How Does Workplace Diversity Impact Team Performance?
Hcareers (www.hcareers.com)
The reason the author wrote the article was to help organizations realize there can be positive growth within a company, with a diversity team. One of the great challenges facing organizations is getting all employees, from the CEO to the hourly workers, to realize that to become the best, they have to embrace diversity. Diversity is about empowering people. It makes an organization effective by capitalizing on all of the strengths of each employee. It is not EEO or Affirmative Action. These are laws and policies. While on the other hand, diversity is valuing, understanding and using the differences in every person.
There were numerous points discussed in the article, not a particular focus on just one organization. * Understanding the Nature of Creative Problem-Solving- Change can require an effort and commitment that many companies are not willing to fully exert, but in order to drive innovation, change must occur. Management should step back and give the team the time and space to work things out. * Expect Conflict-and Plan How to Overcome it. Difficulties inevitably arise when there is diversity within an organization. Most of us have limited information about other people’s worldviews. Frustration often occurs when two people with different worldviews interact; frequently, neither feels valued or understood. Often one or the other practices ethnocentric thinking, experiencing their unique sense of time, use of language, and beliefs about work styles as comprising the one appropriate way to behave. When ethnocentric thinking pervades an organizational culture, the result can be exclusion of some, favoritism toward others, and intragroup conflict. The same difficulties can arise when an employee attempts to interact with a customer who is culturally different from them.