Why Is Cultural Diversity Important: Three Advantages At The Workplace
The Facts
Q&A
A culturally diverse workspace helps to stay focused and creative. It increases our problem-solving attitude and teaches us to be competent. Cultural diversity refers to the coexistence of multiple cultural groups in space. It tends to affect our behavior patterns and provides our social identity.
Cultural and social diversity refers to the people from different cultural and social backgrounds who have different sets of skills and talents. It assists in providing cultural and ethnic identification to the people. Having a cultural identity also relates to having shared values, beliefs, norms, behavioral patterns, and material objects.
Over time, it has been clear that diversity plays a significant role in the international success of hundreds of large corporations. The combination of diversity and the oven of the management team results in financial outplay. Many studies are being conducted to determine the importance of diversity inclusion. In pandemic times, the dependency on the inclusion of diversity has increased a lot. Since people from different cultural backgrounds have different beliefs and ideas, it helps in the in-flow of different and creative ideas. And such a flow of ideas can be helpful to create something that has never been seen before.
Classifications Of Workspace Diversity
To have a deeper grasp of cultural groupings, one must first comprehend the essential traits that comprise a cultural group as a whole. As a result, the following are the traits that an HR department should bear in mind while employing employees from various backgrounds:
- Gender
Even though women make up the majority of workers today, there is still a significant disparity in the compensation and leadership opportunities available to women.
- LGBT
Since this cultural group has to face their challenges and difficulties in daily life, it is the responsibility of the workspace workers to ensure there is no discrimination based on gender identity.
- Age
Many times the employees are being judged based on their age. This preconceived notion leads to many conflicts among the employees, but it needs to be resolved by some mentoring programs by the supervisors to ensure smooth workflow.
- Neurodiversity
It refers to the support programs to help people with neurological diseases. It generally covers people suffering from autism, dyslexia, and much more. This also helps in clearing out the misconceptions of not being able to work properly. It helps in building confidence and a sense of empathy amongst the coworkers.
- Based on race, caste, and ethnicity
It refers to opening up with the employees about the concept of cultural diversity so that they feel like one team. As soon as the ethnic groups have evolved, they fail miserably to hit the mark. These conversations help in boosting confidence and a sense of trust amongst the employees.
- Thinking process
Since distinctive individuals have different personalities and different thinking processes, moreover, in an environment with employees from different cultural groups, this is more common. It enhances creativity but sometimes can cause distress and ill-mannered work results.
How To Manage Cultural Diversity at a Workspace
It is undeniably vital for people of all cultural groups to be competent. As a result, we must adhere to particular procedures to maintain an efficient working environment. Because contact is a fundamental component in establishing cultural competency, it assists in the formation of the capacity to grasp cognitive processes that differ across cultures, beliefs, and schedules. As a result, the following are some of the important guidelines that must be observed in the workplace.
- Interaction:
Certainly, to know somebody, communication is required. It helps provide the accurate information required for the smooth functioning of a team. This is required in every situation, whenever there are troubles in a project or anything regarding that. Hence, communication is the key. Communication gaps often create problems that can not benefit the company. Hence, the member in charge should promote a healthy flow of communication amongst the teammates from different cultural backgrounds.
- Team
When there is a diverse population of people in a workspace, it is substantially more difficult to form a team. People in other countries are more collectivistic, meaning they prefer to work as a team, whereas people in other cultures are conditioned to be individualistic. As a result, a workspace that includes both might lead to disputes, necessitating the use of mentorship programs.
- Time management and scheduling
Individual perception has a significant influence on work. It depends largely on how one feels it to be done. Like the way people perceive time, how do they balance their work-life, or how is it impacted by the religious events occurring? All these factors are largely responsible for one's attitude towards work. Different viewpoints can often create miscommunications and mishaps for the company.
Importance Of Cultural Diversity
There are numerous advantages of having a culturally diversified workspace. Recruiting people from diverse cultural backgrounds, whether in a small or large business, can result in an influx of ideas that are unique in every way, leading to the creation of something new.
However, in a survey, 67% of the recruiters stated that a diverse set of employees is important for a particular company, and 57% of the employees also stated it to be essential. Hence, it can be concluded from the survey that a diverse set of employee workforce can lead to employee brand, which is essential for the right person to come into the job.
Having a workforce from different cultural and social backgrounds can also help the companies who want to expand their business to multi-levels, that is, national, international, regional, or maybe to the local markets.
Advantages Of Having A Culturally Diverse Set Of Employees
There are many benefits of a diverse set of employees, such as the increased engagement of employees into work, increased creativity, and much more. Some of which are being discussed below:
- Increased skill sets
As we know, people from different backgrounds have different sets of thinking, beliefs, talents, and skills. It improves the problem-solving mentality since everyone approaches the problem from a different angle, resulting in a faster solution. In a company where all people are heard and treated equally, the contribution to success is more. As a result, having employees from various cultural backgrounds can contribute to the company's overall success.
- Boosts creativity
According to research, having a culturally varied collection of personnel increases the overall team's innovation. As discussed, everyone will have a distinctive perception of the problems, and hence many permutations and combinations of solutions can be seen to a particular problem.
- Brand reputation
It will spread a good word for your company. As an employer, if all your employees feel safe and treated equally, it will represent a good market image for your organization. Since you have a wide set of people working, it will exhibit positives about your firm and attract more people.
Conclusion
It improves problem-solving attitudes since everyone approaches the topic from diverse angles, resulting in a faster solution. Since everyone has their own set of beliefs and values and perceives the problem from different angles, it will provide many permutations and combinations to the problems. And if the employees in your company are treated rightfully, many people will also be attracted to your organization. Hence, it can be concluded that cultural diversity is important for any work environment.