Thirty years ago discrimination was a part of normal business activity. Work place diversity meant hire outside of your family not outside of your race. As a result, the federal government felt impelled to create employment laws. These new laws were implemented to eliminate discrimination and provide the means for advancement. As a consequence of this implementation, these laws have created possible barriers to maximizing the potential of every employee (Chan, 2000).
Recently, the concept of diversity has completely changed from before. It is predicted that by the year 2005, women, minorities, and the disabled will dominate the workforce (\”Managing Diversity\”, 1999). Organizations that are viewed as biased against these groups will not attract the competent workforce. Today, it is vital that organizations prove its impartiality in order to be successful in a constantly changing business environment.
The previous process of handling diversity entailed expecting people to assimilate to the new cultures. They were forced to adapt to fit the mold of company’s dominant culture. The new process treats diversity as an asset. Actually, good diversity management does not require employees to assimilate. It encourages them to develop their strengths and present innovative ideas (\”Managing Diversity\”, 1999).
What is managing diversity? “Workforce diversity management has become one of the pressing issues that managers must address\” (\”Managing Diversity, 1999). In my opinion, the most general definition of managing diversity is: Diversity management is a long-term process. It means extensively analyzing a company’s current culture and changing those parts that limit cultural diversity. Also, it means recruiting new employees for the skills they can bring to the company rather than their cultural homogeneity.
Lastly, it means working with a management team to help them understand that cultural diversity is a business issue, and their own careers will benefit from enabling their employees to reach their full potential (\”Managing Diversity, 1999). According to Dr. R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr. , author of Beyond Race and Gender (1997), the problem of diversity is not limited to questions of race, gender, ethnicity, disabilities and sexual orientation. Differences that replenish energy and undermine productivity and performance in an organization extend to issues like personality styles (Gordon, 2000).
