Workforce Diversity Case Study

Workforce diversity refers to organizations that are becoming more heterogeneous with the mix of people in terms of gender, age, race, and education background (Robbins, 2009). A diverse workforce for instance, includes gender, age, ethnicity, and education background According to Robbins (2009), workforce diversity has important implications toward management practices and policies. Frequently, diversity is viewed in a limited fashion, primarily addressing issues of race or gender differences, and linked to the laws providing protected status to certain groups. We have used a very broad definition of diversity, to encompass most characteristics that individuals possess that affect the way they think and do things. Today’s managers are responsible

Thus, hyper competition is almost unavoidable in every field. Meanwhile, the technical challenge of industrial problems is getting more difficult as well as more complex. Customers in today’s business world are considering the speed of delivery of solutions as one of the order winners. Thus, industries, regardless of the field, begin to search for new ways of enhancing their organizational performance and for identifying solutions for their business problems. In this regard, organizations are exploring the inclusion of workforce diversity against the traditional monolithic structure. Ife Iron and Steel Nigeria Limited’s workforce has employees from different regions of the country, cultures, generations and genders. Just as organizational performance is highly influenced by individual employee performance, the positive outcomes of workforce diversity at the employee level would also act as intrinsic as well as extrinsic motivational factors for them and would also increase employee participation. Therefore, this study focuses on the employee’s perception gained through their personal experience in dealing with workforce diversity - with respect to age, gender and ethnicity in the context of their organization in Ife Iron and Steel Nigeria Limited. An attempt is also being made to identify potential

These countries have been recognized as homogeneous with respect to ethnic background and highly male dominated in every aspect of social life. With notable economic development in recent decades, and the economic recession of the late 1990s, the labor markets of both Japan and Korea have undergone fundamental changes. More and more companies, either voluntarily or involuntarily, have adopted policies such as downsizings and layoffs in order to survive (Chatman & O’Reilly, 2004).

Diversity management covers many areas of HR, but perhaps because of the ethnic homogeneity of Japan and Korea, the main debates on diversity management in the two countries are rooted in gender issues. In the case of Korea, a survey by the National Statistical Office shows that the rate of women’s economic participation had reached 48.9% in 2003. As for Japan, a survey by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare indicates that the rate of women’s labor participation was 48.3% in 2004. Women represent only about 30% of full-time workers, a figure remaining almost flat since 1985 (Magoshi & Chang,