Question

How does personal biases and perceptions of other ethnicities affect a postive diverse culture in the workforce?

Answer 1

Managers have to possess certain values, skills and attitudes in order to manage diversity effectively. Diversity management involves respect, acceptance, and acknowledgement that individuals are different and unique from each other (Lumadi, 2008). Managing diversity effectively requires that managers take several steps to alter values and attitudes and promote the effective management of diversity. An initial step is to secure top management commitment to diversity, as this is essential step. Top managers have to develop the correct performance and business-oriented attitudes and the correct ethical values that allows them to make appropriate use of the diverse workforce (Jones & George, 2009). Further, top management have to ensure fairness regarding the compensation of the diverse workforce (Aghazadeh, 2004). Another step that is considered as a crucial one is increasing the diversity awareness. In order to increase diversity awareness inside the organization, people have to be aware of the multiple experiences, attitudes and perspectives of others. This could be achieved through programs that reveal personal stereotypes and biases, and then overturn these incorrect beliefs and stereotypes about distinct groups. Added to that, these programs help to enhance the understanding of others, who are distinct from oneself. They also offer an atmosphere in which all people are free to share their differing points of view and perspectives (Jones & George, 2009). This usually requires that the organization values diversity, as some of the core objectives of valuing diversity are awareness and positive recognition of the differences existing among a diverse workforce. Therefore, the organizational cultural environment has to allow differences to be celebrated instead of being tolerated. All employees have to understand both the moral and competitive advantages of diversity. They must support and respect cultural diversity within the organization through the recognition of cultural practices and observances.

Further, increasing diversity skills is considered as an important step in managing diversity effectively in the organization. A crucial skill is to be able to communicate with a diverse workforce. A diverse workforce usually has a distinct styles of communication, as team members could have different languages, levels of fluency, non verbal signals through using body language and facial expressions. Further, the members could even differ in the ways of perceiving and interpreting the information.