Week 5 question 10 - Assignment Example

Workplace Diversity and Change Workplace Diversity and Change Employees are very important to an organization. As such, diversity must be advocated and adopted for organizations to get the best of the employees’ capabilities due to the resulting job satisfaction and motivation. Efficiency in diversity management ensures that an organization has a wider pool of ideas, skills as well as abilities. This helps in creativity and innovation. Individual characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, and race can affect how an employee performs.

Failure to recognize the differences that exist between different people can lead to conflicts, miscommunication, and misunderstanding. Diversity is of great importance in helping an organization to exercise the most appropriate practices especially in the changing structure of the workplace where women are becoming engaged in a similar way as men. Here, diversity would ensure that racial prejudices are not allowed and that any form of unfair discrimination is avoided and equality emphasized.

This improves job satisfaction and the overall organization’s performance. Since the modern business environment is becoming more competitive, organizations are required to change and to embrace flexibility so as to remain competitive in their consecutive business sectors. Some of the most common forces that prompt an organization to change include technology, economic shocks, competition, world politics, and even social trends. However, some organizations encounter problems while attempting to change.

This is mostly due to personal reasons such as habit, security, fear of the unknown, and economic factors and organizational reasons that include structural inertia, group inertia, and threats to expertise. To deal with resistance to change, change agents can apply certain strategies that include education, communication, participation, development of positive relationships, coercion, and building support as well as commitment. Change helps an organization in not only remaining competitive but also in surviving in a highly competitive business environment.