Building an organization in today’s time is very important to look like the importance of diversity in the workplace. Diversity allows up to have access to a larger range of skillsets and talents from across all walks of life.
This is very important because it allows us to gain insight into the needs and motivations of our clients and customer base. This also allows us to be able to provide products and service that help address their pain point and provide a long-lasting solution.
On the surface, tackling diversity seems like an easy task to achieve however, in practice it can be way more difficult.
Firstly, it seems that too many organizations make the fundamental error of failing to align their diversity practices with their organizational goals. And in such situations, no matter how much good there will is towards the concept of diversity, the harsh realities of running the business on a day-to-day basis, of keeping customers satisfied, of selling and delivering the product or service will keep undermining it. And secondly, there is often a mismatch between how organizations design diversity policies and how they implement them. Or to put it another way, what looks good on paper too often falls apart in practice.
However, while our investigations produced these rather dispiriting findings, they also helped us to identify four clear steps towards making workplace diversity a reality:
Clearly identify what you are trying to achieve. – Only by understanding what the goal is can you have a chance of reaching it.
Don’t ‘copy and paste.’ – Every organization is unique, so every diversity initiative needs to be too. Simply borrowing one from somewhere else is unlikely to work.
Good design is important but good implementation is vital. – There is a long-standing maxim in the military that no plan survives contact with the enemy. And in the corporate few diversity initiatives survive contact with operational management.
Win ‘hearts and minds.’ – Successful initiatives answer the basic question, “Why should I do this?” If individuals within the organization cannot see the benefits of a program (or even worse if they identify disadvantages) then it will ultimately fail.
Of course, it’s a cliché to say that nothing worth achieving comes easily. But it’s also true. And the benefits of true workplace diversity are so obviously attractive that the challenges inherent in it simply must be addressed. And we hope that the four steps outlined above will, at least in part, help to do that.
Source: Why Workplace Diversity Is So Important, And Why It’s So Hard To Achieve By Meir Shemla
Meir Shemla is an Associate Professor in the Department of Organization and Personnel Management at RSM More about Meir Shemla.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rsmdiscovery/2018/08/22/why-workplace-diversity-is-so-important-and-why-its-so-hard-to-achieve/?sh=7c6a3a4f3096