Managing Diversity at Cityside Financial Services - Essay Example

?Managing Diversity at side Financial Services Executive Summary The study is related to side Financial Services that deals with various problems related to workforce management that are diverse in nature. The impact of diversity and human capital upon an organization are discussed. Challenges of diversity for hiring, management, development and retention practice as well as solution are discussed with respect to the case study. Ethical and legal issue of strategic talent management and development and Cityside Financial Services are discussed. The study provides an overview of diversified workforce management with reference to the case study of “Cityside Financial Services”. Table of Contents Executive Summary 2 Human Capital 4 Impact of Diversity on Organization 4 Impact of Diversity on Human Capital Management 6 Challenges of Diversity for Hiring, Management, Development and Retention Practice & Solution 6 Hiring 6 Management 7 Development 8 Retention 8 Ethical and Legal Issue of Strategic Talent Management and Development 9 Ethical and Legal Issue of “Managing Diversity at Cityside Financial Services” 11 As an HR Professional 13 References 18 Bibliography 21 Human Capital The importance of human capital is gaining increasing significance in the recent competitive environment. Corporations are identifying the magnitude of investing and allocating the resources in their human capital. This is due to the perception that in order to stay on a leading position in the global economy, they have to appreciate and develop their human capital (Alta Associates, 2006). Impact of Diversity on Organization There are several changes in the cultural aspects of an organization that complicates the management to understand the cultural diversity and its affect upon an organization. An organization can be affected through primary and secondary diversity of human resources. The primary diversity embraces ethnicity, age, race and abilities or qualities. The secondary diversity comprises of educational background, religious beliefs, work experience, marital status and person belonging to a region. All these factors of the primary and the secondary diversity have a great impact on organizations in terms of performance, conflicts, disputes and other related aspects of an organization. The affect of diversity upon an individual’s career and an organizational effectiveness is illustrated through a diagram represented below in figure 1. Source: (Moon, 1997). The model represented in figure 1 demonstrates that an individual’s group associations such as gender, age and race can be analyzed on the basis of three levels namely organizational, intergroup and individual. These three factors will collectively assist in determining the diverse environmental impact upon the organization. This environment influences individuals’ and organizations’ outcomes that may be in the nature of achievement outcomes or it may be effective outcomes. These outcomes of an individual might have an impact on organizational productivity, quality as well as other factors (Moon, 1997). Impact of Diversity on Human Capital Management Diversity driven workforce of an organization has a great impact upon human capital management. The diverse workforce may not ensure proper decision making, creativity, flexibility along with several other aspects. Therefore, unique and multicultural workforce needs to be refined and promoted so that the workforce gets a chance to express their viewpoints. Higher employee turnover and conflicts occur when there is poor diversity management. In this situation, ‘value in diversity’ approach is required in order to derive benefit from positive effects of diversity and in turn helps to avoid the effects that are negative in nature. There are organizations that value diversity and take its advantage by encouraging the workforce for participating in organizational decisions and develop their perspectives and skills (McMillan-Capehar & Aaron, 2009). Challenges of Diversity for Hiring, Management, Development and Retention Practice & Solution Hiring To sustain a competitive edge in global economy, organizations have identified that it is important to attract and hire diversified employees. However, unfortunately organizations occasionally mislay qualified prospect candidates in an overall process of recruiting. This occurs due to two reasons. First, candidate’s potential for a particular job profile is undervalued that might be due to cultural misinterpretation or discrimination and as a consequence the candidate is not hired. Second, candidate perceives that the organization is not a better place to work due to interviewer’s misconduct and thereby candidates screens the employer out (Kelly, 2003). These challenges can be overcome through strategic planning of recruiting and interview practices. Candidate needs to be made comfortable and this will make the overall process easier. Management The challenges in managing a management of diversified workforce are the difference in their perception, values, beliefs and attitudes. This increases the complexity to control the management. There are conflicts due to such differences in individuals and groups. This affects organizations’ performance negatively. The probable solution to this is developing a supportive organizational culture where all employees can be efficient. In this process, the top management needs to strongly support this culture and includes diversity initiative in organizations business strategy (Slideshare, 2008). Development Development of an organization and that of an individual encompass several variables; and more the variables more are the challenges in the development. An individual may not develop due to set of beliefs and values he perceives and does not want to change and get adjusted to an organizational culture. An organization cannot develop until every member is committed towards the organizational objectives with mutual trust and culture (Markos, 2009). This can be solved through systematic and step by step process as culture cannot be modified at once. Training program needs to be implemented in order to inculcate organizational culture by all members (Markos, 2009). Retention Retention challenges lie in changing economic progress and also depend upon geographic location. Economic progression of different sectors and growth in future tends to lower the retention rate of the employees. Location also affects as personnel are more inclined towards their race, culture and society. They shift to these locations for gaining more comfort and growth (Dunkin, 2005). The retention rate can be minimized through meeting the desired expectation and growth of diversified workforce. This is an ongoing process and it consumes more time, but the end result is favourable in controlling and lowering the rate of retention (Dunkin, 2005). Ethical and Legal Issue of Strategic Talent Management and Development Organizational restructuring, diversified workforce, locations, global environmental effect create the requirement of talent management and development of employees and organization. The growing economic and organizational development has increased the demand for more talented and knowledgeable employees. There are ethical issues that are related to management of strategic talent for an organization. There are two process of the strategic talent management. One is within an organization and the other is to source from outside an organization. Considering internal talent management, the issue is related to ‘whom to promote’, parameters to determine the talent without the discrimination in workforce and preference towards certain employees. The question of favoring is always raised in the talent management. This increases the ethical issues that are being associated with the talent management and discrimination. Instead of evaluating the actual performance and managing talents strategically, employees generally perceive indifferent manner that are associated to cultural discrimination and favoritism. The other source that is external source to recruit talented personnel is highly evaluated in terms of ethics. For the strategic talent management special process needs to be involved to derive the actual potential candidate procurement. It depends upon candidate and management to develop talented personnel, but at certain times, candidates present a false statement about experience and other matters. The process for verification is not that developed. The ethical issue rises from both the sides. The management should properly scrutinize the candidates to evaluate and recruit the appropriate talent in an organization. Candidates should not provide a false statement. There are several legal issues in the management of talent and development that are based upon legal contracts that includes promotional letters, payroll schedules, employment position and other human resource documents. The legal contract between an employer and an employee binds them together for achieving the objectives of organization. In recent economical and organizational development, legal issues have been more dominant and due to globalization this legal contract plays an important role. The impacts of legal issues are higher than the ethical issues within the organization. The legal issues can be easily identified and certain steps can be easily taken to rectify and develop the appropriate practice. However, in case of ethical issues it takes more time to understand the exact challenges and then develop different alternatives. This process becomes complicated as individuals in organizations have different beliefs, values, attitudes and ethics that are diverse in nature and they need to adhere to the organizational culture and ethical practice. The development of an organization depends upon policies and strategic planning that is developed. It should include ethical practice policy with legal aspects of an organization that rules the foundation of an organization. The ethical practice with legal consideration will provide a healthy work atmosphere and develop an efficient work culture that will motivate employees to achieve objectives. Without a proper strategic planning of ethical and legal practice, an organization cannot develop and grow in existing economical and organizational growth environment. Ethical and Legal Issue of “Managing Diversity at Cityside Financial Services” From the overview of the case study, it is quite clear that Cityside Financial Services had various ethical issues related to managing the workforce of diverse background. One of the ethical issues was the racial discrimination in the workplace. Group of employees and management were divided into blacks and whites. They were operating in different zones and with different clients. There was no strategy in developing any program to reduce racial discrimination. The powers of financial service were mostly held by the white people. The black people felt that they were not provided sufficient funding, compensations and were even offered titles without real authority and had insufficient access to information (Katz & Moore, 2004). This racial discrimination is an ethical issue that led to complications in deciding hiring, compensating, promoting, retrenching, dismissal and performance evaluation. This ethical issue was deeply rooted in the organization that affected all these variables discussed. The efficiency of the organization got affected negatively and there were conflicts. This is evident from the case that there were conflicts between the two classes and this affected their performance in developing the business for Cityside Financial Services. Due to this ethical issue, there was problem of opportunity providing to the employees. One group was provided more opportunity than the other and they had to prove themselves to acquire a similar position. This was due to the level of comfort zone. The white group of employees were not comfortable with the black and vice versa. The opportunities were more for the whites as they had more control over the organization. The legal issue that was associated with Cityside Financial Services was related to cultural biasness. Cultural biasness existed that is unlawful in the organizational context. The biasness in the workplace that is related to culture is often viewed in several organizations. However, in present era it has been slowed due to globalization, importance towards talent management and human capital. The biasness was high in this organization and that created differences among the workforce. Members of Cityside Financial Services interpreted the behaviour, attitude and relationship of others that are based upon their own cultural biasness. Each member may belong to any group of the organization who have certain beliefs, assumptions and values that turns out to be their own culture and therefore biasness tends to exist in reality (SOI, 2005). There are multifarious reasons for cultural biasness. One of them may be in form of information sharing. To prevent the flow of information organizational legal binding are implemented. However, in the case of Cityside Financial Services, such act has not been identified. This was due to the diversified culture and race that lead to cultural biasness (Pauleen, 2006). The cultural diverse work environment of Cityside Financial Services was affected by the cultural biasness. The present cultural biasness in the organization might include both prejudice and discrimination. According to the case, it seems that there exists prejudice as well as discrimination in the organization. The members of certain group have negative attitude towards another group of organizational member that were based upon individual cultural group identity and there were adverse behaviours as well. There are laws related to discrimination of the recruitment policy that varies from country to country. However, mostly it is implemented to take advantage in developing the business strategy to gain more benefit. As an HR Professional For the purpose of management of talents and development of an organization and talents, it is necessary to understand the key roles they perform that assist in developing the organization. The management of talents potential is not only the job of HR professional but also the responsibility of the business process. To boost the efficiency of the talent management, the HR process and business process should be integrated. This integration of the process will assist in retaining the talents, developing them and ultimately benefiting towards the development of the organization. The integration will assist in involvement of other expert or knowledgeable personnel towards the talent management and appropriate personnel will get their benefit as expected without any unethical practice. For this purpose, an external expert should not be involved as they will consume time and there will be investment as well. This matter can be sorted out within the organizational setting with HR professional and other professionals as integration will provide this opportunity (Murphy & Et. Al., 2009). The involvement of an expert is always known to be better opportunity as the level of unethical practice and biasness gets decreased as they do not belong to the organization. However, in this situation appointing an expert professional will develop more complications in terms of identifying the factors related to talents, evaluating them and then analyzing and finally taking the decision after a long process of analysis. There is possibility that this might provide rise to conflicts among the personnel and even might raise questions upon the HR professionals. Figure 2 is a model that represents the strategic talent management and development. Figure 2: Talent Management (Aivazian, 2009). This cycle will assist in strategically planning the development phase for the talent management that will also assist in developing an organization. With the integration of business strategy and HR strategies it will be helpful to implement such growth strategies. The legal contracts needs to be well-drafted as there might be certain clauses that are not accepted or likable to candidate or employees. For this purpose, help of an expert professional will be required along with HR professional. The expert professional will provide various alternatives and options of the contract drafting. Furthermore, the HR professional will choose the best contract deals that best suit the organization as well as the employees. This strategic approach of HR professional and expert professional will ensure enhanced management of contracts that will boost control, visibility and performance of the employees through the contracts. The legal department of the organization and the HR professional together can frame better contracts. The contracts should include negotiating terms in the contract that will ensure compliance with conditions as well as any kind of alterations that might occur during the implementation phase. Where there are requirement of complex legal contracts, it should be framed and implemented and where it is not necessary it should not be implemented. This might increase the complexity for the organization as well as for the employees. For the racial discrimination with respect to recruitment and selection, development of Affirmative Action Programs (AAPs) should be implemented that will eradicate employment discrimination against ethical, race and racial groups and will also be supportive in reducing the past discriminations that are present within the organization (Gelfan & Et. Al., 2007). The AAPs will identify the causes of the discrimination and then develop the programs that may also be in form of training in order to minimize the effect and eliminate the discrimination. This is a systematic process that involves HR strategies along with business strategies in order to achieve the objectives of the program. When the AAPs will be implemented at the initial stage, it needs to be identified that there are minimum errors and biasness in the implementation program. This will ensure affectivity and discrimination will be lowered or terminated. Mostly discrimination is found in the channels of recruitment process. The AAPs will rectify or identify the biasness in the process and develop solution that will be able to remove such barriers. The APPs in order to be developed and implemented, HR personnel and the expert of management is sufficient enough to cease the racial discrimination in organizations. For such activity an expert personnel from outside the organization needs not to be hired. Cultural biasness is present in the organisation and there are options to reduce this issue. It is a long process as attitudes, beliefs, philosophies and other values do not get changed rapidly. There are policies and regulations that are present to minimize the effect of cultural biasness, but in reality they are followed and practiced. To remove the barrier of cultural biasness in Cityside Financial Services, policies and regulations framework must be developed. Cultural non-discrimination policy and statement should be developed and implemented in every department. Policies and regulations, if followed and implemented at all levels, then it will help to purge the cultural biasness in the organization. This needs to be taken seriously and implemented. Cityside Financial Services should recognize values, cultural factors and cultural diversity that assist social diversity in contributing richness to the organization’s community and enhances the quality of the organization’s individual and group life. This way the workplace diversity will offer maximum advantages in terms of enhancing morale which will help to develop greater teamwork between different cultural diversified workforces and also develop an ambience of mutual understanding and respect. The impact of organizational culture needs to be identified because it is different upon different cultural group. This will assist the HR personnel to develop the culture of the organization that will remove the cultural biasness within the organization. For the identification and purging of cultural biasness, the management expert team of Cityside Financial Services as well as HR expert team are enough as it requires in-depth understanding of different cultures and then develop and implement organizational culture that will benefit every cultural workforce. This is a lengthy process and requires time. This is a continuous process that needs to be managed by the internal management of the organization. This will benefit the organization for long run objectives and its achievements. References Alta Associates, (2006). The Importance of Human Capital. Human Capital. Retrieved Online on March 21, 2011 from http://www.altaassociates.com/pdf/06-AUG-CC.pdf Aivazian, D., (2009).Talent Management. Stanford University. Retrieved Online on March 21, 2011 from http://med.stanford.edu/dfa/documents/Stanford-talent-management-101309.pdf Dunkin, R., (2005). The HR Challenge: Some More Thoughts. OECD. Retrieved Online on March 21, 2011 from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/30/37/36214015.pdf Gelfan, M. J. & Et. Al., (2007). Discrimination in Organizations: An Organizational-Level Systems Perspective. Cornell University. Retrieved Online on March 21, 2011 from http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1471&context=cahrswp&sei-redir=1#search="management+of+racial+discrimination+in+organization+site:edu" Kelly, L., (2003). Challenges in Recruiting and Hiring Diverse Employees. HRP. Retrieved Online on March 21, 2011 from http://www.hrpmn.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=72 Katz, J. H. & Moore, K. R., (2004). Racism in the Workplace. OD Practitioners’ Role in Change. Retrieved Online on March 21, 2011 fromhttp://www.odnetwork.org/events/conferences/conf2004/followup/214M.pdf Moon, M. K., (1997). Understanding the Impact of Cultural Diversity on Organizations. USAF Air University. 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