The importance of diversity and inclusion in a Workplace

Workplace diversity involves the idea of the ability of the organization having its employees reflect the makeup of the greater society. This is through ensuring that it has employees who are understanding and value differences among the people who belong to diverse and different races, religions, sexual orientations, ethnicities, genders, ages and even personalities. The inclusion happens where every employee is fully respected and valued for the contributions that they are able to bring into the workplace. It is important to prioritize diversity and inclusion through ensuring that there is a climate conducive for fostering it (Paigne, 2020). This includes having a culture of respect, equity and positive recognition of the differences thus bolstering a positive employment experience.

Target Company can be classified as not being diverse and inclusive due to the case brought against them by United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). It had violated the individual civil rights act by discriminating some fellow Americans on the basis of race. This happened after they failed to schedule an interview with the company due to them being African American hence attracting a financial sanction of approximately $500.000. The company provides for diversity and inclusion in its mission statement. It states that it values diverse employees and recognizes its importance in a company.

This is through participating in corporate social responsibility of supporting charities and needy families through providing food, education and other benefits. However this is not the situation on the ground as they failed the diversity test in recruiting of their employees thus the prompting of the court case.

The diversity in recruitment of employees in a workplace ensures that the company is able to have a diverse talent acquisition. It would enable the company experience growth through innovations brought by the diverse workforce. In addition to this, it would also enable the company have better performances when it came to product development. The diverse workforce would be able to bring in new creative ideas as they could be categorized as problem solvers due to the different backgrounds hence the ability to solve challenge differently. This would be able to enable the company have higher earnings and returns on the equity (Kingsley, 2019). Therefore Target Company ought to ensure that they incorporate this diversity in the organization.

They ought to have ensured that the process to hire new employees is transparent and incorporates diversity. This is by ensuring that there is a diversity hiring audit of the process so as to ensure that it involves diversity. This would improve on the metrics depending on the current employment structure so that in example if there are less women then they would be considered. The candidate sourcing should also be diverse such that it captures diversity, there should be flexibility and even considering of referrals from the minority employees and finally diversity in candidate screening and shortlisting (Cummings, 2018). This would ensure that there is elimination of bias hence ensure that inclusivity and diversity is adhered to.

In conclusion, diversity is considered as very integral when it comes to an organization as it would ensure that there is mutual respect among employees. It would ensure that the company has a better reputation thus a positive in business as many people would be able to associate with it and as a result but its products (Mayhew, 2018). This would ensure that it makes profits and have a competitive advantage over their rivals. It would also lead to exposure and employee as well as job promotion as it would be able to appeal to global markets.

 

References

 

Cummings, B. (2018). Steps in hiring more diverse candidates. Medium.

Kingsley, S. (2019). Workplace Diversity and its importance. Ideal.

Mayhew, R. (2018). Why is diversity in the workplace important to employees. Chron.

Paigne, S. (2020). Benefits of encouraging workplace diversity . BreathHR.