Action Research Project
[Name of the Writer]
[Name of the Institution]
Problem identification
Rapid globalization has pros and cons and it depends on individuals that which side they would focus. Globalization made interaction more important for diverse groups of people at the workplace. People from different backgrounds and cultures; when they work together at the same place, issues arise. Diversity is one of the leading problems that most of the organizations are facing. Diversity means people are different from each other on the basis of various factors i.e. cultures, language or history. Diversity among employees in organization is directly linked with employee’s performance. Conflicts and poor performance indicates cultural difference among the workers that influence their efficiency and impact the overall productivity. Diversity at workplace could be blamed for increasing the tendency of organization’s employees to indulge in personal conflicts.
Description of the organization
It is a pharmaceutical company where people of different gender, nationality, and cultures work together. This organization has become center of attention because of the diversity of the workforce. This company has earned a good reputation in the pharmaceutical industry and is giving tough time to its competitors by giving quality products with least rates.
Context of the problem
Workers who belong to different cultures, raise concerns regarding their national and cultural holidays. A worker who belonged to the popular culture could enjoy holidays on his/her cultural and religious festivals but those who are from unpopular cultures and countries were supposed to work even at their festivals. Mostly employees used to have a clash upon cultural and national matters that marks a boundary between them. Workplace diversity refers to the division of the work force into separate categories and results in several outcomes i.e. workplace treatment, job opportunities and promotion of the employees.
Problem recognition
The problem of internal conflict among the workers became obvious when human resource management was reported to, about mounting differences among the employees who are the main building blocks of the organization. For a couple of months, performance stats showed that the company was not doing well and there was a need to investigate and resolve the organizational problem. Disturbance among employees enforced management to call for a meeting. It was found that difference created due to diversity within an organization has become one of the main reasons of poor performance. Differences caused because of diversity can affect employees and organization in various ways. Negative impacts due to differences created by diversity include dysfunctional adaptation behaviors, barriers to understanding views of others and miscommunication, etc.
Diversity at workplace
Diversity at wokplace means employees working in an organizations belong to diverse groups. Age, sexual orientation, nationality, race, religion, gender difference, culture and ethnicity etc could be the common factors that draws a line a among the employees.
Organizational development strategy
A large number of organizational strategies and interventions are being formulated and presented so that internal conflicts because of the diversity could be resolved. Diversity of the workforce should be looked upon in detail i.e. difference in the race, culture, language, religion, sexual orientation and nationality etc. According to various studies, diversity gives rise to difference of opinion and other variables that affect the team spirit and development of unity (Roberson et al, 2019). Taking into account the problems, that arise because of the difference created due to diversity i.e. resistance to change in recruitment. Keeping the severity of the matter into consideration, a developmental strategy has been planned so that a healthy and friendly environment could be created in the organization.
Strategies for managing diversity
There are several structural principles focused on the dense patterns of the local interaction as it provides the basis for collective action and coordination. The biggest driver for managing the difference created due to diversity is to promote mutual understanding, cultural and communicative skills in a variety of employees who belong to a different culture, sex, age, and nationalities and use these employees as a tool for creating a friendly environment within the organization. Mutual understanding of the employees’ would not only help them in minimizing their difference but would also improve the products, policies and customer experiences.
One of the strategies that have been used by diversity executives is that employees from different places of belongings must understand the fact that they cannot grow in any professional atmosphere unless they come out of their comfort zone. According to Rodriguez, employees must be trained to be most welcoming for new things and experiences that they have never gone through before (Dang et al, 2019). The openness of mind is necessary as in an organization, it becomes important for them to come out of their box for knowing things that they may not be familiar with.
Reducing prejudices and breaking stereotypes is another major factor of the development strategy that helps in mitigating the differences among people working at the same place. Recognizing and accepting diversity is taken in a positive perspective that could work in creating a mutual understanding among those who believe that they are different and must hold opposing ideas. Recognition of diversity facilitates in educating employees to respect and value the fundamental differences among them.
Miscommunication could be looked upon as a major factor that hinders the building of friendly relations. Human resource management needs to arrange sessions for the employees where they could educate them on how to behave when they come across diverse people (López et al, 2019). According to Harold, HR management must train their employees. They must analyze one's experiences by listening, reading and reading about one’s experience regarding diverse people (Littlejohn et al, 2019). Different strategies and tactics have been used for mitigating the miscommunication. Attentive listening and asking questions if one did not understand others, could be used as tools for avoiding miscommunication among people.
Building a relationship with diverse people is important for resolving the issue that arises among the diverse people. It is the responsibility of HR management to have a check and balance. Seeking feedback from diverse people and evaluating it facilitates management informing strategies for promoting a healthy and cooperative relationship among employees. Analysis of how one is taking diversity also facilitates, as for changing and influencing the mindset of organization worker, understanding their ideology and conception regarding diversity is important.
People who are different from others must not be made to realize that they are someone foreign. They must not be treated as strangers, rather they must be welcomed as guests. Paying respect to those who are different could be looked upon as an ethical obligation. Differences must be respected as diversity is not something that should be criticized.
Resources
For resolving the chosen organizational problem, no material would be needed. Resources that would be used for reducing the difference due to diversity includes trainers and experts who would be having a session with the employees. Guidance and training of employees are crucial so that they could inform employees about the potential benefits and challenges if they fail to reduce differences among them due to diversity. Best trainers and members from management should team up for the team session, in which they could guide employees about how they must behave with each other. Employees must be made aware of the fact that for individual growth, they need to resolve their differences. Employees must realize their difference because their diversity would affect them. Lack of healthy relationship would have negative impacts on the overall productivity and turnover of the organization. Productivity and growth of employees are directly linked so trainers must educate employees for reducing or enrooting their differences because of diversity.
Timeline
The setting of the timeline is one of the difficult tasks when it comes to resolving an organizational problem. Timeline setting is important as it spots light on how well the organization is doing for mitigating the effects and factors that cast negative impacts on its overall performance. Differences and conflicts arise among the employees of the organization and this problem was identified in the first three months of this year. Identification of this organizational problem leads me towards the formulation of the strategies so that the problem could be catered. In a month, after the identification of the problem, strategies were planned and an action plan was prepared. The next three months (April-June) were the time of implementation of strategies. Proper planning was done for implementing the designed strategies. The next three months (July-October) included the time of evaluating the outcome achieved as a result of the implementation of the planned strategies. It could be said that the timeline was set quarterly.
Anticipated resistance
A change or solutions to the problem are hard to bring; likewise it becomes difficult to resolve the issues and differences created due to diversity. Several factors of resistance, change and in the identified organizational problem, multiple elements are amalgamated for posing anticipated resistance. Anticipated resistance in resolving the conflict and differences created due to diversity, constitutes elements like accommodation of beliefs, gender inequality, disabilities, ethnic difference, generation gap, lack of understanding and rejection of other's beliefs and ideologies.
Potential benefits
According to the research of different researchers and experts, it has been seen that diversity could be in any form such as age, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, and race, but reducing the conflicts created because of diversity works best in the favor of the organization. Mutual bonding develops among the workers who could be different from others that gives them the confidence of exchanging views with each other that would ultimately have positive effects on the overall work environment. Resolving issues created due to diversity helps in healthy communication. More openly, the employees are going to interact more than they would understand each other’s point of view.
The employee must resolve individual, group and gender differences to increase the productivity of the organization. Successful management of differences created due to diversity provides an equal opportunity for all the employees to put forth their ideas and suggestions. Provision of confidence is another potential benefit that could be promoted by reducing the difference among the workers. Elimination of the difference among the employees makes them more confident. Increased adaptability could be also looked upon as a potential benefit when the differences are reduced among the workers. Employees belonging to diverse backgrounds suggest the ideas that would be adaptable for all.
Evaluation approach
The evaluation approach is selected after identifying the organizational problem. Differences created due to diversity affect the overall productivity of the company. Keeping into consideration the obstacles, created due to diverse groups of people working in one organization. The outcome-based approach must be used for knowing whether the organizational problem has been enrooted to reduce. The outcome-based evaluation approach is based on contribution analysis. It includes additional reviews of experts and management. This approach measures the short term impact of the implementing programs. Evaluation gives the results on how well the program or the strategies worked in favor of the organization. The outcome-based approach also spots light on how a program or the strategy is being received and it also judges the changing attitude of the employees.
Several areas must be focused and monitored to evaluate the results of whether the organizational problem has been resolved or reduced. First of all, the authorities and human resource management must pay attention and judge the attitude of the employees. Monitoring of the employee’s behavior could be an important initiative to take for knowing differences due to diversity are reduced or not. Monitoring the productivity of the organization should be made a primary part of the evaluation. One of the factors that impact the productivity of the organization is the lack of understanding and difference among the employees. The productivity graph of the company shows a positive movement, it claims and points toward the bonding being developed among the people of diverse groups. If the turnover of the company increased after identifying and catering this organization problem, this means internal issues and difference of employees has been reduced to some extent. Higher turnover also points towards mutual corporation and healthy bonding among employees.
Retention of the employees must be monitored for knowing how well the management has catered the issue of conflicts due to diversity. It has generally been seen that when the employees are not happy or satisfied at a place, they do not stay for long as they find it difficult to adjust with the working environment of the company (Kraus et al, 2019). Retaining employees is a hard thing to do as per the experts. Effectiveness of the strategies for reducing the difference due to diversity could be measured by making a comparison of the retention rate (number of employees who used to leave jobs before and after the implementation of different reducing strategies). Impact based approach takes into account the result achieved after applying certain strategies. Complains registered to the human resource management also reflect the impact of the strategies being used for reducing the clashes among the employees who belong to diverse groups.
Conclusion
Taking a look at the above-mentioned discussion, it could be seen that organizations face various organizational problems and diversity and its related issues are one of the central issues. The issue of differences created due to diversity has been affecting the performance of the pharmaceutical company. Strategies have been made for catering to this organizational problem for which the timeline has also been set. Time was distributed for estimating how long each step would take. A number of issues arose because of the conflicts created due to diversity. The benefits of resolving this particular problem encourage the employee who belongs to a diverse group to reduce their internal conflicts so that their efficiency could be improved. The outcome-based approach has been selected for evaluating the strategies that showed how well the outcome could help in knowing how successful the strategies proved. So as a whole, it could be said that differences among the employees based on different elements (sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, race, and culture, etc.), influence the way employees treat each other. It has been commonly witnessed that people with more similarity makes their group and negates ideology of other groups. To reduce the difference and elements that negativity impact diversity, authorities and human resource management must design policies and arrange sessions so that employees could be guided and encouraged for accepting diversity openly and look at the positive aspects.
References
Dang, K. B., Windhorst, W., Burkhard, B., & Müller, F. (2019). A Bayesian Belief Network-Based approach to link ecosystem functions with rice provisioning ecosystem services. Ecological Indicators, 100, 30-44.
Kraus, S., Schleich, M., Tröster, A., & Roig-Tierno, N. (2019). Cultural Diversity in Large Enterprises: A Qualitative Analysis from the Alpine Rhine Valley. Journal of Promotion Management, 25(5), 640-663.
Littlejohn, R. (2019). Leadership and Diversity Implementation. Effective and Creative Leadership in Diverse Workforces (pp. 43-64). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
López, D., Jaramillo, D. A., & Susaeta, D. (2019). Innovation in Corporate Organizational Culture: Diversity, Motivation and Organizational Pressure as Possible Realities.
Roberson, Q. M. (2019). Diversity in the workplace: A review, synthesis, and future research agenda. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 6, 69-88.
