Advantages of diversity

Advantages of diversity

Attract the best talent

Organizations that embrace diversity management create an inclusive environment that enhances their reputation with job seekers. Typically, no one would like to work in an organization where his or her talents are not appreciated. Worse of all, know one would like in an environment that is rife with discrimination and where is considered a stranger. This means that organizations that prefer a homogeneous workforce, may discourage talented employees from minority groups from joining the company. In such an event, the organization is unable to realize its full potential. Moreover, the organization loses favor with minority groups and hence loose potential market for goods and services.

Enhanced productivity

In John and Bezrukova’s view by hiring workers on the basis of race and gender results, an organization ends up with employees who are paid more wages, but who are not more productive (703). The relationship between diversity and productivity can also be examined using work teams. Work teams or groups are important in any organization. The benefits of work teams can be illustrated using the example of the Motorolla company. The company has adopted a team-based structure to solve organizational problems. These teams are also charged with the responsibility of coming with creative ideas. An important aspect of cross-functional teams in the Motorolla is that their membership is drawn from diverse groups. Social interaction in work teams leads to increased productivity as the members share diverse viewpoints and perspectives. Ultimately, an organization stands to benefit by forming diverse teams.

Innovation

The interplay between innovation and diversity has been explored by many scholars. Innovation is a multidimensional term, and has both subjective and objective traits. Subjective traits include processes of creativity and original thinking. On the other hand, objective traits include the structures through which creative ideas are generated and transmitted to others. The ability of an organization to come up with creative ideas largely depends on the way subjective raw materials are harnessed by the objective structures of innovation.

Innovation is defined as the generation of new ideas that are vital for the production of goods and services and development of processes and systems. It is widely acknowledged that the ability of workers to communicate creative ideas, can be constrained by institutional and non-institutional forms of discrimination. It has also been established teams that have diverse characteristics have a great capacity to solve more complex problems to homogeneous teams as they had a greater pool of ideas. This position is supported by numerous studies. In such one study, established high levels of innovation in Germany was reported in areas where there were higher levels of cultural diversity than areas with lower levels of diversity. In a more comprehensive study whose participation was drawn from 1000 international teams, Under and Kregel (15) found out innovation was higher in teams that had equal gender ration than teams with an unequal ratio.

Based on other similar it is correct to conclude that diversity contributes to innovation in a number of ways. Firstly,creative ideas are born when the participants have dissimilar mind sets. Conversely,like-minded people are likely to make lie-minded decisions. In a diverse group the participants have dissimilar mind sets owing to their different backgrounds hence innovation is likely to occur. Secondly,diversity in a group encourages effective learning. Thirdly, diversity in a group leads to innovation due to the diverse range of perspectives that the participants have. The participants also have a broader spectrum of expertise and more robust critical evaluation compared to homogeneous group, hence more innovative ideas are born. Fourthly, diverse groups can access a broader network of relationships, cultural capital and bi-cultural competence. Diverse groups use these resources to generate new ideas.

Enhance efficiency

The issue of efficiency is well discussed by Janssens and Stevart in the article titled, theories of diversity within organization studies: debates and future trajectories..It is well acknowledged that the members of a diverse workforce can complement each other, since each one of them has different abilities and comes from a different background. In such a setting, communication is also enhanced because each member has unique ideas and knowledge that the other members can utilize. It then follows that organization should target to employ disadvantaged groups to utilize the specific capabilities that they have.

Retention

Employee engagement reduces turnover. In the US, turnover among w.............