Managing Diversity in Organizations Diversity can be described as the manner of recognizing, appreciating, accepting, respecting, and reveling dissimilarities among individuals with regards to age, class, ethnicity, sex, physical and intellectual capability, race, and sexual orientation (Esty et al., 1995). Diversity has become a significant and beneficial component for organizations. With the constant increase in globalization, organizations have been forced to diversify their set of personnel in the work environment. Employees come from diverse backgrounds, geographical areas, tribal and ethnic origins and bear distinctive diverse abilities and aptitudes. It is essential for people to work together and combine abilities and manage diversity commendably in the environment. Every individual's opinions, activities, and also principles are molded by his or her culture. Organizations have to institute diversity into their structures and policies in order to attain the projected goals and objectives (Esty et al., 1995).

The issue of diversity does not just lie on the organizations but also on the employees. Personnel have the responsibility of sharing obligations and accountability within the work environment to ensure that the work place displays and demonstrates respect, confidence and acceptance of employees of diverse backgrounds. Making the most of all the diverse skills and talents of the diverse individuals increases the institutional levels of performance and production. A diverse set of personnel in an organization should mirror the coming together of the ethnic societies that organizations serve (Esty et al., 1995). The purpose of this paper is to outline ways of managing diversity within organizations and the workplace setting. The paper will also delineate the advantage of managing diversity within the workplace and some of the challenges experienced.

Advantages of Managing Diversity

Management of diversity within the organization implies that there is an increase in the effort placed by numerous individuals of diverse cultures, age, sex and race towards the set goals and objectives. Managing diversity has the benefit of increased productivity. For instance, an organization would benefit from hiring foreign managers because this would bring a new perspective of the global and international scene (Cox and Beale, 1997). Additionally, increasing diversity in terms of age means bringing younger employees who have strength to work more hours and instill fresher ideas. The company can also choose to hire older employees who have vast experiences to increase the efficiency in the company. Similarly, an increase in women in the workplace...

Women Estyablish better leadership team by instilling values within the work environment (Henderson, 1994).
Another benefit of managing diversity in organizations is increase in creativity. Diversity brings together individuals who have diverse ways of thinking and perspectives on solving problems and attaining the goal that is set by the organization. Diversity brings along ingenuity and originality with it and this is beneficial for the organization as it obtains better ways of attaining its goals. For the individuals, their work becomes easier and they become more creative as well. Diverse cultures offer discerning options and possibilities that might not have been thought of yet (Henderson, 1994). Another advantage is that managing employees of different age groups also develops new outlooks. For example, young employees come up with conventional approaches and attitudes of solving problems for the organization. For example, the older generation would prefer working manually while young employees would foster embracing the technological aspect. Additionally, managing diversity in the organization helps individuals to think independently (Paulini, 2012). If a firm comprises of identical people who solve problems in a similar manner, it means that when a problem becomes persistent, the personnel will get stuck. However, increasing diversity would bring in new attitudes, way of thinking and approaches to solving difficulties and problems in the organization (Paulini, 2012).

Challenges in Managing Diversity

There are several challenges experienced in managing diversity. As much as increase in work environment diversity benefits an organization as a whole, a part of the workers and directors may not respond positively to modifications made. Such employees who go against increases in workforce diversity generally discard new notions and concepts and make work environments more problematic. This is perceived in aspects of gender, age, race and even employing immigrants (Henderson, 1994). For example, when a company employs workers of a certain gender, the other gender might feel as if they are being overpowered and undervalued. Additionally, if the company recruits elderly experienced workers, the young employees might oppose that, claiming they are not being presented with opportunities to prosper. Another example would be hiring immigrant workers. This action can stir up a great opposition from workers of the resident country claiming to be handed such prospects and openings. If the organization does not take care of such resistances, the increased diversity might prove to be detrimental (Henderson, 1994).

Approaches of Managing Diversity

The following are approaches that should be utilized in managing diversity within the workplace setting.

Organizational Culture

One of the key elements of managing diversity in organizations is cultivating and encouraging a culture that embraces diversity. Organizations ought to design and sustain organizational culture that takes full advantage of the benefits of diversity, and utilize that culture to manage different groups of organizational members, project teams, business start-up teams, customer service response teams, and executive management. Organizational culture considerably impacts the process of strategy devising and choice, in addition to its execution within the workplace. Organizational culture instigates discerning insight of happenings in an environment. Organizational…