Challenges against diversity in the Workplace

Diversity refers to the practice or of including or people from a diverse social, economic and ethnic backgrounds and of different age group, genders, sexual orientations, etc. Inclusion at workplace ensures every employee’s ideas and opinions are valued and they feel a part of the organization. Diversity and inclusion go hand in hand with equity as well. Equity means giving every individual every possible chance to develop his/her competency level and equal opportunity to get on the same platform as every other individual in the mainstream.

Diversity and Equity comes with challenges as well. What are those? Let’s see one after the other.

Immigration and Employment law.

Diversity is a matter of concern when we talk about it from a global perspective. Every company has to adhere to employment laws of the country it is operating in. For example, a company in India is willing to hire candidates from all across the world, even for that matter a work from home employee have to face the laws, regulation and employment policies of the government. Well, it is not the case with freelancing work for companies as that is outsourcing from a company to another individual. But an employee will face a bunch of paper trail and will be embedded by country law.

Varying Workstyle may be a matter of conflict.

This is one of the serious matters for any organization to face as people from different cultures, backgrounds, and ideologies come to the same table will definitely have clashes of ideas which will raise conflict. For example, a group of Gen Z employees have a different way of working than the people of the 80’s. The good part here is, conflicts can be seen as an opportunity to challenge the statuesque and provide an opportunity for increased innovation & creativity.

Merit Based Hiring could be one dimensional.

We have seen some organizations which have a fundamental rule of hiring people from a specific educational institution/university. Can you recall ‘Pearson Specter’ from “The Suits”, the rule to hire only from Harvard Law college and Mike on other hand appeared out of the blue who was not even a college graduate who was about to be nominated the youngest Junior Partner? That is what diversity is all about, and is one of the best examples diversity and inclusion in the workplace examples. One dimensional hiring cannot give you a diversified work culture. From the example of “the Suits” the only point here is the junior has a unique way of solving cases and helped the organization in its growth irrespective of his educational qualification.

Stakeholders can resist change in merit-based hiring.

Advocating merit-based hiring means going against the traditional way of hiring and can be one of the key reasons stakeholders might resist.

Each diverse candidate may not be as qualified as other mainstream candidates. They, too need to be given a chance to ensure truly diverse work.

How to promote

Now after addressing the challenges, we need to know how to promote diversity in the workplace and how to improve diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.

Prepare a comprehensive DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Policy
Be aware about Conscious and Unconscious Bias
Communicate the Importance of Managing Bias.
Promote Pay Equity
Develop a Strategic Training Program
Acknowledge Holidays of all cultures.
Employee Resource Groups
Make it easy for your people to participate in Employee resource groups.

Regular reinforcement of DEI values

Steps for Implementing Diversity and equity in the workplace

What actions are you taking to create an engaging and inclusive culture? If not sure let us discuss diversity, equity and inclusion best practices at the workplace in 5 steps.

Educate your leaders

‘As HR practitioners, we take for granted when we say to leaders that they need to be inclusive that they know what we mean.’- Dianne Campbell. It is considered that the leaders need no training and seminars and many individuals at the VP and presidential posts’ get offended when asked to be in training, but it is necessary to understand the change and diversification and amplifying growth of the organization. So, educate the leaders of organizations for including diversity and inclusion at the workplace.

Form an inclusion council.

No policy can be made without a bunch of people acting on policy making. That is the same thing with the Inclusion policy, you need to have 10-12 people who are dedicated and committed to introducing inclusion at the workplace. The people could be just below the CEO level as they understand the top and bottom most people in the hierarchy.

Celebrate Employee Differences.

Each and every individual has a different culture and social identity. Celebrating differences of these social and cultural backgrounds can bring the most influencing change as far as diversity is concerned.

Listen to Employees

‘We’ve created a very close-knit group of people who treat one another like family. I think that’s incredibly powerful, especially when you look at everything happening in the world.’ – Eva Bak. To know the problems in dealing and managing different people or people from different social backgrounds, it is very necessary for an HR person to have a comprehensive dialogue with every individual or small group of people in the company to monitor what is working right or what needs to be amended.

Communicate Goal and measure progress.

The only factor that keeps everyone attached to an organization is its goal, and continuous efforts for the organization to thrive. Every individual, no matter what, should at least work on the same goal and that is one thing where everyone should be on the same grounds.

Some of the companies practicing Diversity and Inclusivity

List of 6 Companies that have implemented diversity and inclusion in their organization.

Sodexo
Johnson & Johnson
Master Card
Kaiser Permanente
L’Oréal

Lenovo

Conclusion

So we have seen that multiple MNC have implemented Diversity and Inclusion and have been involving people from multiple cultures, different castes and mindset, and are successfully finding ways to combat the challenges of a truly Diversity & Inclusion organization.