Cindy Delgado
Devry University
Cultural Diversity in the Professions
Professor Peter Conis
March 6, 2015
Let's Be Lefties for a Day! As professionals and managers it is important to understand cultural differences because it will help develop a business’s reputation for valuing each employee and help the organization become recognized. As future nurses, it is important to understand and respect different cultures, ethnicity and gender differences. It is critical for professionals and managers nurses to learn the importance of culture, ethnic and gender differences because they will encounter many individuals from diverse societies. Currently there are many cases of different minority population issues that are on the rise and becoming more complicated in many different areas, for example: social, education, legal, medical, and financial areas. We should all recognize and accept individuals for who they are and be sensitive to their cultural needs and practices of others. We should all work to live in a society that is accepting and respectful of others regardless of whom they are or where they come from. As with every occupation cultural dissimilarities can bring interpersonal disagreements. We need to find means to overcome and deal with the problems that develop. According to Cox and Blake (1991), they proposed several reasons how diversity could benefit organizations. Cox and Blake (1991) performed an experiment between two groups, one group had no diversity among themselves, and the second group with diversity. The experiment focused on problem solving creativity, originality, and practicality; the outcome of the experiment stated that if both groups had similar ability levels, the group with diversity was the most creative than the group that did not have diversity. These results represented an obvious example of the business community failing to recognize that extreme changes is needed in the cultural thinking in order to successfully manage an effective and productive workforce. Major corporations are undertaking positive changes.
Workforce diversity can potentially improve the performance and service delivery just by understanding the principles and norms the organization serves, especially for community employees in service delivery organizations. “Recognizing the importance of diversity, many organizations have developed policies and professional development issues to attract, retain, and develop employees, as well as facilitate communication and understanding amongst them” (Nichol & Anti-Boasiako, 2012). Employees must know the importance it is to effectively communicate to others that cannot speak or understand English. I work at a local hospital and we are fortunate enough to have a diverse population of employees that are bilingual.
Today, I spent the day being left-handed which was a challenge and led to a lot of frustration and incomplete tasks. Loosing the