Equal Opportunities and Managing Change
The one thing that we know most organisations have in common is the need to respond to, and somehow manages, the change that is going on around them – in society’s values. For instance in 1992 the domestic market took a whole new meaning. The United Kingdom, and UK companies in particular, could no longer sustain an insular attitude. The ability to work across different cultures has been valued highly, as Europe became ‘open for business’.
Equal opportunities and Total Quality Management
If equal opportunities can, therefore, help organisation manage change, there is one particular challenge- becoming a ‘quality’ organisation – which it specifically supports. Total quality requires the best people and need them to be working in the most effective way.
By ensuring that the best people are appointed, and by creating an environment where employees can work together as effectively as possible, equal opportunities can play a significant part in helping organisations embrace total quality.
Equal opportunities and Customers
The link between equal opportunities and ‘customers’ can be seen in a positive manner. It is not just that some purchasers may insist on seeing how you are progressing in this area; it is that equal opportunities can actually be powerful force for bringing organisations closer to their customer base.
For instance, because of the indiscrimination suffered by the women and ethnic minorities there has been an increasing proportion of new start business.
Equal opportunities and choosing the best
The organisations need to become increasingly outward towards looking and responsive to their customer needs, equal opportunities can play an important role by ensuring that their employees are able to do this. The employers legitimate concern is to choose the candidate that has the best fit to the organisation, with the skills required.
The equal opportunities ought to force into the open the selection criteria for each vacancy, ensure that these criteria are based on skill and help managers apply the criteria objectively.
Equal opportunities and keeping the best
The first step of the organisation is to recruit the best and the challenge is to keep the best. As job becomes more knowledge based, those with the relevant skills become more sought after. This is a central theme in Peter Herriots’s book Recruitment in the ‘90s,Institue of personnel Management, 1989. He stated
‘It is the central argument of this book that it is only when organisations agree contracts with individuals which take account of their specific needs that they will be able to meet the human resource challenge of the 90s’.
Equal opportunities and productivity
Equal opportunities should not only ensure that organisations are staffed by the best people, but also that they get the best outcome of them. If people feel discriminated against, or just not supported, their confidence will fall off, and they are unlikely to give their best. If on the other hand, there are ‘round pegs in round holes’ then people are likely to be good at their jobs and be happy to get on with them. If there is potential that is not being tapped, then the organisation must be loosing out – it is not making use of other assets that are represented by its other employees.
Equal opportunities and the bottom line
Equal opportunities can help create the right organisation for the future. There are some tangible bottom line benefits that can be directly traced back to the introduction of equal opportunity policies. They can be grouped into two main areas: reducing attrition cost and reducing recruitment cost. The equal opportunities help in development of the business. Equal opportunities is no longer represented by a series of pressures from outside the organisation. It is to these internal needs that organisation should turn when they are seeking to develop their aims for an equal opportunities programme
Voluntary actions by employers are a necessary and sufficient basis for advancing the cause of gender equality in UK business.
‘Gender equality means that women and men have equal conditions for realizing their full human rights and potential to contribute to national political, economic, social and cultural development and benefits equally from the results. Equality is essential for human development and peace.
Employers, who fail to lift the barriers to opportunity for employees and potential employees by underestimating and undervaluing their contribution to business success, diminish both individual and company prospects. Many have recognised the benefits of employing a diverse workforce as key to achieving a competitive edge. Successful companies therefore include equal opportunities policies and practices as an integral part of their business strategy. Discrimination is bad for business; equal opportunities are cost effective and should be integrated into all management, personnel and employment practices. Employers have found that by putting equal opportunities policies into action they have the benefit not only of compliance with the law, but also enjoy a number of other advantages .
To implement equal opportunity in the UK business the employers formulate a written equal opportunity policy. The policy focuses attention at the commitment and allow it to be expressed publicly, in line with the objectives. It makes intention of the employer clear to develop any apply procedure and practises which do not discriminate on the ground of sex or marriage and which provide equality of opportunity for all job applicants and employees. Policy is written and made known to the managers, supervisors, employees and job applicants and notified to recruitment agencies, job centres and any other sources from which job vacancies are filled. Implementing the policy is the responsibility of a particular individual or a group, according to the size and structure of the organisation.
The equal opportunity committee needs to fulfil some of it duties like analysing the information provided by the monitoring process, assessing this against the objectives of the Equal Opportunities Policy to identify how the Policy is working in practice, putting forward suggestions for remedying any failures, assessing the success of the proposed remedies over time. Where an individual manager alone has this responsibility, then she or he must have access to the most senior management, in order that top-level decisions can be made systematically, to ensure the continued effectiveness of the Policy. In an equal opportunity organisation the employees are made aware of the policy and those involved with the recruitment and selection process given training on the application of the policy relative to their responsibilities.
In particular, managerial, supervisory and personnel staff, especially those involved in the selection process, are given further training which includes the following:
- An explanation of the forms discrimination can take (direct and indirect discrimination; direct and indirect marriage discrimination; victimisation; and sexual harassment)
- Information which displays the myth that only men or only women possess characteristics which qualify them for specific types of employment or training.
- Guidance on the unreliability of generalised assumptions and prejudices concerning women and men, and the need to avoid basing employment decisions on these assumptions.
- The need to assess people on their individual merits and ability to do the job and to avoid letting assumptions about marital status, children and domestic obligations distort objective judgement.
Such training on the equal opportunities policy is an essential first step. Even after proper training there may be some flaws in the equal opportunity policies for which a closer examination is required.
To identify the barriers to equal opportunities, existing employment practices, procedures and policies and should be examined and revised where appropriate. After all this process an organisation definitely wants to be certain that is it providing equal opportunities. This can be done by gathering information on the employment situation of women and married people. The data will probably reveal that there are sections of the organisation where there are few or no women; sections where they exist but only in the bottom grades; and other sections in which women make better progress.
As seen above the employers in United Kingdom have worked quiet a lot to introduce equal opportunity in their organisations. For Women’s development they have introduced the Women’s Development fact tract scheme. BBC world recognised the need to assist women in developing their careers to match other BBC division performance targets. This led to creation of the Women’s Development Initiative (WDI), an annual scheme that goes beyond individual women’s training need for their current job. All women staff were invited to apply and 24 were selected through competitive assessment centre.
The WDI pulls together a comprehensive set of development approaches as identified within each woman’s personal development plan, including mentoring, work challenge or special projects small ‘peer’ group learning sets, exposure to senior colleagues and priority access to existing training and development programmes. In first six months of the WDI, 54% had changed jobs within the organisation, 33% secured promotions, 25% started on MBAs or similar course of study, and 15% lead managing change projects. BBC and World Service have effectively increased female representation of management levels from 9% to 37% in five years.
Progress for women in UK business
Since the early 80’s, business has operated in a changing climate of opinion, demographic shifts and increasing participation of women in labour market. Significant results are visible.
The proportion of women in the labour force has grown dramatically from 34.4% in 1971 to over 48% today. The growth of women in part-time employment has been significant over the same period. For married women with children the increase has been most notable – from 23% to 38%. Where women accounted for only 17.2% of management and administrative grades in 1971, by autumn 1995 the comparable figure was 32% appreciably closing the economic activity gap between men and women. In 1975 average female earnings were 72% of male earnings. Two decades later the gap has narrowed to 79%.
A number of initiatives involving business in United Kingdom which promote the economic development of women in society and in work have flourished. These include:
-
‘Fairplay for Women’ – a joint government and Equal Opportunities Commission project based around regional consortia of employers, trainers, public and private sector enterprises.
-
The Equal Opportunities Commission’s regional network of ‘Equality Exchanges’ with employer members from the public and private sector.
-
‘Opportunity 2000’, a network of leading employers which seeks to advance women into management roles.
CONCLUSION
Thus we can see that Equal opportunities makes business sense. It enables organisation to:
- Manage change by attracting people with new any different ways of thinking.
- Creating a working environment where total quality can take root.
- Anticipating and meet the changing needs of customers.
- Recruits and promote the best people by widening the traditional source of candidates.
- Retain the best people by ensuring that their needs are fully taken into account.
- Increase productivity by raising motivation and commitment.
- Increase profitability by reducing attrition and recruitment costs.
After keeping in mind the above, all the above statistics and the steps taken by the United Kingdom’s business employers we can see that a lot of efforts have been made to abolish the gender inequality. The above-mentioned statistics for UK business shows that the voluntary action taken by employers has made changes in the working organisation. So according to me the efforts made by the employers in UK business for gender equality is sufficient
