Diversity in Organization
Organizational diversity can be understood as a difference in personalities and the way people perceive and interact with one another in that organization. The organization needs to know about the existence of the same and how to go about accommodating every one of its members so as to achieve its set goals. Diversity training involves an initiative by an organization to educate and inform its staff on diversity and how to interrelate amongst themselves.
The Diversity Climate
In every organization or a society, there are diverse personalities. Every member has a unique perception of things that happen around them. People are often drawn from different cultures. Different people do have different attitudes, different races, work experience, gender and sexual orientation. If there is no defined and clear harmonization of these differences, then an organization is in danger of experiencing tremendous collapse.
This training is a very useful ingredient for an organization in the process of planning its methods of work. We may not say that diversity training is the absolute way to go about harmonizing cultural diversity in an organization; it rather creates awareness among the staff members and educates them on how to accept and appreciate different cultures of fellow employees (Miller 2011). The fundamental goal of a prospective diversity training initiative is to come up with a positive and tolerable working environment for every staff member in an organization by helping them to recognize and appreciate the differences amongst themselves.
When proper diversity training is carried out, the organizations do often reap a lot of benefits. It teaches administrators how to delegate a job to the subordinate staff and hence save a great deal of time in the evaluation of workers. Consequently, employees develop a faster thinking ability and step up their participation in projects of an organization. This gives room for a better teaching to take place
Methods and Procedures
First of all, it is important to break down the person that you want to analyze his or her culture. This can be carried out by designing a model that differentiates the diversity and various personalities. Personalities can be sub broken into internal, external and organizational dimensions. Understanding the personality of people helps in appreciating how they add up to form a culture.
Internal dimensions are things like age, race, gender and sexual orientation among others. External dimensions include marital status, place of origin, income, type of livelihood and others. Organizational dimensions are things like the group that you belong to and the work position you hold among others.
A direct interaction with employees can be used to know more about them. This will help in providing information about the person’s background, where he comes from and the things they like and dislike. A direct observation can also be used to help determine the characters of a person (Anca and Vazquez Vega, 2007).
The way a person interacts with workmates relates a lot with his or her personality. Experience is a major factor in this case. Employees are always in a position to describe the personalities of their colleagues. This is normally based on the past experiences and encounters with the subject persons. Work records and file information about the employee can also be accessed. Things like their curriculum vitae and other life documents can be appropriate sources to dig more information about them.
I will discuss three methods to implementing the findings in a cultural diversity training initiative. First and foremost education is a key way to go about it. This would involve training the management on the difference in culture among their staff members. This can be done by coming up with discussion groups where members discuss and learn ideas of how they are going to deal with the differences and how to harmonize works of diverse cultures. The CEO is a key figure when it comes to this process. He should create the right ethos and lead by example. Leaders or departmental heads in the organization will have to carry on the initiative and encourage the staff that reports to them to be actively involved in the initiative. One challenge is how to manage opposition to the agreed plan of action (Cox, 1994).
The second method is the enforcement of the action plan. All members are a key requirement in ensuring that the initiative is a success. Everyone should be encouraged to be actively involved in the process if it must be adequately effective. Input into the process is the main theme here. All members that rediverse in culture, gender and ideas should be involved so as to ensure a fair dispensation of real diversity and sharing the same among the members to appreciate and come up with a sound plan of action.
The third method to implementing diversity is the exposure to different cultures rather than one’s own. When staff members are exposed to other cultures, they learn to appreciate others and assimilate themselves easily into different cultures. This fosters harmony amongst them and enhances productivity in an organization (French and Rayner, 2011), Employees of different cultures should be put together to share their cultures and let them learn from one another. An initiative can be undertaken for employees to visit places of different cultural influence to learn more about them.
Cultural diversity is a part of an organization’s composition, and its awareness should be created. An organization that suffers from cultural stigma is bound to face a lot of challenges. Learning to live in harmony amongst members of an organization enhances productivity.