| ||
| ||
|
Management Information | |
|
|
Tales From the Corporate Frontlines: Diversity in the Workplace: Ethnic Considerations
This article relates to the Diversity in the Workplace Competency, commonly evaluated in employee satisfaction surveys. This competency explores whether your organization provides understanding and supports interaction among diverse population groups while respecting individuals' personal values and ideas. Research shows that by fostering a climate where equity and mutual respect are intrinsic, an organization can create a success-oriented, cooperative and caring work environment that draws intellectual strength and produces innovative solutions from the synergy of its people. All businesses can benefit from a diverse body of talent bringing fresh ideas, perspectives, and views to the workplace. However, a diverse workforce means that the managers within your organization must be capable of capitalizing on the mixture of genders, cultural backgrounds, ages, and lifestyles present in your staff to respond to business opportunities more rapidly and creatively. This short story, Diversity in the Workplace: Ethnic Considerations, is part of AlphaMeasure's Compilation, Tales from the Corporate Frontlines. This article illustrates how decisions made by large companies can have unintended morale consequences at the local level. Anonymous Submission Diversity in the Workplace: Ethnic Considerations I once worked at a small local company where the employees were not accustomed to dealing with change. It was a family owned business and most of the employees had been there for 20 years or more. They all lived in the same locale, an area of predominantly Western European ancestry steeped in religious heritage and tradition. When the owner family sold the company to a huge multinational corporation, the changes were big and they happened quickly. Most of them were met with cheerful resignation. But I do remember one that sparked an amazing amount of controversy---changes in the holiday schedule. It was decreed that a long-standing company holiday, the Friday before Easter, also known as Good Friday, was to be scratched to make room for the secular national holiday of President's Day, never previously observed. Not a big deal, you might think, but considering the demographic of this particular part of the company, the outcry was awesome. Most of the affected employees were women, with families and children, for whom the Easter weekend held great religious significance. For them, it's not just a one-day holiday, there are three days of religious observances, customs, and celebrations that require massive amounts of cooking, cleaning, and shopping. Many of these employees used vacation or personal time to prepare and then took the Monday after off to recuperate. They had followed these traditions all their lives and deeply resented having their holiday cut short. They registered complaints, both written and verbal, in fact, HR was besieged. The union representing some of the employees expressed its displeasure. As a three-year employee from another region, I was amazed by the enormity of the outcry. The huge, multinational parent company, however, was not. Executives listened to the complaints with sympathy and regret, but would do nothing. The company procedure was to go to the national level only when setting holiday schedules---it simply wasn't practical to make allowances for local ethnic considerations. Looking back, I think the company should have changed, or at least reviewed, their policy. There were some really unhappy workers during that first spring season, and for the ten years I remained at that company, discontent was reawakened every time both holidays rolled around. In fact, in an online employee satisfaction survey completed four years later, it was still the number one complaint. Sometimes large companies, in an effort to embrace diversity in the workplace, need to be flexible to allow for local ethnic considerations. © 2005 AlphaMeasure, Inc. - All Rights Reserved This article may be reprinted, provided it is published in its entirety, includes the author bio information, and all links remain active. Measure. Report. Improve your organization with AlphaMeasure employee surveys. Josh Greenberg is President of AlphaMeasure, Inc. AlphaMeasure provides organizations of all sizes a powerful web based method for measuring employee satisfaction, determining employee engagement, and increasing employee retention. Launch your employee surveys with AlphaMeasure.
MORE RESOURCES:
Lincoln Financial Group Announces New Senior Management Committee ... - International Business Times
Management - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Indiscretion Can Kill Your Business The quickest way to cancel out all the thought, work, energy, time and expense you've poured into promoting your business is with indiscretions. I'm not talking about giving your clients' confidential materials to their competitors, though that certainly will kill your business I'm talking about the indiscretions that leak out of your mouth, such as: Those inappropriate responses to anyone and everyone within earshot when you are dog-tired and have been up all night trying to meet a deadline. Implementing Change There are different reactions that individuals experience during time of change. Understanding the emotions of an individual may better help them get through the period of unexpected change. Innovation Management - Producing Great Products, Motivation Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas. Whadda Jerk! If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool. Carl Jung Sadly, public discourse today seems to have degenerated into warring parties spitting epithets at one another. Choosing the Right Corporate Training According to a Gallup Poll, 80 percent of employees said the availability of company-sponsored training programs was a factor in deciding whether to accept a new job or stick with a current one. And yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the average number of hours of formal training per employee per year is only 10. Innovation Management - forced into it! Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development and commercialisation. Innovation Management - Diversity Can Make All The Difference Companies are welcoming a diverse range of employees (The Sunday Times, April 10 2005). Doh!It is incredible that this concept is getting coverage in 2005. Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Coworkers Collaborate to Complete Successful Initiative This short story, Coworkers Collaborate to Complete Successful Initiative, is part of AlphaMeasure's compilation, Tales From the Corporate Frontlines. It illustrates how important cooperation, collaboration, and communication are to achieving the common goals of a successful organization. Make Change Easy - Get Involved! There are wild variances in how much involvement organisations are brave enough to offer their people in change. From those organisations where they just 'tell' (sometimes by text message even!), to the most enlightened extreme, where they enable wholesale contribution to the change process. Behavioral Interview Questions You Can Use Monday Morning If past behavior is the best way to determine future behavior then behavioral interviewing is a requirement for anyone serious about hiring top talent. This skill isn't something that should be taken lightly, but everyone's got to start somewhere. Does Your Management Style Remind People Of Something They Read In Dilbert? With thanks to Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian who does the "You might be a redneck series of jokes.If you really believe people in your group are lucky to have a job, you might be a jerk. Creative and Innovative Culture, Change Management - Three Easy Tests Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation and innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation. From this simple definition, it is clear that certain cultural characteristics ought to be prevalent if creativity and innovation are to be maximised. Critical Success Factors - Next The Critical Success Factors Focusing on the things that make the biggest difference to your future prosperity. (Note, although this article was written in early 2002, it is totally relevant. What Every Manager Should Know About How to Maximize the Two People Inside Every one of us, in reality, has two people inside: The person we are today and the person we can become tomorrow and in the future.We go to work every day, are never late or absent, earn a promotion; and receive occasional raises. Time Management and Team Development - The Yes and No of It Sometimes.In fact making some small changes to the circumstances when we use these two little words, can make all the difference. The Top Three Problems IT Managers Face and How to Overcome Them Todays business environment has changed drastically from just a few years back. Rather than working exclusively with equipment, data, and systems, todays IT managers face issues such as cross training, personnel management, interdepartmental communication, and a widening job scope for all IT employees. Build Rapport Fast! - Eight Easy Steps Building rapport is all about creating a relationship, in the moment. And this is vital in business, education, friendships and many other areas of life. Using the Six-Sigma Methodology to Improve Wafer Fab Productivity As a result of consolidation of operations and significantly increased production requirements, Intersil's main Fab was facing bottlenecks in supply versus demand. Intersil enlisted Tefen USA first to support identifying the Fab bottleneck, and then to develop a comprehensive roadmap for capacity and cycle time improvements. Creativity and Innovation Directors, Consultants and Managers Creativity and Innovation is essential for competitive advantage, yet the role of Creativity and Innovation Manager is often not viewed as essential. Organizations without such a role will simply not perform as competitively as their rivals. Delegation Obstructions OBSTRUCTIONS: 1. Staff deficiencies.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
