Diversity Management And Its Impact On Job Outcomes

Diversity Management and its Impact on Job Outcomes Can businesses today work without having a diverse workforce? Can job performance in teams be equally high with homogenous teams rather than diverse ones? How does diversity need to be managed so a manager can get the most out of their teams? These are just some of the questions todays leaders and managers are faced with in making their daily business decisions. Since the start of globalisation and rapid migration across countries in the last 100 years todays businesses are more diverse than ever before. But what does diversity in the workplace mean? One definition of diversity is defined as differences in relating to gender, ethnicity, age, religion, sexual orientation or physical†¦show more content†¦Individual and Organisational Performance: In many professions job performance is an outcome of a job. This could be how one employee performs within an organisation or how they perform as part of a team. In any organisation with a diverse workforce teams will contain people with diverse backgrounds. In many cases co-workers bring unique experiences and perceptions to a group. On an individual level it gives employees greater exposure to new ideas and cultures that can be a source of personal development (Shen, Chanda, D’Netto, Monga, 2009). Effective diversity management also leads to improved levels of innovation and creativity within an organisation. The more diverse an organisation is the more innovative it can be. If an organisation is not diverse then Page (2007) argues that people who think alike, no matter how smart they are will get stuck at the same solution. Finding new innovative solutions requires a different perspective and this is what diversity provides for an organisation. The biggest problem is that diversity needs to be managed effectively. If diversity is not managed properly it can also be a source of problems. In some instances there could be communication problems if cultures clash. This can reduce a group’s productivity and it won’t be good for the organisations performance. Although in the long term, as diverse groups spend more time with each other these issues should disappear (reference). Another issue that may