Establish A Cultural Department

To establish the corporate culture for workforce diversity is a systematic program which includes builds the internal workforce culture, incentive culture and external brand culture, image culture. The characteristics of workforce diversity require organizations to establish the independent department of corporate culture whose duties includes: 1. Make diverse culture strategies according to the actual situations inside and outside the organizations. 2. Manage and control the diverse culture and adjust the strategies.  3. Monitor the diverse workforce culture and innovate the new ideas for diverse culture building.

In order to find the characteristics and process of diverse culture development, organizations need to investigate throughout the workforce and gather the detailed information. Questionnaires, interviews and anonymous complaint books are suitable ways to gather data about the culture of workforce diversity (such as current culture situation, employees’ attitudes and views, different employment experiences, etc.).

Hard to Make Consistency

The diversity of employees’ value will reduce the executive power of the organizations. Lack of a coincident view on a problem will result in more time consuming.

·         First, communication is a big problem in migratory country in which people speak different language.

·         Second, searching for the diverse opinions may increase the complexity to the problems and make them more blurry.

·         Third, the difference on the appreciation to the decisions and ways of work will make the decisions more difficult to be implemented.

Different Ways

The diversity workforce will reduce the incentive function of the organizations. As we can see, different employees have different grades in response to the incentive methods in the organizations. For instance, the incentive method to an undergraduate student is quite different from that to a house wife. Also, different employees have different demands of incentive. For example, male employees tend to emphasize the autonomy at work while female employees prefer to seek the opportunities of study, flexible shift time and good interpersonal relationship. Due to the culture differences, incentive methods vary from country to country. Take Asian countries for example, negative reinforcement methods may be more effective to increase the enthusiasm of employees. But to most western counties, people are educated under a positive reinforcement method so that encouragement works on them.

A Difficult Task

Although the diverse corporate culture brings much benefit to organizations, it is not easy to build a good diverse corporate culture.
 
The workforce diversity becomes the barrier for organizations to form the sharing corporate culture.  Difficulties appear when the managers recruit different workforce and try to have them involved into the organizations. Management want employees to accept the sharing values of the organizations, the values, however, are contradict with some employees’ values so that they will probably disobey the organizations’ values at any time. The most difficult thing is, to the management, they have to publicly admit, accept and support the diverse attitudes, beliefs and values of employees, and adjust, integrate the core values of the organizations. The purpose to recruit diverse workforce is to use their own advantages, however, when they are accepted and integrated into the organizations, their diverse behaviors and advantages may decline in the corporate culture.

Characteristics of Enterprise Culture in The Diverse Workforce Organizations

Workforce diversity affects the formation of modern enterprise culture directly. In the condition of workforce diversity, there are several characteristics of enterprise culture.

1.       Diversity. The employees of the organizations come from different countries and regions with various beliefs, personalities, educational backgrounds and unique value to the world. So the enterprise culture will absolutely reflect the employees’ values.

2.       Integration. Economic globalization is the catalyst for corporations become cross-cultural human organizations. Organizations integrate competitive workforce into their own departments though globalization.

3.       Permeable. The enterprise culture is just a soft mind restriction to the members of organizations. It infiltrates to personal value by sharing the organizational value so that to “restrict” the behavior of employees. It respects employee’s own thinking and feelings, in order to let them combine their personal goals with the organization’s goals together.

4.       Study. Diverse workforce affords different values to organizations, at the same time, inspires the employees to study so hard that keep the competitiveness and status inside the organizations.

5.       Mobility. The liquid diverse workforce determines the mobility of enterprise culture. High turnover rate is one of the characters of modern organizations.

6.       Innovation. Workforce diversity means value, intelligence, belief diverse so that organization can achieve the organizational goals more effective by allowing the employees achieve their own goals with innovative methods. Both organizations and employees benefits from the innovative methods.

Corporate Culture: How does it really work?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92lg7EvwKBE

Reasons of Workforce Diversity

As the society develops, workforce diversity becomes a key element of successful business and the big challenge faced by managers is to coordinate the diverse workforce and make them achieve the most effectiveness. The diversity of workforce and the reasons of its formation are as follows: 1. The consistent alteration of population structure. More and more immigrants enter the labor pool and act as a huge source of workforce. As the old-age society comes, the life of old people become longer due to medical system so old people are also an important part of workforce. 2. Diversity of value. In Canada, people try to observe and treat the life in their own ways. As a minority or group, the value become diverse and it makes people back to society and find their own roles of society, rights, and obligations and discover the complexity of life. 3. Diversity of work skills of employees. In order to keep the elasticity to deal with high degree of uncertainty, many organizations divide workforce into two parts: core staff and assistant staff. Core staff is the core and soul of the organization. 80% of the organization’s value and profit are created by the 20% core staff. Assistant staff is uncertain to organizations with lower loyalty. Normally the organizations employ them in the form of part-time or contract worker to reduce the cost of management. 4. Globalization of workforce. The trend of workforce diversity becomes more obvious than before in the process of economic globalization. People in different country or region will get an employment from the economic globalization.

Benefits and Challenges of Diversity in the Workplace

Diversity is beneficial to both associates and employers. Although associates are interdependent in the workplace, respecting individual difference can increase productivity. Diversity in the workplace can decrease lawsuits and increase marketing opportunities, recruitment, creativity and business image (Esty, Et al., 1995). In an era when flexibility and creativity are keys to competitively, diversity is critical to an organization’s success.  So, management tools in a diverse workplace should be used to educate everyone about diversity and its issues, including laws and regulations. Most organizations are made up of diverse cultures, so organizations need to learn how to adapt to be successful.

There are challenges to managing a diverse workforce. Managing diversity is more than simply acknowledging differences in people. It involves recognizing the value of differences, combating discrimination, and promoting inclusiveness. Managers may also be challenged with losses of personnel and work productivity due to the prejudice and discrimination and complaints and legal actions against the organization. (Devoe, 1999)

Negative attitudes and behaviors can be barrier to organizational diversity because they are harmful to working relationships and they can reduce morale and work productivity. Negative attitudes and behaviors in the workplace include prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination, which should never be used by managers for recruitment, retention and termination practices (could lead costly litigation).

References:

Esty Katherine, Richard Griffin, and Marcie Schorr-Hirsh (1995). Workplace Diversity. A manager guide to solving problems and turning diversity into a competitive advantage. Avon, MA: Adams Media Coporation

Devoe, Deborah. (1999) Managing a diverse workforce. San Mateo, CA: Infoworld Media Group.