The areas of diversity at my place of work include diverse cultures, lifestyles of individuals, their outlooks, age, and religion among others. The community consists of many types of people that work together to achieve business goals and meet each individual needs. Individuals living with disability are considered as important part of the workforce as well as people from different social backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and color. The workforce in our business consists of people of varying ages, young, middle-aged, and senior citizens as well as mixed genders. The number of women constitutes 48 percent thus they are well represented. Other categories of employees include people of different education levels, abilities, work experiences, religious backgrounds, and statuses such as married and singles. The opportunities brought by the diversity and inclusion include creation of excellent forums for decision-making, diverse skills and experiences, organizational unity, and excellent performance (McCuiston, Wooldridge and Pierce 74). Employees are able to be aware of other and work to promote each other’s wellbeing. Productivity of the firm also improves when everyone is involved in activities of the firm. However, some barriers exist such as resistance to change by some members of the team, communication, and cultural issues due to varying ideologies. Other difficulties include change in policy and procedures and conflicting roles.
Work plan
Task
Staff
Task
requirements
Time needed
Employee information (will help determine diversity
Sex orientation
race
age
gender
religion
Marketing
Marketing managers (seniors), sales team (young-male/female)
Designing advertisement, distributing products to the market
Marketing training and skills/ aggressiveness/ outgoing character
20 hours/week
Management
Executives
Managing the organization and decision-making
Management skills/10 years experience/problem-solving skills
25 hours/week
Daily operations
All employees
Running daily activities
Relevant skills
45 hours/week
Human Resource Management
HRMs
Recruiting staff
Relevant skills
30 hours/week
Gender, race, abilities, sexual orientation, and other diverse groups can be included by ensuring there are policies and ethical requirements to be followed during recruitment and assigning of duties. For every team or department the staff must include at least one member of the major identified groups for inclusivity. The work plans for each department will be reviewed regularly to monitor the performance as well a check whether the inclusivity policies have been followed. The workers should fill the last column of the work plan, which should then be analyzed to establish whether diversity and inclusivity has been attained. Other measures include asking for feedback during meetings, visiting work areas, encouraging employees to make suggestions and raise concerns, and providing an open-door policy for staff to communicate with supervisors.
Complying with relevant legislations, policies, and procedures at the workplace is also important such as the health and safety as provided by the Australian government. Other policies include ensuring safe working places and manuals during work as well as having well designed workplaces for the employee (McCuiston, Wooldridge and Pierce 74). Lighting and ventilation must be appropriate to prevent strain while seating must be adjusted to the correct position especially for staff in the offices. The legislations also cover areas such as codes of practices of the industry, product safety, how to deal with suppliers, retailers, and wholesalers, unfair market practices, product labeling, prices, as well as industry regulations.
Some management and communication methods help work plans and encourage inclusion are impact analysis to help determine existence of any negative strategies and risk assessment that determines if any risks contribute to the identified strategies. Others include team reviews to help identify strengths and weaknesses as well as establish solutions to existing challenges (McCuiston, Wooldridge, and Pierce 75). Communicating equitably across department and with employees will also help in creating awareness and identifying weaknesses.
Fee back and review processes can be handled on monthly basis by reviewing the filled work plans reviews should be conducted with various departments such as senior management, department managers, supervisors, shift managers, customers, work teams, as well as employees. Holding review meetings with the employees on different segments after which recommendations are made is appropriate.
Strategies and tools to use at the workplace to ensure inclusive engagement include workplace support and access enabling services, which should directed towards achieving a balanced and integrated team. Great support should be given to managers, supervisors, as well as other teams to promote performance (McCuiston, Wooldridge and Pierce 78). They may include mentoring, availing relevant information, and management with diversity, policy, and procedure changes. Services available at the workplace should be extended to all workers to ensure full participation. Training can be of great help in instilling knowledge and skills while enabling services such as training, provision of resources, career planning, correct equipment, funding and employment, written guidance, seminars as well as diversity events are recommended.
Work Cited
McCuiston, Velma E., Barbara Ross Wooldridge, and Chris K. Pierce. "Leading the diverse workforce: Profit, prospects and progress." Leadership " Organization Development Journal 25.1 (2004): 73-92.
