Succesful Management of a Diverse Workforce

By: Viral Mehta
Submitted: 2007-01-17 11:53:58
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Employees of the modern era consist of a community with different ethnic backgrounds which has led to new techniques for managing a diverse workforce. Not too long ago, the high profile projects were reserved for a select few people from a common background. Today, both men and women are equally represented and today’s new corporate employees are from places all over the world. New management techniques must be learned in order to ensure success. Ross Perot's old company, EDS, talks of using its experience in handling workplace diversity as a way of better understanding a globally diverse marketplace, and sees its CCI as part of such successful management (Grayson, 1993).

A manager in the modern corporate world must be skilled in knowing how to deal with the issues of a diverse workplace. In a small group, each employee may be from a different background so communication can be difficult. Communication is the essential tool to create and build a work team that can carry out both the values and instructions of your organization. Translating materials to include this employee population is not just good business, its essential to success. Cultural differences could lead to miscommunication. For example, looking at a person from an Asian cultural background directly in the eye is disrespectful, and therefore the Asian person will look and focus at a different point or object other than your face. (multilangual planet, 2006) A manager in today’s workplace must be skilled in knowing how to communicate with employees who are from different parts of the world. This form of effective communication is valuable because a department may have different employees from all over the world. Making a mistake in understanding communication could prove to be disasterous to the employee-manager relationship.

The specific word, diversity, was rarely used when people described their best, favorite, or most effective manager. However, fairness, respect, objectiveness, and listening recurred frequently. These attributes describe an effective manager and leader (Harris, 2006). Learning the professional goals of all your team members, creating opportunism for your employees to be exposed to corporate leaders they may not often get a chance to work with, fair delegation and objective performance evaluations are a few essential management practices. Some other excellent practices include making time to talk privately with each of your employees, asking your staff in private how they would like to be managed and spending some recreational time to talk to your staff during their lunch break. Taking some time to have a friendly exchange with an employee who may be under your supervision is a key element to building a succesful relationship between the manager and employee. These small interactons over a period of time shows the employee that the manager is interested in his life of a personal level. It is also importanat to know that it is not necessary to go out after work with the employees but a simple friendly exchange during the day will still go a long way to building a succesful department.

Working in a diverse workplace also has its fair share of pitfalls. Many of today’s companies will make sure that they have a person on staff that speaks another language in addition to English. Sometimes people that are descendents of foreign nationals have not had formal training in the language they have grown up speaking in their homes. They have learned the language in their house speaking with their parents, brothers and sisters but they do not have a formal education in that language in order to have good linguistic skills for reading and writing. This is not meant to imply that everybody who learns a language at home is not an adequate interpreter, but this is meant to raise awareness of this possibility. (multilangual planet, 2006) This is just one example of a pitfall that many organizations succumb to in the modern era.

There are a wide number of sources of barriers that can enter into the communication process. This can occur when people don’t know each other very well. In a work setting, it is even more common since interactions involve people who not only don't have years of experience with each other, but communication is complicated by the complex and often confliction relationships that exist at work. (interperator, 2006) It is important for a manager to understand when two or more employees may not be suitable to work in the same department or team together. This does not mean that one employee has to be let go because both may be of equal value to the organization. In most cases, good employees who may not be amiable towards each other at first will still understand to have a respect towards each other after some time. Howerver, understanding that there maybe a cultural or personality difference between different groups of employees is important to the health of the organization.

In order to have a successful workplace, management should ensure that these techniques are practiced. One important quality of management success is being a person that others want to follow. Every action you take during your career in an organization helps determine whether people will one day want to follow you. The key to successful managing is effective communication. Effective communication is an essential component of organizational success at any level. It is critical to understand and be aware of the potential sources of errors and constantly counteract these tendencies by making an effort to make sure there is a minimal loss of meaning in your conversation. It is also very important to understand that a majoring of communication is non-verbal. Mastering some of these techniques will make it easier for successful management in a diverse workplace. www.theeasynetwork.com

Sources:

1. CCI: The Strategic Management Tool, Grayson, David. Management Development Review. Bradford: 1993.Vol.6, Iss. 3; pg. 3, 4 pgs

2. Leadership & Management in Engineering; Oct2002, Vol. 2 Issue 4, p28, 3p

3. Public Personnel Management; Summer98, Vol. 27 Issue 2, p187, 14p, 2 charts

4. http://www.sideroad.com/Diversity_in_the_Workplace/managing-diversity-in-the-workplace.html

5. http://www.multilingualplanet.com/legal_resources.htm

6. http://web.cba.neu.edu/~ewertheim/interper/commun.htm

http://www.theeasynetwork.com

Viral Mehta

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