Diversity in the Workplace

Diversity in the workplace

The work place as we new it, is no longer black and white. There are now many gray areas and diversity has filled every nuke and cranny of today’s industries. All companies are required to maintain a certain amount of diversity by law, in order not to fall under the legal battle of discrimination. A group of team members should be different in many ways so that they could build a high level of performance. There are many factors that come into play when looking at the harmony of a team. “When teams are relatively homogeneous—that is, when members are similar in respect to such things as age, gender, race, and experience,—there are certain potential benefits for group dynamics. It will probably be easy for members to quickly build social relationships and engage in the interactions needed for teamwork. (Schermerhorn, 2005)” In the proceedings will be discussed four of the topics mentioned above.

First, when looking at the multicultural aspects of a diversified group one has to take into consideration all the various ages involved that make up a team. A team is much more apt to succeeding if there is a multitude of ages working towards the same goal of team effort. For example, if a company was to only higher the older crowd because they are more knowledgeable and experienced, it will have to face the fact that, that same group of older workers will be more apprehensive to new and different ways, points of view and styles of handling business. This older much more experienced set of folks will be reluctant in changing the ways that they have worked in for many years and some times decades, which will in turn hinder the team from moving from point A to point B. In the organization for which I work for, there is a vast age group that works in one particular office. The large age differences helps the entire team come up with new enlightened ideas to bring to the table because there is such a balance of age personality’s to work with. We all respect each other states of mind and step outside of the box to see the brighter, bigger picture. Sometimes that’s all it takes to have an outstanding group of workers.

Second, any company most definitely requires a well rounded team of men and woman to make things happen. If a workplace only has one or the other, then the team is not capable of making ideal solutions because men and woman are extremely diverse in there ways of cognitive thinking. Woman have a tendency to think with there hearts instead of there brain. Men on the other hand, think more often than not with there brain. They also ration and analyze the situation with a little more thought than do woman, for the most part. There are of course exceptions to the rule. Let’s take a situation where a manager must lay off a highly qualified team member, whose family solely relays on the income of his wages. His wife is a stay at home mom who is not able to work and depends on him to support his family. What would the man manager do in this situation? Most likely think of how much money he will be saving the company by letting him go and how great he is going to look for making such a smart move. The woman manager on the other hand probably is going to take into consideration his situation with his family. She might really think twice before letting him go just for the mere fact of saving his families stability. In most cases that is how the situation would be handled with of course the exception to the rule. We also take into consideration the changing times of society. “Today's workforce has the highest levels of employment participation ever by women. The number of dual income families and single working mothers has increased. Change in the family structure means that there are fewer men and women in traditional family roles. (Green, 2002)” The shifting times of the workplace has caused for more woman than men to leave the home in order to survive.

Third, race is a sore subject and when it comes to hiring dissimilar types of people according to there race, it becomes a messy job only for the mere fact that the annoying stereotypes always come into play. It is already complicated enough to deal with it on a daily basis and then to have to bring it to the workplace makes for a sticky situation. People now days are always comparing themselves to the whit man. They should all be proud of who they are because there is immense quality’s in all races. If everyone was to see the bigger picture this world would be a nicer place to live in. Those in charge of hiring should always look at all the great qualities that any one person has to offer instead of just doing the typical he/she must be like the rest of them. Singular races are definitely needed when it comes to having a functional set of team members because all these unlike views come from the experience