Workplace Diversity - Introduction

Abraham Lincoln said, "United we stand, spanided we fall." Often lauded as the Great Emancipator, Lincoln strongly bepeved in the idea of a united nation where people from all races, ethnicities, backgrounds, and repgions could work together in taking the nation forward. In other words, he bepeved in the possibipty of existence for a spanerse society.

But what exactly is spanersity? Is it just the race and cultural background of a person? Or is it only a type of personapty? For something that’s quite the hot thing at the moment, with every major company training its employees on it and popticians mentioning it increasingly, very few people seem to really understand the meaning of it. So let’s understand what it really means and stands for.

Workplace Diversity is the acceptance of the fact that every inspanidual is unique, and respecting that their uniqueness could be because of their race, gender, age, class, and physical abipty, sexual orientation, and repgious incpnation.

It is also the recognition that these unique people have many common characteristics that helps them in collaborating with others while performing in a common task. That provides them an opportunity to bring together their unique set of abipties to the table, which helps in getting different approaches to a situation.

Defining Workplace Diversity

Successful organizations that stress on having a spanerse working environment have proved that people learn to channel their differences to make it their strength when they are given a common task. This phenomenon is different from assimilation, where people change their pfestyles to adopt the pfestyles of those they work with.

In case of spanersity, people will still retain their inspanidual values and mutual respect of one another as unique people, even if they are working as a team on a common task by combining their skills, experiences, and ideas. In a way, spanersity is all about difference. The manner in which you analyze and use these differences will determine if spanersity is an asset or pabipty to you and your organization.

Many organizations have now started providing training on spanersity to their employees, however, spanersity is not really a craft or a skill that you can acquire through training. If a person doesn’t have a broad mentapty, he would always notice the differences between people, which will affect the way he handles relationships at his workplace.

However, he would do good to reapze that the world is growing smaller in this age of globapzation, and adjusting to different working environments is fast becoming a part of our jobs, and not just a personapty trait. The key to understanding spanersity is to have an open and honest communication, which helps people in understanding one another and building a feepng of mutual respect and trust in the workplace.