The Importance of a Diverse Workforce and the Future Issues in HR and Their Impact - Term Paper Example

Introduction: As per the present staff structure of our organization, males constitute 54 % and females 46 % of our workforce. While this is more orless a balanced equation in a general context, if we examine the number of employees each gender represents in the middle and upper executive levels, it can be seen that women are under-represented in these categories. Gender inequality in business and workplace has been a matter of serious debate in the UK for the past several years. Government and other agencies have been formulating several policies and action plans to effectively face this challenge. There have been numerous research efforts in this area and a lot of organizations are devising strategies aimed at bringing more women into the upper levels of workforce. In its response to the DTI consultation on productivity indicators, the EOC has submitted that, “The achievement of gender equity is central to the three key elements of economic growth – an increased labour supply; flexibility, so as to be able to adjust to new growth opportunities; and rewarding workers according to their performance and skills.” (http://www.eoc.org.uk). Our main aim in HR terms is the recruitment, retention and development of the very best and creative staff and to provide them high quality support to strengthen our strategy of maintaining the cutting edge of functional ability. The challenge we presently face in HR is to maintain our present staff strength so that we can sustain our present momentum and stay ahead of our competitors. The shortage of skilled workforce is the main problem in UK and within the next years the position is likely to get worse rather than improve. The factors of aging, migration to other jobs, disparity between staff etc are some of the key issues that may serve the create shortage of manpower in our organisation. Evaluation of Present Situation: While we recognise that women constitute a proportionate portion of our research staff , photographers, copy writers, editors etc and do play a key role in delivering our overall strategic aims, their numbers in the middle and senior level executives are much less than their male counterparts. Our strategy, therefore, must reinforce the importance we attach in achieving equality of representation of both genders in the higher echelons of staff structure. Our present strategy is primarily focused on recruitment and retention, reward and recognition, training, learning and development, action to tackle poor performance, review of staffing needs. While our efforts in the area of reward, recognition and review of staff needs have paid off somewhat in terms of our ability to retain some best talented employees, the time is ripe for us to acknowledge the age factor of some of them. In a few years these employees might reach a saturation point, and will have to be replaced by fresh talents. Our current process of HR planning is primarily focused on the stereotype of recruiting a workforce that is physically fit, smart, and is expected to work on the standard business hours of 10 to 5. We are yet to fully recognize the benefits of having a diverse cultural and ethnical group of employees. Our organization has also, not in the real sense, been encouraging equality of genders in the higher level of vacancies. Though we have never been discriminative, we haven’t also been able to initiate any special drives for identifying and recruiting females for key higher posts in the organization. Our recruitment strategy fundamentally remained oriented to the traditional parameters of identifying a person with appropriate qualifications prescribed for the job. We have never felt the need to consider other factors that may help us for locating the best person and facilitating that person’s retention in our organization. We have not paid any attention to the factor of equality or considered how it could benefit our organization. Though we recognise the importance of a diverse workforce not only in terms of gender, ethnicity and disability but also in the broadest sense of reflecting the wider community and how such a workforce might best serve our interests we are yet to take a concrete step to achieve this. From the fact that women represent only 17% of our higher and senior level executives, it is apparent that we are yet to have a system for checking whether we are taking sufficient measures to ensure gender equality in all levels of our staff structure. It may be recalled that we have had to deny employment opportunity to a couple of females who were found qualified in all respects but wanted flexibility in the timing due to some personal reasons. Both these ladies are currently working for our competitors on a flexible schedule of 3 pm to 9 pm. If we have made a conscious effort to bring the number of women in higher level of management at par with that of men, we could have seized this opportunity by making suitable adjustments in their timing. The Importance of a Diverse Workforce: Gender equality is of great significance in the workplace because only when we recognize its relevance to the society we can empower women and all others in under-represented groups and thus utilize the creativity they offer. Some of the benefits of equality include best use of human resources, flexible workforce to aid restructuring, workforce representative of the local community, improved corporate image with potential employees and customers, attracting ethical investors, managers can integrate equality into corporate objectives, new business ideas from a diverse workforce etc. In our business the most valuable capital is the creativity of our artists and other employees. Thus the stereotype of a standard career person doesn’t necessarily fit the frame of our staff requirements. A blend of different culture and traditions offers a larger variety of human experiences and beliefs. Thus there is a possibility of tapping a wider range of imagination creative potential. We also need to understand the cost of inequality like: inefficiency in the use of human resources, inflexible workforce limiting organizational changes, poor corporate image with prospective employees and customers, management time spent on grievances, and losing an industrial case which may entail bad publicity, legal fees, staff time etc. It is also relevant that women make a major share of all consumer purchases and are responsible for a substantial amount of purchases in the corporate purchase department as well. In the case of the top ten television programs, and in almost all cases, the majority of viewers are women. But if one goes to any advertising or related events inevitably, one will see the stage dominated by men, even if women form the majority of the audience. However, if one asks a woman inside marketing departments about their corporate brands, she will say a male superior will have to take the decision. The disparity exists not only in the decision making process, but extends to salary as well. The situation is not a peculiar feature a single industry but rampant in the entire business world. It is quite surprising that no woman has yet headed a big British company, although nearly half of the UK workforce is female. The main reason for this seems to be unforgiving workloads and hours, career interruptions for children, travel demands, complications while trying to balance between family and work. This will illustrate why it is crucial for our organization to take a different stance and try to employ women in higher level responsibilities. Reward System: When it comes to the retention of staff, the relevance of a proper reward system becomes most significant. Our company presently have a very good system where we offer incentives to our staff to motivate them. We also have a suitable system in place to redress the grievances of staff. However, the existing system seems to lack futuristic vision, especially in the context attending to the specific needs of women. Rewards need not necessarily confine to financial incentives or promotions. Welfare oriented rewards like flexible time schedules, liberal approach towards requests for work from home etc may motivate more women to come to the organization. Many other companies are evolving by allowing flexible timings or work from home. “Most organizations will have only a small core of full time, permanent employees working from a conventional office. They will buy most of the skills on a contract basis, either from individuals working at home and linked to the company by computer and modems (tele-working), or by hiring people on short term contracts to do specific jobs or carry out specific projects. In this way, companies will be able to maintain the flexibility they need to cope with the rapidly changing world.” (Cooper and Jackson, 1997). Thus in order to stay abreast of the changing times, our company needs to shift the focus from traditional rewarding systems and adapt to the transition. Future issues in HR and their Impact: The emerging trend of flexible timing and work from home provides us ample leeway to hire more women into our rolls. Women are more likely to accept offers of part-time employment rather than full time because it will provide them enough spare time for balancing between work and family. In the same vein, they will also be more comfortable with the concept of work from home. The emerging trend will also enable us to employ other under-represented groups like ethnical minorities, physically challenged persons etc. Statistics reveal that “there are currently, in the UK, five times as many women working part time than men, and although twice as many men are now working part time than a decade ago, women are historically more experienced at discontinuous career patterns, flowing in and out of the labour market, working part time and on short term contracts. (Equal Opportunity Commission, 1998). It is a welcome gesture that the accounting, legal, and consulting professions have shown that the concept of providing more employment opportunities to women and other groups can be put into practice to a reasonable extent by switching to job-sharing, relaxed “up-or-out” standards, flexitime, work from home and other policies. So far as these ideas relate to our organization, it will be more conducive to us because it suits our nature work where imagination, creativity and an artistic bend of mind are the primary raw materials. It won’t be a problem for us to employ a woman or a physically challenged person. And the workforce from these groups will be ready and willing to work for us. It can be seen that many major industries have transitioned to this mode of functioning as can be seen in the case of British Telecom. “BT has harnessed communications technology to transform the way the company runs, moving from a more static, site-based workforce to an ‘e-BT’ of employees who work flexibly and/or from home. Equipping people with access to the information necessary to do their jobs seems obvious, but prior to ‘eBT’ much of the information was not available to people where they were working. Often engineers had to leave customer premises to find the information they needed, wasting time and decreasing customer satisfaction Providing employees with online, real time, access to information and training not only increased productivity, it also increased sales, customer satisfaction and enables flexible working. To meet increasingly demanding and varied customer expectations BT has to be more and more agile as a company. To achieve this BT applies the same flexible thinking to its people and the demands on them. BT now has over 9,000 home workers, nearly 500 job sharers and more than 5,000 part-time workers.” The current situation in UK workforce is very critical. There is acute shortage of skilled workers in almost all areas. However, this deficiency could be reduced considerably if we can change our present mode of operation. This will provide us more flexibility in recruiting the staff and increase our ability on enrolling the services of women, ethnic minorities and physically challenged persons. Thus it becomes obvious that our organization too can benefit much by switching to the emerging mode. In the recent days, the role of women in business is being recognized as becomes evident from the findings of Catalyst, a US organization that studies the role of women in business, that a strong correlation exists between strong financial performance and the number of women in top positions among Fortune 500 companies between 1996 and 2000. Our organization needs to promote successful female executives as role models. Finally, we must implement female-friendly work and personnel policies that take into account their hefty onus in taking care of families and homes. Works Cited Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC). (June, 2004). Women.Men.Different.Equal. Retrieved November 26, 2006. From Homepage EOC at: http://www.eoc.org.uk/PDF/dti_consultation_on_productivity_indicators.pdf Equal Opportunities Commission (1998) The Fact About Women Is, EOC, Manchester. Cooper, C L. and Jackson, S. (1997) Creating Tomorrow’s Organizations: A Handbook for Future Research in Organizational Behaviour, John Wily & Sons Chichester and New York. British Telecom (BT). http://www.employersforwork-lifebalance.org.uk/pdf/BritishTelecom.pdf Read More