diversity
...egatively toward workers who are perceived dissimilar to them than toward employees perceived as similar. Such negative reactions can, in turn limit the potential of the individual and ultimately limit the potential of the organization. Argument Three: Costs of bad hiring and Benefits of Using Best-fits Diverse workforce has positive as well as negative impacts on the organization’s ability to compete with others and maintain itself across time. Organizations take into account their human resource base before hiring employees (Aghazadeh, 2004). According to Angela Coleman, vice president of human resource at New York Life Insurance, “The human resources department establishes annual diversity goals in each department and with the help of diversity officers in each unit, monitors a department’s hiring and promotional activity” (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). Workplace diversity can cause tensions between people (feeling of being discriminated), have a negative impact on the business by increasing costs, and affect HRM practices, unless diversity is carefully managed. Diversity can easily cause feelings of being discriminated in people because the team members do not see situations in the same way, do not understand them in the same way, and do not act in the similar way. Sometimes discriminatory attitudes can be couched in seemingly neutral language; for example, “I don’t understand what they’re saying, their accent is so strong” (Dwan, 2005). This can reflect some people’s response in not wanting to acknowledge someone’s views or level of authority over them and using their accent, as the excuse (Dwan, 2005). Employee resistance to diversity based on their belief is another tension between people. For example, the belief that inspires them to recognize their own tendencies toward ethnocentrism and the belief that their own cultures are superior (Noe, 2005). The accelerated growth of diversity in the workforce over the past 20 years has spawned new developments in managing employee relations, making it one of the biggest challenge facing managers (Roper, 2005). To meet this challenge, various types of training must be given to all levels in the organization. This increases within an organization due to costs associated with seminars, programs and lectures given to promote cultural diversity in the organization. According to Kochan, a professor of management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, “There are estimates that companies spend $8 billion on diversity training annually.” However, this training is not directly relative to the skills people really need to achieve performance improvements toward the organization’s objectives. Kachan adds “Much of the spending is wasted because it is spent on programs for awareness and valuing diversity that do not give people the skills they need.” Organizations that fail to get to grips diversity are putting themselves at risk, with legislation placing no limit on how much an employment tribunal may rule an organization to pay if it is found guilty of discriminating against someone (Edwards, 1986). Age discrimination complaints make up a large percentage of the complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the number of complaints continues to grow whenever the economy is slow (Noe, 2005). The heterogeneous composition of the workforce challenges companies to create HRM practices that ensure that the talents, skills, and values of all employees are fully utilized to help deliver high-quality products and services because it is unlikely that one set of values will characterize all employees (Noe, 2005). Managing cultural diversity involves many different activities, including creating an organizational culture that values diversity, ensuring that HRM systems are bias-free, facilitating higher career involvement of women, promoting knowledge and acceptance of cultural differences, ensuring involvement in education both within and outside the company, and dealing with employees’ resistance to diversity (Noe, 2005). It is very hard to create work environment that makes employees from different backgrounds be creative and innovative because those employees need different kinds of incentives and compensations. Besides, it is even harder, more costly, and more time-consuming task to train and develop minorities. For instance, a workplace which employs both immigrants and US employees, immigrants will have to be trained to understand the US culture; US employees will need skills to improve their ability to communicate with employees from different countries (Noe, 2005). Hiring best-fits (qualified people) helps businesses build enthusiasm and dedication within the workforce by staffing sometimes hard-to-fill jobs with very appreciative employees. Qualified people have the needed skills to the jobs and are immediately more productive than people who satisfy diversity criteria but do not meet the job requirements. Generally, the best-fits need less supervision and have lower turnover rate. When people from different cultural background come together and work, turnover rate and absenteeism may increase. Research has indicated that the turnover rate for African Americans in the US workforce is 40 percent greater than the one of whites (Adler, 1997). Qualified employees are satisfied with the new job, eager to learn, and ready to make a contribution to the growth and improvement beyond what it takes to “Just Get By.” Does Diversity Matter? Every decision in this world has trade-offs both positive and a negative. We have provided many of the negative points of Affirmative Action and forced diversity, and one could argue ad nauseam the other side of this highly controversial topic. The real issue at hand is to determine whether or not Affirmative Action is for the better good (of the company, the person, the bottom-line, etc). To put it more clearly, “Is it worth it?” To answer this question, we have to establish if diversity, in general, better for a company. By that, does diversity affect productivity, profits, etc? Several studies have been conducted on the effects of diversity on business performance. The resounding results are...it depends. In certain business industries such as high tech diversity actually had a negative effect on business performance while other industries such as retail diversity had no effect at all(et al 2003). Furthermore research shows that group dynamics has more an effect on team performance rather than diversity itself. The study showed how groups with increased communications and strong working ...