Cultural diversity in the organization

“UNAOC and BMW Group Announce the 10 Finalists of the 2019 Intercultural Innovation Award” by BMW Group is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Cultural diversity happens when differences in race, ethnicity, language, nationality, religion, and sexual orientation are represented within a community. A community is said to be culturally diverse if its residents include members of different groups. The community can be a country, region or city. Cultural diversity has become a hot-button issue when applied to the workplace.

In basic terms, diversity simply means a variety or difference. Some people have misunderstood diversity to mean the involvement of racial minorities. However, race is one of the many aspects that can help create a diverse group of individuals. Diversity includes race, national origin, home state or country, interests and other factors.

We may never be completely free from bias, but we can look for ways to communicate that are most likely to respect and include people. Biases are often embedded in communications that give the message that some people are less valuable, less worthwhile, or somehow less deserving of human dignity than other.

The important of culture diversity in the organization

As workforce demographics shift and global markets emerge, workplace diversity inches closer to becoming a business necessity instead of a banner that companies wave to show their commitment to embracing differences and change. Employees reap tangible and intangible benefits from workplace benefits, not the least of which include respect from co-workers and business gains.

People from different races, etc. have different life experiences. This flavors their interpretation of events. These differences can bring strength to the group if it is valued and integrated into the group dynamics. However, it can take time, intent and the willingness to be open-minded and non-judgmental about the value the differences bring. It definitely takes effort to make cultural diversity strength.

Cultural diversity can also weaken a group. Differences in interpretation of events can lead to communication breakdown, awkwardness and hostilities if not addressed. Prejudices about people of different backgrounds can also lead people to jump to conclusions and misinterpret actions and behaviors.

Source adapted from “Culture Diversity” by Whatcom Community College is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Culture can affect technology transfer, managerial attitudes, managerial ideology, and even business-government relations.

Centralization and Decentralization

Safety vs. risk

Safety culture, broadly defined as shared beliefs, norms, values, practices, and structures concerning safety in organizations (Aven & Ylönen, 2021), risk culture has a broader scope. First, risk culture is not limited to organizations or a specific context. Accordingly, risk culture exists in, and can be applied to, different forms of social entities on a macro (e.g., societies), meso (e.g., organizations), and micro level (i.e., individuals as members of social entities). Second, risk culture can incorporate other related concepts such as safety culture as a specific, safety-orientated form of risk culture. However, risk culture research would benefit significantly from a comprehensive and conceptually well-defined identification and assessment of all cultural layers.

Individual Vs Group Reward

Reward management consists of analysing and controlling employee remuneration, compensation and all of the other benefits for the employees. Reward management aims to create and efficiently operate a reward structure for an organisation. Reward structure usually consists of pay policy and practices, salary and payroll administration, total reward, minimum wage, executive pay and team reward.

Individual Reward

• Individual reward so called Intrinsic rewards: tend to give personal satisfaction to an individual.
  • Information / feedback: Also a significant type of reward that successful and effective managers never neglect. This type of rewards offers guidance to employees whether positive (remain on track) or negative (guidance to the correct path). This also creates a bond and adds value to the relationship of managers and employees.
  • Recognition: Is recognizing an employee’s performance by verbal appreciation. This type of reward may take the presence of being formal for example meeting or informal such as a “pat on the back” to boost employees self-esteem and happiness which will result in additional contributing efforts.
  • Trust/empowerment: in any society or organization, trust is a vital aspect between living individuals in order to add value to any relationship. This form of reliance is essential in order to complete tasks successfully. Also, takes place in empowerment when managers delegate tasks to employees. This adds importance to an employee where his decisions and actions are reflected. Therefore, this reward may benefit organizations for the idea of two minds better than one.

Intrinsic rewards makes the employee feel better in the organization, while Extrinsic rewards focus on the performance and activities of the employee in order to attain a certain outcome. The principal difficulty is to find a balance between employees’ performance (extrinsic) and happiness (intrinsic).

Regardless of the form, the reward needs to be tailored according to the employee’s personality. For instance, a sports fan will be really happy to get some tickets for the next big match. However a mother who passes all her time with her children, may not use them and therefore they will be wasted.

When rewarding one, the manager needs to choose if he wants to rewards an individual, a team or a whole organization. One will choose the reward scope in harmony with the work that has been achieved.

• Individual
  • Base pay, incentives, benefits
  • Rewards attendance, performance, competence
• Team: team bonus, rewards group cooperation
• Organization: profit-sharing, shares, gain-sharing

Managing Culture Diversity in the Organization

We are generally aware that the first step in managing diversity is recognize it and learning not to fear it.

Since everyone is the product of their own culture, we need to increase both self-awareness and cross-cultural awareness. There is no book of instructions to deal with cultural diversity, no recipe to follow. But certain attitudes help to bridge cultures.

Admit that you don’t know:  Knowing that we don’t know everything, that a situation does not make sense, that our assumptions may be wrong is part of the process of becoming culturally aware. Assume differences, not similarities.

Suspend judgments:  Collect as much information as possible so you can describe the situation accurately before evaluating it.

Empathy:  In order to understand another person, we need to try standing in his/her shoes. Through empathy we learn of how other people would like to be treated by us.

Systematically check your assumptions:  Ask your colleagues for feedback and constantly check your assumptions to make sure that you clearly understand the situation.

Become comfortable with ambiguity:  The more complicated and uncertain life is, the more we tend to seek control. Assume that other people are as resourceful as we are and that their way will add to what we know. “If we always do, what we’ve always done, we will always get, what we always got.”

Celebrate diversity:  As a company find ways of sharing the cultures of your diverse workforce, i.e., in 2002 Deutsche Bank carried out multiple initiatives around the theme of “tolerance: diversity, identity, recognition” which they called “Initiative Plus 2002.” They encouraged employee projects and organized an annual colloquium of global experts.

Source adapted from “Reward management” by Wikipedia® is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 and Aven T., Ylönen M. (2021). How the risk science can help us establish a good safety culture. Journal of Risk Research, 24, 1349–1367. https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2020.1871056