Environment of Inclusion and Diversity Management on Perceived Diversity Climate

Introduction

Workforce diversity is a reality today as the world has shrunk into a global village becoming a melting point for people of all ages, genders, abilities, social and culture backgrounds, religions, sexualities, and lifestyles to come together and work for a common purpose. This transformation is due to the rapid changes witnessed over the last two decades in the political economic, technological and socio culture spheres. This has necessitated a heterogeneous workforce that in turn creates a different climate that needs to be understood by the organizations and must strive to provide opportunities equally for all individuals.

Diversity earlier was restricted to differences in physical, gender, ethnic and religious characteristics but today it covers attitudes, lifestyles, generational cohorts, disabilities and sexual preferences. It covers visible and invisible attributes of people. Diversity becomes evident in organizations in the way employees think, feel and behave with respect to work, performance, satisfaction and contribution to growth in the organization (Hays-Thomas and Bendick 2013). Interpersonal relationships of people reflect their perceptions, values and behaviours that emanate from the beliefs they hold and the backgrounds they come from. Managing these employees requires a good understanding of their diverse backgrounds (Jeffery Sanchez-Burks and Michal E. Mor Barak, 2005). It is an absolute necessity in globalized markets to address and accommodate the requirements of diverse employees. If a firm fails to do so, it is branded to be non-competitive in today’s context (Sharbari Saha, Dewpha Mukherjee Patra, 2008). Firms need to bring in inclusive practices to make employees from diverse backgrounds to become a part of the organization, as it is a natural tendency for members of the same background to group themselves as one unit and disassociate themselves from others belonging to other backgrounds (Mor Barak, 2000). It is imperative for firms in this generation to understand the serious need to address diversity and use it to gain competitive advantage (Kreitz, 2008). Firms that manage diversity well are able to see results from employees in the form of creativity, decision making, skill transfer, energy and motivation (Qasim, 2017)