Succesful Management of a Diverse Workforce


By Viral Mehta


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


More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Management Information:

Related Articles


Internal Prisons: The Thief of Productivity and Quality in our Workforce
As a professional speaker, one of my biggest challenges is to grab the attention of my audience within the first few minutes of the presentation- grab them by the throat if you will. I do this by coming out in a suite and tie, following an introduction in which I have been described as a recent college graduate who earned both of his degrees with a 4.
Ten Steps to Take the Work out of Work - Replicate Yourself!
They say that management can be a lonely place. A manager has to lead from the front, make challenging demands of their people and if part of an organisation, pass on the dictats of the more senior and remote bosses up at the top.
A Journey of a Thousand Miles
You can't build a reputation on what you are "going" to do. Henry Ford Everyone procrastinates in their own way.
The Communications Myth
Living in the 21st Century is truly marvelous, isn't it? We live in a world of instant communications where everything we need to know is right at our fingertips. The moment anything of significance occurs it is instantly transferred around the globe making us the most well informed generation in the history of the world.
Setting a Pitiful Example: Twenty-six Warnings to Heed *
TO: All Parents [and Employers and Managers]From: Your Child and/or EmployeeDate: The present timeRe: Don't Spoil me; Teach Me1. Don't spoil me.
How to Delegate Effectively
ACCOUNTABILITY: Delegation is not complete unless subordinates are held accountable for their work. They should be accountable to only one person-usually their immediate manager-and must understand what criteria will be used in judging their performance.
Online Business Peace of Mind
Is your online business disaster-proof? Online businesses face a unique set of challenges. Unlike our offline counterparts, we must worry about hackers, credit-card fraud, loss of data, virus attacks, websites going down and more.
Encouraging Behavior That Gets Results
You're the boss, and you have every reason to feel good about your organization.You've built a great team.
The Silent Assassin - What to Do When They Visit You?
IntroductionThere are a group of people in the community that will some time in their career visit your business; the silent assassin.The silent assassin displays all the qualities of a serial killer as they silently wreck havoc in your business through unrest, sabotage, bullying and non-productivity.
Managing Creativity - An Oxymoron! Not
Interrogated on a beach in Barbados by friends insistent that there was little validity to my speciality, I have felt compelled to answer the most common objections in the field of Managing Creativity and Innovation.a) Managing Creativity and Innovation is an oxymoron!When ideas are required, leaders tend to herd people into a room with a flip chart and conduct (usually an ineffective) brainstorming session.
How To Prevent Your New Manager From Becoming A Statistic
According to a study by the Manchester Group, 4 out of 10 new managers fail in the first 18 months! The top 5 reasons cited:Not building partnerships or teams with colleagues and peersUnclear expectationsNot enough political savvyTakes too long to learn the jobInability to balance work and personal livesEvery day new managers are hired or promoted because of "what they know". When they fail to thrive it's because of "who they are" or "how they go about getting things done".
Document management : A dream of paperless office
What is document management: When we think about "Document Management" we usually see a picture of paperless office. It is not an easy task to make an office paperless due to several existing problems based on Industrial needs.
10 Steps When You Need Help in Your Business
If you think ahead and plan, many nightmare panic and chaos situations can be overcome. By ensuring that you have a great group of people around you, there will be more to fall back on when the going gets tough - because that, as they say, when the tough really do get going.
Innovation Management - Time to Market or Time to Success?
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.
Understanding Every Aspect of Your Organization
GET TO KNOW YOUR ORGANIZATION: If you don't understand an aspect of the organization or a procedure within it, ask. If you still don't understand, ask again.
Managing People - Why Is It So Difficult?
Managing, supervising, being a team leader is the hardestjob in the world and I'll tell you why.Imagine what it's like to drive a car.
The Seven Essentials of Business Communication
There are seven essential elements to successful business communication:StructureClarityConsistencyMediumRelevancyPrimacy/RecencyPsychological
Allowing Employees Responsibility
Merely assigning a task with detailed instructions is not effective delegation. An employee cannot grow without the freedom to make decisions on how the job should be done.
Why Businesses Fail - And What You Can Do About It!
Have you unintentionally set your business up for failure?No one sets out to fail! Most business owners read all thestatistics (maybe more than once) before they open theirdoors. Many know the reasons why businesses fail.
Boost Your Leadership Skills By Disciplining Yourself In The Way Of The Question Mark
I'm often asked to come in to organizations and give a motivational speech to their employees. I reply that I'm not a motivational speaker.