Coursework Example on Diverse Workforce

Introduction

A diverse workforce is characterized by having employees who have differences in their race, age, individual traits as well as gender (Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities (U.S.), 2011). Over the past decade, diverse workforce is becoming common among large and small firms as many owners have realized that when operating in a society that has a diverse population, it is good to have a workforce population that reflects the diversity so that the organization can sound familiar to the customers.

Discussion

Among the many performance advantages of a diverse workforce include better ideas, increased creativity as well as overall productivity in the organization. This is because employees from diverse backgrounds always have different perspectives regarding the handling of problems within the group as well as the way they confront opportunities that arise thus improving the quality and quantity of ideas presented within the organization (Scott & Byrd, 2012). Additionally, a diverse workforce that has different languages and cultures helps an organization have employees that can provide better services through interacting with different cultures. This is because some customers may not be in the position to speak a universal language thus employees with multiple languages become an added advantage.

On the other hand, diversity within an organization has its disadvantages as the team is required to provide a diversity training that may include training the employees on sensitivity as well as cultural awareness. This is as a result of the different languages that employees from different cultures speak and therefore communication can be a challenge in the organization, and this can affect both the informal and formal communication and cohesion negatively within the team. This can also result in increased conflicts and errors that would not be found in a less diverse organization. Moreover, increased management cost is one of the disadvantages of workforce diversity in a group. This is because, for a team to achieve the full benefits of workforce diversity, diversity management has to be taught within the organization. Thus, this makes managers and other leaders spend a lot of time and attention coaching the employees on enhancing their relationships as well as ways in which they resolve their conflicts whenever they arise within the diverse group of employees. In some instances, the organizations may incur some extra costs by paying outside parties to come and offer this training, and therefore these values become recurrent as new employees may come in and the old employees may need ongoing refreshing sessions too.

The United States of America is in a better place to compete globally as a result of its diverse population because the diverse society makes it hard for any form of jobs to leave the country. This is because the community that has different skills can handle almost all types of jobs in and outside the economy of the United States of America. The strong industrial centers in the US have also been in the position to create formal employment to many of its citizen's something that has resulted in increased exports as compared to the imports to the country. Additionally, the shift to a service industry by most organizations in the country has made the US be able to outsource most of their customers from other countries thus being able to compete with other nations in the service industry.

Conclusions

Therefore, workforce diversity is a very crucial aspect that every organization that seeks to maximize its profits needs to invest in. This is because the difference in the workforce will result in the advantages stated above and also led to better utilization of employees talents as well as increased marketplace understanding among others.

References

Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities (U.S.). (2011). The CURE paradigm: Enhancing workforce diversity.

Scott, C. L., & Byrd, M. Y. (2012). Handbook of research on workforce diversity in a global society: Technologies and concepts. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.