Advantages and Disadvantages of Diversity
Advantages and Disadvantages of Diversity
Advantages and Disadvantages of Diversity. Today, companies must step up their game to remain relevant and competitive in the market. Therefore, adopting diversity into their system is an indispensable imperative that companies embrace to enhance theicompany’sance. Diversity in companies mainly constitutes acceptance, appreciation, and recognition of staff with different backgrounds. Different sexual orientations, ages, religions, races, gender, ethnicity, class, and mental and physical abilities create diversity at work. Employers should consider employees with diverse backgrounds during recruitment to improve the organization’s quality and performance in the competitive job market.
Advantages of diversity in the workplace
Women, people of color, people with disabilities, and immigrants are usually marginalized in the workplace. Employers should see that everybody at work is accorded equal treatment by providing an enabling environment for creativity, productivity, and teamwork. This is termed diversity staffing (De’CampoDe’Campoost employees prefer to work in an environment where diversity at all levels is encouraged. Companies should integrate the 3Rs of 3R’srsity a company: company’sn, Results, and Recruitment.
However, no matter how vital this imperative is for companies, it becomes difficult for most companies to achieve it. This is because most organizations have the wrong perception of diversity and fail to incorporate all levels of diversity. One of the common mistakes they make is to consider the visible dimension of diversity, mainly gender and race. This makes them omit other forms of diversity, such as disability, religion, sexual orientation, geographic background, and reasoning ability. Another common mistake is diversifying the lower employment ranks, but there is no diversity in the management sector. To address this problem, organizations should include all workers in the company’s mission ancompany’sand acknowledge their skills and areas of knowledge for the overall excellence of the organization (Lieberman web).
Benefits of diversity and inclusion in the workplace
Diversity has both merits and demerits. The benefits of diversity include diverse experiences, where different workers have peculiar perceptions and experiences from their various cultural backgrounds atop their individuality. Proper management of this diversity complements the workers’ strengths to enhance the impact on the workforce. Secondly, exposure to various cultures, ideas, and perspectives contributes to an employeeemployee’sanemployeeemployee’sandaging them to be all-rounded. This improves their wellness and intellectual ability. Diversity also encourages the retention of human capital because employees will not have reason to seek other companies with diversity. This ensures that heterogeneous talent is maintained because employees are not migrating from one company to the next in search of diversity. Recruitment of new staff is quite costly to firms, and they could avoid it by embracing diversity.
Moreover, hiring multilingual staff is a plus for the company because it caters to the needs of people who do not understand a specific language. This enhances communication skills within the company, which may yield positive results for the company’company’sge. company’company’sgerkforce translates to greater output and productivity. There is also an increase in sales because clients’clients’c, cclients’clients’cl needs are represented when buying goods and services from a diversified company.
On the contrary, diversity also has some demerits. One of the drawbacks is the increased cost of training incurred in pursuit of diversity during lectures, seminars, and programs that promote diversity. Diversity could also provoke competition other than teamwork at the workplace if employees do not embrace different cultures. This hurts the business because employees work separately instead of as a team. A lack of respect for other people’speople’sncespeople’speople’snces workers who prefer sticking and working within their culture. This could also lead to discrimination and prejudice (Kelly web).
The merits associated with diversity outweigh the demerits. A company cannot ignore the fact that diversity yields numerous benefits, and should embrace it as a business imperative for enhanced performance and productivity. Despite the demerits, a company can forego the costs of diversity since it will reap the benefits in the long run. Other minor demerits can be complemented with the merits and handled amicably within the company’company’sThecompany’company’sThereforee, part and parcel of all companies.
Works Cited
De’CampoDe’Campo. “DDe’CampoDe’Campo.:”Much Mo” e Than You Think!” The Mu”ticultural “dvantag” . 2009. Web. 9 April 2013.
Kelly, Lila. “Challen” es in Recru” ting an” Hiring Diverse Employees.” The Mu “ticultural “dvantag”. 2009. Web. 9 April 2013.
Lieberman, Simma. “Moving “eyond the N “mbers: “ow to Recruit, and Retain a Diverse Workforce.” The Mu” ticultural “dvantag”. 2009. Web. 9 April 2013.