gender, religion, handicap, and sexual orientation because it gives people a chance to prove themselves, If a person is a bad employee, it can be documented and the person can be removed. Just picking people based solely on merit leaves minorities at a disadvantage because people from minorities may not have the same schooling, or the record to show for themselves. There are many other reasons and hundreds of years' history behind minorities' situation today. e.g. Women are mostly less educated in many societies especially if we look at Muslim society, Black Americans, who until very recently were treated differently by American institutions, same is the case of gays in many societies and almost every minority group in different countries have suffered poor economic and social situation for decades. If I look at my own country Pakistan religious minorities and women both have been neglected generally. School syllabus until 6 years ago was designed only for majority Muslim population of the country,which caused lack of proper recognition of diversity in society and many problems of Pakistani society such as: sectarian and racial violence, crimes against women, and unfortunately the list goes on and on. Such lack of opportunities and hopelessness amongst minority groups causes even bigger social problems, So it might be a good idea to give minorities a chance to get good jobs. This will help all segments of society to integrate with each other and learn from each others experiences and people from divergent backgrounds can come together to create a better corporation.
Managing Diversity.
Consider the role of HR specialist in developing and implementing diversity policies.
Diversity:
Before discussing Managing Diversity and HR, we need to define that what dose diversity means? When we usually think about diversity we tend to think about ethnicity and race, and then gender; however, diversity is much broader than that. Diversity is otherness or those human qualities that are different from our own and outside the groups to which we belong, yet present in other individuals and groups. According to Loden and Rosener (2001) "diversity has many dimensions which include, but are not limited to: age, ethnicity, ancestry, gender, physical abilities, race, sexual orientation, educational background, geographic location, income, marital status, religious beliefs, parental status, and work experience." (loden and Rosner .Diversity HRweb)
Galagan (1991) also points out that "Diversity refers to much more than skin colour and gender. It can encompass age, race, religious affiliation, economic class, militarily experience and sexual orientation." CIPD report,Diversity: Stacking up the evidence (Anderson and Metcalf 2003) , put all these different types of diversities into three basic groups which are
. Social category diversity such as age, sex and race,
2. Informational diversity such as knowledge, education, experience, tenure and functional background, and Value diversity which includes differences in personality and attitude.
Diversity and idea of managing diversity both are complex as every human is different than the others.(ANDERSON, T. and METCALFE, H. 2003)
We all have different attitudes and different people behave differently sometimes even though they are experiencing the same situation. But just to make it simple we tend to categories people and put them in different groups. Mostly categorising people into groups gives us the idea that how should we deal with them and what to expect of them in a certain situations, but in complex situations people of same group might act differently and that is where challenge of diversity management gets bigger and important. Though
diversity is a recognised fact legally and law requires every organization to be free of discrimination. The most important document in U.K regarding this is the Race Relations Act 1976, supported by the 2000 Race Relations (Amendment) Act which introduced positive duties on public authorities to promote equality of opportunity and good race relations. Law might be very clear but if we see at the practices, there is still a lot to be done to get rid of racist behaviours, through education at all levels.
As a concept, diversity is considered to be inclusive of everyone. In many ways, diversity initiatives complement non-discrimination compliance programs by creating the workplace environment and organizational culture for making differences work. Diversity is about learning from others who are not the same, about dignity and respect for all, and about creating workplace environments and practices that encourage learning from others and capture the advantage of diverse perspectives. (WWW.ILR.COM )
MANAGING DIVERSITY:
organisations started to realize that the idea of melting pot was not very successful especially when multi-nationals started to expand themselves globally,in late 80's . Legislation in different countries has also made it a necessity for organizations to start employing people from those different groups which were usually ignored just on the basis of gender, disabilities or race. R. Roosevelt Thomas (1991) defined managing diversity as a comprehensive managerial process for developing an environment that works for all employees. In his view managing diversity means enabling every member of your workforce to perform to his or her potential. It means getting from employees, first everything we have a right to expect, and, second, if we do it well- everything they have to give.'.(r.r thomas.. Byond race and gender) Many writers argued that the fast pace changes in the field of technology and the changing dynamics of business and politics are very important reason due to which many multi-national organizations started to value diverse work force, managing diversity is not just about employing people from different groups of society, the basic and difficult task for any HR specialist is to set up a policy which enables an organization to employee people those who are capable to do their job and are not of any one particular group, affirmative action or positive discrimination is mostly seen as a tool to bring diverse workforce into an organisation. Danger which arises with the idea of bringing in diversity into an organization through affirmative action is the "number game". Many people argue that organizations sometimes employee people just on the basis of their so called diverse back ground and start ignoring some talented applicants, Kirton & green say that the term managing diversity just 'reflects a business oriented catch phrase' for employer-led initiatives designed to value workforce diversity, and which is more concerned with utility than justice. This statement dose not explain that what dose Justice means according to Kirton & green? We can not really say that bad practice or inability of some organizations to put theory into practice means that diversity is not concerned with justice and its just a business oriented catch phrase. The question is that what do we mean by "justice"? In any social issue you cannot come up with a formula which is universal and which can be proven 100% true in different situations, as the definition of justice can be different for different people. So it is more important for any organization to deal with all the stakeholders in such a manner, where all of them feel comfortable and at ease with whatever policies are being adopted. HR has to be aware of the fact that diversity management is not only about hiring people from different backgrounds but HR also has the responsibility of managing them in a way where all of them can perform to their potential and feel valued. Positive discrimination or affirmative action might be a good idea to bring in a diverse workforce but it is not daiversity management itself. Most of the multinational and many national organizations have a certain level of diverse workforce due to demographic changes and legislation. It means that diverse work force is almost inevitable. Lack of good diversity management means conflict, high turnover and bad image of organization. A very important issue for HR department is that most of the organizations do not have much diversity at decision maker's level. An organization can only get the competitive edge if it has diversity at decision makers' level even if an organization is diverse in its makeup, but all the decision makers are of one group, such diversity can not add much value. We see that there are many problems when we try to address the issue of diversity at the higher level, Root cause of these problems is mainly our social and educational system, in which minorities do not have the chance to educate their children to the highest level. If we take the example of U.K we can see that university education is seen as an investment and its no longer free, so how is it possible for student from poor background to get university education? In order to give every one a fair chance policy makers must come up with some new strategy. May be the old system of student grants was a good idea. An organization can not hire a plumber to teach physics, same is with managers if most of degree holders are of one particular group one can only hire from that pool of degree holders. Diversity at the highest level can only be achieved if our system of education is producing a diverse pool of degree holders, so it has to be politicians and society itself to recognise the real issues and take corrective measures. Political correctness takes care of almost everything but when it comes to the real issues we do not see any progress. If we want to bring diversity at the higher level into any organization in such a social situation, then may be affirmative action has a role. One can argue about its effects that it is, in many ways unjust for people of majority groups and we should hire people only on the bases of merit, but question for HR department is that, is it always better to hire the "most qualified" person all of the time? Sometimes it might be a good idea for a company to hire at the bases of race, gender, religion, handicap, and sexual orientation because it gives people a chance to prove themselves, If a person is a bad employee, it can be documented and the person can be removed. Just picking people based solely on merit leaves minorities at a disadvantage because people from minorities may not have the same schooling, or the record to show for themselves. There are many other reasons and hundreds of years' history behind minorities' situation today. e.g. Women are mostly less educated in many societies especially if we look at Muslim society, Black Americans, who until very recently were treated differently by American institutions, same is the case of gays in many societies and almost every minority group in different countries have suffered poor economic and social situation for decades. If I look at my own country Pakistan religious minorities and women both have been neglected generally. School syllabus until 6 years ago was designed only for majority Muslim population of the country,which caused lack of proper recognition of diversity in society and many problems of Pakistani society such as: sectarian and racial violence, crimes against women, and unfortunately the list goes on and on. Such lack of opportunities and hopelessness amongst minority groups causes even bigger social problems, So it might be a good idea to give minorities a chance to get good jobs. This will help all segments of society to integrate with each other and learn from each others experiences and people from divergent backgrounds can come together to create a better corporation.
