TOPIC 4: MANAGEMENT OF CULTURAL DIVERSITY

4.1 Demonstrate Mastery of Knowledge and Understanding Of Managing Cultural Diversity

4.1.1. The Challenges of Cultural Diversity
The concept of diversity includes acceptance and respect. It means understanding that each individual is
unique, and recognizing our individual differences. These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity,
gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political
beliefs, or other ideologies. (Harold Andrew Patrick and Vincent Raj Kumar (2012) Managing Workplace
Diversity: Issues and Challenges)
Negative attitudes and behaviors in the workplace include prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination,
which should never be used by management for hiring, retention, and termination practices. Managers
may also be challenged with losses in personnel and work productivity due to prejudice and
discrimination, as well as complaints. Despite this successful organization, challenges to diversity
naturally occur in terms of communication, discrimination issues and in training challenge.

a) Communication Challenge
In a diverse work environment, many different ethnicities, age groups, sexes and religions are
represented and these differences comes with a variety of communication styles. Poor
communication between employees cause misunderstand someone who communicates
differently. Misunderstanding leads to misinterpretation and poor office relationships.

Ineffective communication of key objectives results in confusion, lack of teamwork and low
morale.
Age, gender and culture can influence the messages sent and received.
Communication barriers may be temporary and can be overcome

To promote better communication in workplace, encourage staff to learn more about their
coworkers and communication methods. This can be done through office retreats, frequent
diversity meetings and diversity seminars.

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Common Communication Barriers
- Virtual Work: isolates team members from socialization and face to face interaction,
creating a lack of clarity.
- Emotions: can leave some people unable to verbally express themselves clearly and
coherently.
- Gender: can be associated to the different styles between men and women on how they
explain things.
Culture: expresses the values and patterns of behavior which can be very confusing, making
it difficult to communicate.
Communication Barrier

b) Discrimination Issues
Back in the olden days say, the 1950s employers didnt worry about discrimination
because it was legal. White men had the best jobs and the highest pay. Women were generally
expected to stay home and raise the kids, or they could do womens work and pursue jobs as
teachers, secretaries or nurses. A man would often be paid more than a woman for doing the
exact same work since the man was supposed to bring home the bacon. As for African
Americans and other minorities . . . they were often stuck with low-paying jobs that whites
didnt want.
Thats the primary federal law that prohibits employment discrimination based on the protected
classes of race, color, gender, religion, and national origin. Theres still plenty of discrimination
today, but its not as obvious as before.
Illegal discrimination occurs when employees or job applicants are treated adversely or less
favorably than others because of their protected class. This aspect relates to treating people
differently based on an unfair. Discrimination may include:

Race;
Color;
Gender/sex (including pregnancy);
National origin;

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Citizenship;
Age;
Military service;
Union activity;
Disability; and
personal relations
Religion.

Common Discrimination issues

i)
Race: occurs when an individual is treated differently based upon their actual or
perceived race or also encompasses discrimination based upon skin color. Employer
intentionally targets a member of a racial group or indirectly, for example when a
seemingly neutral job policy tends to exclude minorities for a reason that is not job
related. Victim of race discrimination may faces:
Hiring/Firing/Promotions - refusing to hire an employee based on their race
Pay - paying an employee less or providing them fewer benefits on account
of their race
Job Classification- improperly classifying or segregating employees or
applicants by race.
Harassment failing to provide benefits, promotions, or opportunities, to an employee
because of their race
ii)

Gender/sex: Sex or gender discrimination is treating individuals differently in their

employment specifically because an individual is a woman or a man. Discrimination
of gender may include:
discriminate against women in employment because of pregnancy,
childbirth, and related medical conditions
threatened women with punishment for complying with sexual requests
pay men and women different wages even jobs require equal skills, effort,
and responsibilities

Unfair Salary/Remuneration

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iii)

Sexual Harassment: Sexual harassment is any unwanted or unwelcome sexual

behaviour, which makes a person feel offended, humiliated or intimidated. Work
environment extremely unpleasant or hostile for the victimized employee Example:
displaying sexually suggestive pictures
using offensive or sexually suggestive language
discussing sexual activities
talking about a person's physical characteristics
inappropriate touching

iv)

Age discrimination: Elderly and youthful employees sometimes experience age

discrimination in the workplace. Ageism is stereotyping and discriminating against
individuals or groups on the basis of their age. Employers are generally not allowed
to hire, fire, promote, or decide an employees compensation based on their age.
For example: if you are 40 years of age or older, and you have been harmed by a
decision affecting your employment.
Age discrimination in employment can include:
advertising for someone to join a dynamic, young team
not interviewing someone because they are too young or too old to fit in
with other staff
not employing younger workers because its assumed that theyll quickly
move on to another job
not employing mature workers because its assumed that theyll soon retire
not providing training opportunities for young or mature workers because
its not worth it
Making choices around redundancy, or forcing someone to retire, because
of their age.

v)

Religious discrimination: involves treating a person (an applicant or employee)

unfavorably because of his or her religious beliefs. The law protects not only people
who belong to traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity,
Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, but also others who have sincerely held religious,
ethical or moral beliefs.
Discrimination at work because of religion or belief could include:
Dismissing/fired you because of your religion
advertising for job applicants of one religion only
Requiring you to dress in a certain way, for example, requiring all women to
wear a short skirt. This would not be acceptable for women of several
different religions
Requiring you not to wear sacred items. For example, a Sikh man might be
required to remove their kara (symbolic bracelet). However, if the employer
can justify this on health and safety grounds, this wouldn't count as
discrimination
making you work at times that you cannot work because of your religion
Bullying at work because of your religion. This is also known as harassment.

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vi)

Disability Discrimination : treating individuals differently in employment because of

their disability, perceived disability, or association with an individual with a disability
Examples of disability discrimination may include:
Discriminating on the basis of physical or mental disability in various aspects of
employment, including: recruitment, firing, hiring, training, job assignments,
promotions, pay, benefits, lay off, leave and all other employment-related
activities.
Harassing an employee on the basis of his or her disability.
Asking job applicants questions about their past or current medical conditions,
or requiring job applicants to take medical exams.
Creating or maintaining a workplace that includes substantial physical barriers
to the movement of people with physical disabilities.
Refusing to provide a reasonable accommodation to employees with physical or
mental disability that would allow them to work.

c) Training Challenges
Diversity in races, ages, gender, and education background may influence training challenges to
organizer. Example of training challenges is:
-

Language Barriers: language barriers between people of different ethnic backgrounds,

people of different ages and people with different levels of industry experience.
Personal Issues: People who refuse to communicate based on a personal disagreement are
damaging the company's ability to do business and slowing the growth of the organization.
Employee thinks they not need training.

d) Resistance to Change
- Refusing to accept new policies
- Why change something that works
- Weve always done it this way
- Scared of failure and not being able to learn/adapt to new things
- Not wanting to spend time and effort changing
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-

Not understanding what is expected (the fear of the unknown)

4.1.2. Explain the Employee Relationship Management System

Employee Relationship Management System
An employee relationship management (ERM) system is an information system that supports the
relationship between a company and its employees. Employee relationship management has focused on
enabling employees to collaborate on typical managerial tasks with their employers.
The term 'employee relations' refers to a company's efforts to manage relationships between
employers and employees. An organization with a good employee relations program provides fair and
consistent treatment to all employees so they will be committed to their jobs and loyal to the company.
Such programs also aim to prevent and resolve problems arising from situations at work.
The term "Employee Relationship Management" (acronym ERM), translate as "management of the
relationship with the employees" refers to the use of technologies in the management of human
resources. This concept is based on client relationship management, with the employee at its center.
This involves implementing a dedicated information system for the management of human resources
(generally referred to as HRIS), which makes it possible to cover all problems that are related with the
relationship between a company and its employees, in particular:
-

Training, i.e. the preparation of an overall training plan of the company which makes it
possible to handle a catalog of compulsory or optional internships, requests by employees,
and tracking of training actions;
Pay, to prepare a statement of payments and mailing of salary bulletins;
Recruiting, in particular follow-up on recruiting interviews and new recruits;
Competence and career management, consisting in the implementation of a competence
reference standard which permits improved management of jobs within the enterprise and
in-house transfers. The goal is to value human assets by prioritizing the competences,
knowledge, and know-how of the employees;
Time management, i.e. the management and quantification of the activity of the employees
of the company, in particular with a view to compliance with existing laws (reduction of
working hours, payment of overtime, accounting of vacation, work breaks and absences);
Internal communication, which permits sensitization and transversal information, which
makes it possible to break the isolation of the different sectors of the enterprise.

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4.1.3. Explain the Diversity Management Training Programs
Diversity Management Training Programs
Developing a diversity training program for your organization typically involves assessing your teams
needs, designing materials that reflect your training requirements, delivering workshops and reference
materials and evaluating your efforts. Companies that implement diversity training programs to
advocate workplace diversity tend to have higher employee retention rates, improved morale, reduced
lawsuits and improved recruiting.

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a) Diversity Training
Training is key to helping employees with different backgrounds understand and respect each
other's differences so they learn to collaborate and achieve the company's goals. Diversity
training can benefit an organization by helping to prevent civil rights violations, increasing the
inclusion of different identity groups, and promoting better teamwork. The main goal of a
successful diversity training program is to create a positive work environment by helping
employees recognize and be tolerant of differences among co-workers.
b) Why Need Diversity Training?
- Opportunity for employers to educate employees about diversity.
- Increase participants' cultural awareness, knowledge, and communication.
Although diversity training cannot completely change an individual's beliefs, it does have
the ability to increase awareness, impart knowledge, and educate employees on how to
accept differences among fellow employees.
- Organizations use diversity training to bring out the best in their employees.
- Want to break down the barriers that separate different types of employees, such as ethnic,
social, and political barriers.
- Diversity training improves the quality of work put out by employees. It produces a happier
staff and, in turn, increases productivity.
c) Types of Diversity Training
Developing a diversity training program for your organization typically involves assessing teams
needs, designing materials that reflect training requirements, delivering workshops and
reference materials and evaluating training. Examples of training are:
-

Ice breaking: Participants will have a greater understanding and appreciation for the
diversity within the group, while realizing that they have things in common with some of the
people from whom they might have felt most distant.
Awareness-Based Diversity Training: awareness-based training is designed to increase
employee knowledge and sensitivity to diversity issues. Many programs focus on creating
attitude change around workforce diversity or specific groups of employees. This can take
the form of bias-reduction training, which encourages participants to identify and modify
negative attitudes toward people from different backgrounds.
Skill-Based Diversity Training: it provides workers with a set of skills to enable them to deal
effectively with workplace diversity. Its content (1) building new diversity-interaction skills,
(2) reinforcing existing skills, and (3) inventorying skill-building methodologies.
Exploring Language and Definitions Activity: help participants understand and to explore
different definitions for each word. Its help participants learn to appreciate the importance
of language in discussing multicultural and social justice issues, and how the process of
discussing the definitions adds to the understanding of the terms.
Cultural intelligence training increase group cultures intelligence and appreciate
differences. Prepare group to work better in different cultures group.
Cross cultural communication training understanding different communication styles and
suggest tools for communication better in person and writing.
Global business etiquette prepare staff guidelines working in international with different
country background.

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4.1.4. Identify the Method to Overcome the Stereotypes and To Increase Fairness
What is a stereotype?
to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/)
Stereotypes are generalizations about a group of people whereby we attribute a defined set of
characteristics to this group. These classifications can be positive or negative or neutral, such as when
various nationalities are stereotyped as friendly or unfriendly.
A stereotype is based on a prior assumption. Stereotypes are often created about people of specific
cultures or races.
Common Stereotypes
a) Gender
- Men are strong and do all the work.
- Men are the "backbone."
- Women aren't as smart as a man.
- Women cant do as good of a job as a man.
- Girls are not good at sports.
- Guys are messy and unclean.
- Men who spend too much time on the computer or read are geeks.
b) Cultures
- Mexican stereotypes suggest that all Mexicans are lazy and came into America illegally.
- Italian or French people are the best lovers
- All Blacks outside of the United States are poor.
- All Jews are greedy.
- All Asians are good at math. All Asians like to eat rice and drive slow.
- All Irish people are drunks and eat potatoes.
- All Americans are generally considered to be friendly, generous, and tolerant, but also
arrogant, impatient, and domineering
c) Sexual Stereotypes
- Any feminine man is gay and any masculine woman is a lesbian.

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What is fairness?
the quality of treating people equally or in a way that is right or reasonable
considering everything that has an effect on a situation, so that a fair judgment can be made
(http://dictionary.cambridge.org)
Fairness is usually related to the concept of justice. This involves what is right and equal. Interpreting
this is a problem, due to the limitations of human experience and the balance of all desired good.
Fairness can be interpreted as being equal in provision, in opportunity or in result. From each point of
view, the other point of view may seem unfair.
Method to Overcome the Stereotypes and To Increase Fairness
a) Beliefs and Attitudes
- Aware of and sensitive to own cultural heritage and respect and value different cultural
heritages.
- Aware of own values and biases and how they may affect your perceptions of other
cultures.
- Comfortable with the fact that there are differences between your culture and other
cultures' values and beliefs.
- sensitive to own personal biases, racial/ethnic identity, and other cultural factors that might
require you to seek the help of someone from a different culture when you interact with
another person of that culture
b)

Knowledge
- Understand the power structure of society and how less powerful groups are treated.
- Acquire knowledge about the particular group(s) with which you work.
- Aware of the institutional barriers that prevent members of disadvantaged groups from
benefiting from organizational and societal resources.

c)

Skills
- You use a wide variety of verbal and nonverbal responses when dealing with differences,
and you give and receive verbal and non-verbal messages appropriately and accurately.
- You intervene promptly and appropriately on behalf of people when they receive negative
attention due to their sex, culture, race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or gender
expression.

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4.2 Understanding the Study of Minorities
Study of Minority
a smaller party or group opposed to a majority, as in voting or other action
a group in society distinguished from, and less dominant than, the more numerous majority
a racial, ethnic, religious, or social subdivision of a society that is subordinate to the dominant group in
political, financial, or social power without regard to the size of these groups
(http://www.dictionary.com)
When we're talking about race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or any other socially meaningful group of
people, the majority refers to the social group considered to have the most power in a particular place
(and sometimes the most members).
Example: In the United States, white or Caucasian people are considered to be the racial majority group.
White people have historically been the most powerful race in terms of representation in the media,
business positions (like owning companies), or representation in politic

4.2.1 Minority in racial and ethnic groups

Racial
Race refers to a person's physical
characteristics, such as bone structure
and skin, hair, or eye color.

concept of dividing people into

populations or groups on the basis of
various sets of physical characteristics

an example of race is brown, white, or

black skin (all from various parts of the
world),

Ethnicity
Ethnicity refers to cultural factors,
including nationality, regional culture,
ancestry, and language.

Population group whose members

identify with each other on the basis
of common nationality or shared
cultural traditions.

Ethnicity is German or Spanish

ancestry (regardless of race).

The definition of a social minority is any category of people distinguished by either a physical or cultural
difference that a society has subordinated.
Characteristic of minority group:
a) Minority group has to have a distinctive identity.
- This means that people need to be able to spot them or categorize them easily. Minorities
could be based on skin color, like race, or by biological sex, like men versus women.
b) Minorities can also be based on religion,
which is often distinguished by the way someone dresses or from accessories they wear,
such as a Star of David necklace, indicating Judaism.
c) Minority could be based on choices,
- such as vegetarians who don't believe in eating meat and who take an active role in
demonstrations and other activities to promote the wrongs of eating meat to others.
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4.2.2 Ethnonism
An ethnonym refers to an ethnic group, or a group of people who identify with each other as a distinct
people. Ethnonyms play a large role in group identity formation because they distinguish members
from non-members. A common name that is not shared by people from other groups helps to harden
the line between "us" and "them,"
Ethnocentrism
Definition
Sociology: the belief in the inherent superiority of one's own ethnic group or culture.
- Belief in the intrinsic superiority of the nation, culture, or group to which one belongs, often
accompanied by feelings of dislike for other groups.
- Belief of superiority is one's personal ethnic group, but it can also develop from racial or
religious differences.
- Tendency to use your own culture as the standard by which to judge and evaluate other
cultures.
- In other words, taking an ethnocentric point of view means using your understanding of
your own culture to gauge what is "normal."
- This can lead to biases and a tendency to view cultural differences as abnormal or in a
negative light.

4.2.3 Women as Minorities

Women are not a statistical minority, as in most societies -- they are roughly equal in number to men -but they do qualify as a minority group because they tend to have less power and fewer privileges than
men. Underlying this unequal treatment of women is sexism, which is discrimination, based on sex.
Discrimination against women is evident in a number of different spheres of society, whether political,
legal, economic, or familial

Sexism
Sexism can refer to three subtly different beliefs or attitudes:
The belief that one sex is superior to the other
The belief that men and women are very different and that this should be strongly reflected in society,
language, the right to have sex, and the law
It can also refer to simple hatred of men (misandry) or women (misogyny)

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