The Pros And Cons Of Workforce Diversity

The subject matter of this paper is workforce diversity. This work is conducted to find out if the diverse workforce is more creative and productive and how companies can manage it, the level of its significance to the performance of the corporations, evidence of its advantages and disadvantages from different cases. Also, this work analyzes different HR processes in promoting and managing workforce diversity that deals with challenges arising from employees with the different diverse background.

Workforce diversity acknowledges the reality that people differ in many ways, visible or invisible, mainly age, gender, marital status, social status, disability, sexual orientation, religion, personality, ethnicity and culture according to (Kossek,

Numerous researchers and practitioners have found that companies who implement diverse workforce successful tend to build competitive advantage over the companies who prefer homogenous workforce (Karpin,1995). Most importantly, these companies can benefit from potential advantages diverse workforce brings. Two most significant advantages are presented and discussed below and are later showcased with 2 case studies of good and bad workforce management. One of the most significant advantages outlined by scholars is improved productivity at a workplace. Studies show that people who feel valued irrespective of the background tend to have increased commitment and productivity (Daft, 1997). Additionally, employee welfare programs, such as healthcare and flexible working, help create the sense of belongingness to a firm, and in turn, increase productivity (Ingram, 2013). Adecco research (2015) has also found that diverse workforce allows organizations to benefits from enhanced learning, as employees can learn and apply different processes, practices and perspectives at a workplace, establish best practices and ways of working. Another important benefit diverse workforce bring is increasing creativity and innovation in a workforce. Harvard research has found that employees with different skill set are more likely to foster the creativity at a workplace and break the boundaries of

The company ranked 5 out 100 in Calvert research in 2013 (Berman, 2013). The research found that the company only had two women in the board of directors and none in the C-suite, which generated a lot of negative publicity and cause CEO Warren Buffett to step up and publicly promise to increase gender and ethnic diversity in the upcoming years (Adams, 2013). Though being one of the most successful companies in the world, Berkshire Hathaway has always been successful due to the abilities and skills of its founder Warren Buffet, the lack of diversity at the workplace has resulted in outflow of diverse skills and experiences (e.g. languages, cultural understanding) which would allow the company to succeeded on a global basis like how it has done in the united states. Furthermore, the lack of diversity has impacted the performance of employees to their highest abilities. Higher diversity leads to global wide company strategies than can be executed, resulting in higher productivity, profit and ROI (Berman,