pros and cons of diversity at the workplace
In the initial post, you have described the pros and cons of diversity at the workplace and especially in a new product team. I strongly agree with you on the advantages and some of the disadvantages, however, I believe the company can work its way to avoid some hostility in the team.
Conflict is inevitable in a diverse workplace due to differences in generation, work style, and personality. Conflict could be between employees or employees and their supervisors. Whatever the case, necessary measures should be taken to ensure productivity and profitability.
First, top leadership and management should demonstrate the commitment to achieving diversity. When the managers and supervisors are committed to the course, employees will be bound to follow suit. Failure of commitment from the top management will lead to a collapse of diversity, no matter how well conflicts are communicated and disseminated.
Moreover, adequate training in diversity should be given to employees. Research shows that the best primary way of preventing workplace conflict is through creating awareness and training employees on diversity. Although opponents of diversity may argue that diversity training does not work, the organization needs to conduct training to new employees and newly promoted employees.
In addition to training supervisors and newly promoted managers should be empowered to handle workplace conflicts. Empowering supervisors will help contain conflicts at the group level before it escalates to the human resource department. Therefore, the company should train its leaders on diversity and ensure they can identify and resolve the problem scenario before formal complaints are made with the EEOC.
Finally, the company should publish a step-by-step process of reporting and solving conflicts. The employees’ handbook should contain those steps and regularly revise them if necessary. Also, the HR department needs to have an expert in investigating workplace issues to help mitigate the risk of unfair employees’ practices.