Diversified problems in the Workplace

Anik Mostafa

10-16830-2

Sec : D

Research Methodology
 Acknowledgement

I am very thankful to everyone who all supported me, for I have completed my
project effectively and moreover, on time.

I am equally grateful to my teacher . He gave me moral support and guided me in

different matters regarding the topic. He has been very kind and patient, whilst
suggesting to me the outlines of this project, and correcting my doubts. I thank him
for his overall support .
 Table of Contents

Contents Page
Introduction 1-4
Materials and methods 4-5
Questionnaire 5-6
Results and discussions 6-11
Conclusion 12
Reference 12-13
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1. Introduction

Our workplace is an ever‐changing, ever‐evolving environment. As business needs

change so do the skills, competencies and attitudes of our workforce need to
change in order to stay competitive. It is estimated that by the year 2040 one half
of the US population will be people of color representing various ethnic groups.

Understanding and embracing changes and diversity in the workplace can make a
difference in how successful both you and your organization are going to be.
Diversity in the Workplace training is ideal for supervisors, team‐leads, and
employees at all levels who are interested in gaining a better understanding of what
some of the challenges that a diverse workplace environment pose and provides
suggestions for managing diversity.

The world’s increasing globalization requires more interaction among people from
diverse cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds than ever before. People no longer live
and work in an insular marketplace; they are now part of a worldwide economy
with competition coming from nearly every continent. For this reason, profit and
non-profit organizations need diversity to become more creative and open to
change. Maximizing and capitalizing on workplace diversity has become an
important issue for management today. Supervisors and front-line managers could
benefit from reading this paper. Supervisors and managers are the targeted
audience because they need to recognize the ways in which the workplace is
changing, evolving, and diversifying. Since managing diversity remains a
significant organizational challenge, managers must learn the managerial

skills needed in a multicultural work environment. Supervisors and managers must

be prepared to teach themselves and others within their organizations to value
multicultural differences in both associates and customers so that everyone is
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treated with dignity. This paper is designed for managers to effectively manage
diverse workforce populations. It provides a general definition for “diversity”,
discusses the benefits of diversity in the workplace, the challenges of managing a
diverse workplace, and presents effective strategies for managing diverse
workforces.

Employees will be located in different countries as many organizations move to a

global way of doing business. Part of this trend is the increasing reliance on virtual
teams, made possible by the advance of Information Technology (IT) (Zakaria,
Amelinckx and Wilemon ., 2004). Management should encourage mentoring
programs by announcing it formally and ensuring that there are enough people to
serve as mentors. Mentoring can assist members of a diverse workforce to
assimilate into the organizational culture and it also can help the mentor to change
any inaccurate stereotypes and ethnocentrism. This process can become a win-win
situation if mentors are rewarded for their effort (Sadri and Tran , 2002).
Knowledge sharing may also be the most susceptible to effects of cross-cultural
differences within a company (Ford and Chan , 2003). In order to encourage
knowledge sharing, organizations should facilitate a friendly work environment
and offer more opportunities to communicate and get to know one another outside
of the workplace, such as sporting events. Inside the workplace, it should also
create a physical environment in which boundaries are literally broken down
between the culturally diverse staff: for example, there should be no doors in
offices. Architecturally, it should also provide places that encourage
communication, such as circular lounges in the center of work spaces. This will
create an atmosphere where it is physically possible and easy to go up to one’s
supervisor and colleagues to talk about problems or issues (Jana ,2000).

organizations should have diversity awareness training to help people become

aware of their own cultural boundaries, their prejudices and stereotypes. This
training helps people learn how to work and live together. It also helps people to
handle conflict in a constructive manner in order to reduce stress and negative
energy when working in diverse teams (Daft , 1997).
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Scope of the research

The scope of this research is to find out about :

1. How effective is diversity management and communication ?

2.What impact do diversity challenges have on advancement and treatment of

employees?

3. Does employees have similar responses in their value and assessment of

workplace diversity practices in their organizations?

Limitation of the research

The limitations of this research can be :

1. Communication issues
2. This problem is a very complex problem in our current time .So, to understand
this problem properly i need huge amount of experience
3. Time to conduct the research

Significance of the study

Diversity is beneficial to both employees and employers. Although employees are

interdependent in the workplace, respecting individual differences can increase
productivity. Diversified problems in the workplace can increase lawsuits and
decrease marketing opportunities, recruitment, creativity, and business image . In
an era when flexibility and creativity are keys to competitiveness, less diversified
problems in the workplace is critical for an organization’s success.
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Hypothesis test

I am doing is research because i have huge interest in this topic and i want to find
out about modern workforce problems and how to solve those problems .

Specific Objectives

Therefore i am doing this so i can find out about :

1.To find out about the similarities between individuals at all levels of the
organization.

2. To explain how diversity contributes to an organization by having a variety of

views, approaches, and actions to strategic planning, problem‐solving, and
decision‐making.

2.Materials and methods

It took me 1 month to conduct this whole research process starting from March 16
,2014. The timetables for the research is given below :

Research processes Time

Introduction 14 Days
Materials and methods 12 Days
Results and Discussions 3 Days
Conclusion 1 Day

The cost to conduct the research was around 300 taka

I used the questionnaire method to collect the data's about this research . I collected
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the data's from 10 people working in GP, Robi ,Airtel and different call centers
who are all my friends and i know them personally .

The questionnaire for the research is given below :

1.Does your Workplace employ a diverse range of people ?

A. Yes B. No

2.Does your Workplace have a diversity and or/equal opportunities policy in place
?

A. Yes B. No

3.Does your Workplace make employees aware of equal opportunity policies and
provisions ?

A. Yes B. No

4.Does Your Workplace have procedures in place for reporting discrimination ?

A. Yes B. No

5.Does your Workplace host seminars on diversity awareness ?

A. Yes B. No

6.Does your Workplace encourage all employees to attend events about diversity
awareness?

A. Yes B. No

7.Does your Workplace guarantee promotions and pay rises based on merit only?

A. Yes B. No

8.Does your Workplace have a reputation for promoting diversity and tackling
discrimination?
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A. Yes B. No

3.Results and Discussions

Question 1

From my questionnaire 6 peoples ticked yes and 4 peoples ticked no out of 10

peoples in this question .

Does your workplace employ a diverse range

of people ?

Yes
No

Question 2

From my questionnaire 8 peoples ticked yes and 2 peoples ticked no out of 10

peoples in this question .
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Does your workplace have a diversity and /or

equal opportunities policy in place ?

Yes
No

Question 3

From my questionnaire 6 peoples ticked yes and 4 peoples ticked no out of 10

peoples in this question .
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Does your workplace make employees aware

of equal opportunity policies and provisions
?

Yes
No

Question 4

From my questionnaire 6 peoples ticked yes and 4 peoples ticked no out of 10

peoples in this question .

Does your workplace have procedures in

place for reporting discrimination ?

Yes
No
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Question 5

From my questionnaire 1 people ticked yes and 9 peoples ticked no out of 10

peoples in this question .

Does your workplace host seminars on

diversity awareness?

Yes
NO

Question 6

From my questionnaire 3 peoples ticked yes and 7 peoples ticked no out of 10

peoples in this question .
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Does your workplace encourage all

employees to attend events abour diversity
awareness?

Yes
No

Question 7

From my questionnaire 9 peoples ticked yes and 1 people ticked no out of 10

peoples in this question .

Does your workplace guarantee promotions

and pay rises based on merit only?

Yes
No
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Question 8

From my questionnaire 8 peoples ticked yes and 2 peoples ticked no out of 10

peoples in this question .

Does your workplace have a reputation for

promoting diversity and tackling
discrimination ?

Yes
No

Summary and Criticisms

From my research findings i can say that the organizations handle the basic
diversified problems of their organizations pretty seriously and even aware the
people of their organization. But ,they don't take any extra initiative to host
seminars and don't much encourage their employees to go to these seminars .
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Conclusion

After conducting this research i can say that organizations are already a lot keen to
deal with diversified problems in the workplace but they also need to conduct
seminars and training programs to make their employees fully knowledgeable in
this topic . But i conducted this research only on 10 peoples who work in
telecommunication industry .So, the case can be different for other organizations .
I would recommend if anyone is interested in doing research in this topic they
should allocate a lot of time and should get data's from different organizations for a
complete result .

Reference

1. Zakaria, Norhayati, Amelinckx, Andrea and Wilemon, David 2004,

‘Working Together Apart? Building a Knowledge-Sharing Culture

for Global Virtual Teams’, Creativity and Innovation Management,

Vol.13; pp. 15-29.

2. Sadri and Tran, 2002, ‘Managing your diverse workforce

through improved communication’ , The Journal of Management

Development, Vol.21; pp. 227-237.

3. Jana, Rena 2000, Preventing culture clashes, InfoWorld, Vol. 22;

pp. 95-96.

4. Ford, Dianne P. and Chan, Yolande E. 2003, ‘Knowledge sharing in a

multi-cultural setting: a case study’, Knowledge Management

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Research & Practice, Vol. 1 ; pp. 11-27.

5. Daft, Richard L.1997, Management, 4th edition, Harcourt Brace

College Publisher, USA.