How to Ensure Diversity and Equality in a Workplace
The workplace should have a conducive environment for every worker to feel comfortable and accepted by the employer and every employee. Inclusivity at the workplace is wide and touches sensitive issues like the worker's culture, race, color, religion, gender, and sexual orientation.The employer should be at the forefront in the promotion of diversity and equality in the workplace. On the other hand, employees should stir among themselves an all-inclusive culture that gives every employee chance to freely express themselves. Diverse and equitable workplace culture can include the following.Diversity sensitive recruitment processIt's easy to recruit people from a certain background, especially in local and regional companies. Traditionally, most employers may feel better having a workforce of people who speak their mother tongue, from their family lineage or same gender.Today, businesses have broken boundaries and any investor, developer or service provider can tap from the international market. If businesses can tap from the international market, they should also consider having a diverse human resource.During recruitment, employers can have an all-inclusive recruitment process in terms of gender, race, nationality, religion, etc. The employer can make a resolution to employ workers from different backgrounds, include both gender and people from a different religion.The recruitment phase can be the starting point for a work environment that ensures diversity and equality.Empower your management teamThe managers can make or break the workforce. The team leaders and managers need to be empowered in terms of knowledge on how to manage their diverse teams. They need to understand how to equally handle workers from different faiths, colors, nationalities, and gender.If the manager is biased and treats a certain gender or race as special at the expense of the other employees, they will be creating an environment of hatred, discontentment, and unproductivity in the workplace.Even though the managers may be qualified academically, they may not be qualified socially. The employer can help and train their management team on social virtues, diversity, and equality.Show respect for genderMany complaints are recorded each year by employees who face gender harassment from their workmates, managers or employers. Most of the cases are never reported for fear of losing their job.Many more workers, especially women, resign or fail to report to work because of sexual harassment from their bosses. Businesses should have a work policy that protects gender inequality in terms of promotion to higher positions, salary level, education advancement, and recruitment.Employers can start by acknowledging the fact that workers differ in terms of gender, but they can contribute equally to the wellness of the company.Gender equality in the workplace is crucial and can help create a work environment where every worker looks forward to reporting to work another day. Employers and workers can put effort into reading about principles that promote a gender-balanced workplace.One of the best ways is to organize work in a way that does not show favoritism to a particular gender. Employers and employees can also learn more about gender equality by studying from a wide choice of essay samples on gender inequality available online on WritingBros.com. The samples are also useful to students because they study in environments that include both males and females.Create a conducive work environment for all workersIt is easy to get into the temptation of creating wonderful workspaces for the management team to forget the support staff, customer service, back office, etc. It is okay for the managers to have beautiful offices, but if the difference is much, the other workers will find a reason to complain and murmur.If the company is involved in manufacturing, the employer should not buy protective gear for the managers only and forget the other workers. Some companies provide tea or lunch for the managers only and forget they have many other workers. This kind of environment can create unproductivity in the business.Another example can be in colleges or other institutions of learning. Students need to have a balance between study and social life. College administrators and parents at home can help and create a conducive 'work' environment for students.This means they provide good study places by designing a student's room with an environment suitable for study. They can think of good furniture for study, best lighting, soft wall colors and so on.Balance payments among workers in the same job groupThere can be incidences where an employer pays certain employees more than other workers in the same job group. They do this mostly because the employee comes from the same race, nationality, or language as the employer.This kind of disparity can promote hatred amongst the employees and the other workers may socially distance themselves from the favored employee. Employers should balance payment packages between workers in the same job group.ConclusionPeople come from different families in the morning and commute to work. They expect to meet another family called workmates/colleagues. If the environment in this second family is sour, the worker can never feel at peace or comfortable working. Employers have a greater responsibility to lead by example so that every employee can learn from them.Author Bio:Paul Calderon works for a media agency as the senior PR manager and looks after newspaper and tv campaigns for key clients. As a side job, he works for an academic writing agency that provides essay writing assistance to school and college students. His free time is for cycling, drawing caricatures, and reading comic books.