Diversity

Diversity

In today's business world, diversity in the workplace is a very important topic. The significance of this subject increases proportionately as the workforce and community become more and more diverse in age, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status. In an ideal world, everyone would be treated equally, but unfortunately this is not the case even when it comes to getting a job, advancing ones career, or even just being treated fairly in the workplace. In this paper I will examine the effects of the diversity in ethnicity, age, gender, and religion.

Ethnic Diversity

Although slow and begrudgingly, Americans today are expanding their tolerance limits when it comes to learning about the ethnic history and background of others. Throughout American history there have been many societal upheavals that have taken place regarding ethnic diversity. There has been the civil rights movement, rising African-American consciousness and the resurgence of ethnicity. There has also been a backlash against these movements. Ethnic diversity has caused many changes to take place throughout history (Ostrom, 1990).

When it comes to ethnic diversity in the workplace it has been and will continue to be a great challenge. The cost of ignoring and not meeting the challenge of ethnic diversity can be costly. This can be seen at Coca-Cola and Texaco. Both of these organizations had put in place policies and programs that had appeared to promote diversity and protect them from legal claims. Even with these policies and programs in place they have found themselves subject of discrimination lawsuits. These lawsuits have cost them quite a bit of money, their reputation, time and focus. In the case of Coca-Cola, they spent more than $190 million dollars to settle a class action lawsuit in late 2000. Along with this payout they had also agreed to an extensive and intrusive surrender of traditional employer decision-making, including a diversity review committee. In the case of Texaco they settled a race discrimination class action lawsuit in 1997 for $176 million, this included $29 million in attorneys' fees. They also paid its public relations firm $40 million to assist with damage control (Katz, 2005).

The understanding of ethnic diversity can only benefit an organization. Although this can be challenging it can be done. If organizations would look at ethnic diversity as an advantage instead of a disadvantage then lawsuits such as the ones against Coca-Cola and Texaco can possible be avoided. Even with the understanding of ethnic diversity there are other diversity issues that exist. Another big problem is age diversity.

Age Diversity

In our day and age organizations need to embrace human resource management practices that support a multigenerational workforce. This is because our labor pool is aging. The fastest growing workforce age group is those between 55 and 64 years of age (Silveri, n.d.).

The problem with age diversity is that the generation gaps can be a distraction and hurt morale and teamwork. This can be avoided if managers learn how to accommodate the uniqueness of each group. In order to accommodate this uniqueness the manager also needs to avoid stereotyping the generation groups. Each generation brings their own values and points of value. With such diversity these groups do not always agree on how the ultimate goal should be accomplished. The older generations appear to be inflexible to the younger generations and the younger generation appears to lack respect for authority in the eyes of the older generations (Golmoski, 2001).

Gender Diversity

With the growing workforce and economic issues, more and more women are entering the workforce, causing a more gender diverse workforce at all levels. This gender diversity is being caused by the growth of single mothers, both parents working outside of the home, and single women wanting pursue their own career goals. With more men and women having to work together come many issues, such as sexual harassment, promotion discrimination, and communication.

Men have become petrified over the fear that what they say will be construed as harassment. This is becoming a great concern as more and more advance in their careers and become bosses. With this growth of women bosses men are starting to learn that the way they used to communicate needs to change and be adapted to communicating with women in the workforce. Not only do men need to adjust the way in which they think, speak and act so do women (San Francisco Business Times, 1996).

Religious Diversity

As our society grows and becomes more diverse in age, gender, and ethnicity, it is also become ever more diverse in religion. With this growing diversity corporate America