Diversity management is a strategy for enterprises to utilize human resources required for building competitive advantages in a market environment or a technology structure where they are placed. It is important for enterprises to strategically utilize human resources as a part of the management strategy for the purpose of enhancing their competitiveness rather than promoting welfare and corporate social responsibility.
Globalization and other market environment changes have been behind the growing need for diversity management. These changes accelerate changes in and the uncertainty of competitive environments for enterprises and diversify their stakeholders.
Amid the changes, enterprises are required to take the following measures:
- Figuring out diversifying customer needs accurately and generating innovations to take new earnings opportunities.
- Responding to rapid environmental changes flexibly and positively and taking risks as business opportunities for flexible actions.
- Leading domestic and overseas investors to view enterprises as investment targets featuring sustainability. As a business management strategy to meet these requirements, enterprises must conduct “diversity management” to create innovation and generate values by securing a wide range of human resources with various values1 indispensable for business development and allowing them to exercise their potential2 as much as possible. Diversity management is a standard tool for enterprises to survive the future.1 2
2. Background information on diversity management (6 marks)
In today’s competitive global marketplace and dynamic environment the company success is defined how well diversity are integrated in the business processes and organizational culture.
Diversity can be defined as the range of visible and non-visible differences that exist between people. Diversity(It) is about embracing many different types of people, who embody different things and represent different cultures, generations, gender, ideas, and thinking.3 Diversity also refers to any other kind of difference between one or more employee of an organization like economical status difference, educational background difference, and geographical area difference Thus, Managing workplace diversity involves recognizing the value of individual differences and creating a productive environment in which everyone feels valued, where talents are fully utilized and in which organizational goals are met.
Managing effectively actually goes beyond creating a workplace free from discrimination, bias or harassment. It is about developing a hospitable and supportive atmosphere for everyone, where different perspectives, views, cultural, professional and other experiences and knowledge that employees bring can be shared in order to find best innovative solutions in the work.4
Effective Diversity Management is proven to produce significant benefits in terms of customer engagement, recruitment and staff retention, problem-solving and creativity.5
Therefore, linking diversity with business strategy in a workplace can significantly improve results because better management of diversity means job satisfaction, happy employees, high productivity, integrated workforce, increased profit margins through efficiency savings and innovation and as a result competitive advantage over competitors. To ensure effective and balanced it must be well managed at all levels of the organization so that all employees are able to contribute to their best abilities. However, department heads, SPMs, division chiefs, and deputy division chiefs have a key role to play in helping to ensure that everyone has the skills needed for managing inclusion at the departmental, division, team, or individual level as needed
Thus, Diversity management is the key factor to companies’ growth and success in today reality.
3. Identify 3 specific best practices (programs/initiatives) that are