INCLUSIVE DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE
As odd as this may seem, a number of folks are reaching out to me to ask about diversity and why it is important to any organization. Others who seem to have interacted with the concept in a corporate setting, seem to hold divergent views as they perceive diversity to be in direct conflict with meritocracy. Well, I contend that diversity, nay, inclusive diversity benefits us all… Let’s engage.
When I first explored a research topic for my graduate school thesis, I was a bit unmethodical. Having done a business course in my undergraduate studies, I was hell bent on merging the knowledge I had acquired with my social science graduate studies —Public Policy and Management — thus considered them to be interrelated fields. The point of convergence, I saw, was economics; the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption and transfer of wealth. (In simple terms, money!) Hence in business terms, I was interested in the production of goods and services with labour being a critical component of this fact. On the social science side, the human capital and it’s management, I saw, was as complex as it was rewarding as a factor of production. There is a multitude of dynamics that surrounds labour, its availability and productivity. So my first research topic sort to investigate the economic influences on labour mobility, to which a mate at school suggested that I was enticed by the fancy wording to human resource and policy dynamics. (Pun intended)
Four months later, after numerous consultations with my supervisor, I had dropped the labour mobility angle and had now immersed myself to labour, productivity and enabling policies. I sort to find out whether there could be policies that fully utilise labour as a production function. Even with the 4th industrial revolution, labour will not be declared a defunct function in our industries, as a few tend to misunderstand... To bring my research close to home, I decided to explore the effect of labour diversity (workforce diversity) to productivity (performance) in a public institution or local government. My hypothesis was that workforce diversity is a non-negotiable requirement for any 21st century organisation or local government — should they aim to achieve increased productivity and maintain a competitive edge.
But the research had to be conducted to test this hypothesis locally.
Workforce diversity, is the culmination of human resources that possess different attributes such as gender, race, age, marital status, culture, education, skills, religion, physical ability and sexual orientation.
Diversity does not propose that unqualified staff are meant to replace the trained staff who are already employed, in order to meet a certain demographic threshold. On the contrary, a homogeneous set of skills, attitudes, gender, education, culture et all may inhibit an organisation’s creativity and innovation in the 21st century. An ex-Google woman in Tech argued that diversity attempts to get more women in Tech through ticking boxes, keeps f*#king it up for qualified women in Tech. She stated that in the copius hiring she did at Google, 97% of the people she hired were men because of their technical competencies. She concluded by stating that;
To solve diversity, we must start at the source of the problem — encouraging women to pursue engineering in college. — Vidya Narayanan
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. That assumption, especially in developing economies, holds that all individuals have had a fair chance to access education and other training opportunities. It completely ignores systemic historical injustices (yes — even in the developing countries) that dispositions everyone from accessing equal opportunities. This does not mean that the corporations should compromise their bottomline mission to meet a social justice one — it offers that inclusive recruitment opportunities can accommodate the genuine placement of differently skilled, age, racial, cultural and gender individuals to master their skills and possibly even acquire qualifications that merit the organisation as they continue to deliver their duties in the workforce. It allows them to bring forth their creativity through exchange of ideas and maximise on responsive strategies because the market demographic is unequivocally diverse.
So believe it when I tell you, that if you recruit members of a homogeneous set of skills, culture, gender, age, race and mindset individuals, you actually inhibit the potential optimum growth, creative innovation and other gains that are experienced in diverse 21st century companies or local governments.
Let’s consider age diversity — the acceptance of all ages in a work environment. Young workers are generally known to work faster and have better cognitive & physical abilities. This also makes them more adaptive to change. Older workers are considered to have more job experience, better knowledge about intraform structures and market understanding. Given that these are complimentary qualities for businesses and local governments, it would be unrealistic to have exclusive policies that do not encourage team members from different generations to integrate.
In fact, Laisser (1999) suggested that specific elements like age diversity may generate gains where the net effect on productivity will only be positive if the net gains outweigh the additional communication costs and difficulties related to the emotional conflicts incurred by a diverse workforce. Thus the gains for diversity are greatest when these conditions are fulfilled:
i) Individuals have completely different skills and information set;
ii) The different skills and information sets are all relevant for the tasks that have to be performed by the team; and
iii) Individuals are able to communicate and understand each other.
In summary, diversity is not just a buzz word nor is it dirty. Diversity means that understanding that an individual is unique and also recognising our individual differences. The differences can be in race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs or other ideologies. Diversity has a positive impact on productivity, teams synergies, skills sharing, conflict resolution, business reputation and ultimately innovation. It must be encouraged as a performance indicator in the 21st century workplace.
Thanks to all who shared their contributions on this article.
