Question

Question 1
With reference to the extract, explain workforce diversity and discuss four (4) reasons why it
is necessary to increase workforce diversity in South Africa.

Question 2

According to the extract, it is only when the leadership embraces diversity and makes it an
organisational priority, will its true benefits be seen. Based on this, critically discus five (5)
organisational approaches to the management of diversity.

Answer 1

1) With reference to the extract, explain workforce diversity and discuss four (4) reasons why it is necessary to increase workforce diversity in South Africa.

Workforce diversity is nothing but the similarities and differences among employees in terms of age, physical abilities, cultural background, and also disabilities, race, gender, religion and sexual orientation.

Humans are always different from each other. Generally, people don’t just differ in only gender, race, culture, and psychological characteristics but sometimes also in their perspectives and prejudices. Our society had discriminated these aspects for the past many centuries. Diversity always makes the work force heterogeneous. In the recent days, employing a very diversified workforce is a vital thing for every organization where managing them is considered a big challenge.

For example, when we work on a challenge within an organization which is diverse in culture, there may be multiple perspectives and solutions from every person in the organization. This is because of the fact that every person is from a different cultural background or a race. From the client’s perspective, the more diverse a team is, there is a great chance of better productivity and creativity. Diversity in an organization always enhances the global communication. Many companies which operates in international markets has realized that workplace diversity is an important factor which would play a great role in the development of their company.

Reasons to improve workplace diversity in South Africa,

· Diversity improves insights and reduces racism

By enjoying a very diverse workforce, it is widely accepted that employees spend more time in their daily lives with people from various cultural backgrounds that they never had an exposure to.

This in turn helps the employees to learn about new cultural insights and also helps them to reduces negative emotions such as racism, sexism and the likes. So, a country like South Africa which has a bad history on racism would need to work on developing work force diversity in many of their organizations

· Cultural diversity reflects positively on reputation

The benefit of diversity in the workplace is about the positive reputations that the organization could receive. It is widely accepted that the organizations which recruits and encourages the individuals from a diverse range of backgrounds usually gains a reputation for being a good employer. South Africa is a growing economy but has very rarely produced international talents or even there are very lesser globalized multinational companies. So, South Africa could achieve these by increasing workplace diversity.

Increased boardroom leverage

There are a lot of statistics about how the boardrooms are dominated by white males in South Africa.

For example, in many organizations in South Africa, there are fewer women than there are men on the boards, which is a very sobering stat.

Boardrooms have to reflect the changing demographics of the country, and by having a very diverse boardroom an organization can basically benefit from a wider range of experience.

Improved productivity

There is always a scary feel among some managers in South Africa where they believe that having too diverse a workforce will lead to more arguments and also reduce productivity.

But this is not the reality, an increased diversity brings a broad range of experience combined with great skills and backgrounds which would definitely have a positive impact. According to a stat, Diversity in a company increases the productivity by 35%. So, I believe South Africa definitely need this to increase their productivity and by then the country’s GDP

2) According to the extract, it is only when the leadership embraces diversity and makes it an organizational priority, will its true benefits be seen. Based on this, critically discus five (5) organizational approaches to the management of diversity.

Here is a few organizational approach for diversity management:

Ensure Polices are Performance:

Organizations should establish the HR policy and protocols based on the performance of the employees and not based on any Race, Color, Sex or other backgrounds. Managers should be aware about all these discrimination laws and also the consequences of breaking them.

Provide training:

When an organization provide training on workplace diversity, the employees would understand on how to deal with the situations of diversity challenges.

Open Communication:

This is the best thumb rule to maintain the diversity within a company. The employees should always be considered in any meeting and has to be given chance to express their concerns. This is the way to make the employees feel that the company treats every employee equally.

Establishing a council for diversity:

This council would be responsible for the development and implementation for the plans of workplace diversity. It would also lead to build accountability to the company’s efforts. This council should also be set to monitor complaints and other concerns.

Knowledge Sharing:

Companies should organize regular team outings in order to bring the diverse set of employees together. This would make the employees to share their personal life stories which in turn would create a friendly environment when they are back in the office. A friendly organization is the where usually knowledge sharing happens.

These are the five best organizational approach for diversity management to run the company successful and thrive over the upcoming years!!