Abstract

Promoting diversity and inclusion in a workplace is an effective way of fostering an open-minded culture in a global company. Helping a company to understand its employees, clients and customers make a workplace an excellent and exciting environment. In today’s globalized business environment, it is essential for an organization to create diversity and inclusion. Boosting cultural competency is a good way of fostering diversity and inclusion in a work environment (Bah, 2015). Developing candid relations with employees helps an organization to create honest conversations which focus on the growth and expansion of the organization. Working in a culturally diverse environment is essential because it gives one a grasp of how it feels to communicate and integrate with people from diverse cultures. Michelle, the HR Manager at  Lollipop Company, clearly understands the importance of having a culturally diverse workforce. Creating operational and motivational dividends are good approaches which organizations should use to increase employees’ efficiency. Employees are more likely to stay in an organization that motivates, respects and values their input.

Key Elements of Motivating a Culturally Diverse Organization

Communication

Communication is a critical element of motivating a culturally diverse organization. Good and effective communication attracts loyalty, efficiency, and yields great productivity (Vohra et al., 2015). Further, good communications keep employees in an organization engaged and inspires them to work and achieve the organizational goals irrespective of the cultural differences. Talking to employees in a culturally diverse organization instills in them a sense of belonging and this motivates them to perform exceedingly well.

Professionalism

Professionalism in a culturally diverse organization entails having a proper business, ethical as well as interpersonal behavior. Professionalism inspires employee loyalty (Bah, 2015). Treating workers across a culturally diverse organization with professionalism pushes them to value their professionalism, and this further urges them to become highly efficient and productive in the organization.

Style of Management

A culturally diverse organization need to have a management that fosters good leadership style. Managers should be leaders and not drivers. Of great significance is the fact that leaders value and encourage employees to be successful even when they come from different cultures (Vohra et al., 2015). A leader knows when to integrate employees from different cultures to motivate them to embrace each other’s differences and perform well in their assigned roles.

Training and Recognition

Training a culturally diverse workforce equips them with the missing set of skills or provides them with better skills to perform well in their capacities. Employee training is a good motivator. Apart from fostering knowledge and self-confidence, training promotes leadership (Vohra et al., 2015). Training should be done without bias and prejudice; all employee from different cultures need to undergo training and development programs because this will motivate them to be aggressive with their work hence displaying better results thereafter. Recognizing employee diversity and inclusivity of the different cultures in a workplace is an excellent motivational and operational dividend. Appreciation is a great motivator.

Importance and Benefits of Diversity Inclusion

Diversity in the workplace outlines how an organization reflects the community it operates in. Diversity facets include gender, race, sexual orientation, cultural references, personality types, experiences, and religious affiliations. When every person in the organization is valued, empowered and respected and feels a sense of belonging then inclusion is present. Diversity is important because it fosters economic growth. Again, a diverse workforce can reach a large consumer market.

Diversity and inclusion are essential as it creates a competitive economy especially in a globalized world and it also fosters creativity and innovation in the workforce (Shaban, 2016). Additionally, diversity and inclusion are significant because it helps in reducing and avoiding employee turnover in a culturally diverse organization. Diversity and inclusion foster significant financial gains this is because employees’ potential is maximized to help them understand the various, unique and diverse needs of the consumers.

Diversity and inclusion have various benefits. Firstly, diversity and inclusion foster higher job satisfaction. Whenever employees feel they are wanted, respected and valued for the contributions made in the organization, they are more likely to feel satisfied with their jobs. Secondly, diversity and inclusion are beneficial since they help in increasing employee’ productivity because they feel appreciated and motivated as well (Shaban, 2016). Thirdly, diversity and inclusion make recruiting and retaining employees much easier. Lastly, diversity and inclusion improves a company’s brand, increases innovation and creativity, increases organizational flexibility and increases employee’ performance in an organization.

The integration and leaning diverse perspective helps to work with each other because it integrates people from diverse cultures and creates learning opportunities with each other. Working with each other with respect to diversity is good because it boosts morale and productivity. Working with each other can help with respect to the discrimination-and-fairness perspective because it gives everyone a fair chance to become productive regardless of discrimination — perspectives on diversity influence how people manage tension which relates to diversity. The access and legitimacy perspective can help in working with each other because it gives everyone free and legitimate access to diversity (Bah, 2015). With respect to diversity and the above mentioned diverse perspectives, working with each other builds understanding, and this is the best approach to promoting diversity.

My plan to motivate employees at Lollipop Company entails developing a training and development plan for the employees. This plan will indeed motivate and engage a culturally diverse workforce by creating equal training and learning opportunities for every employee working at Lollipop. A training program will equip the employees with the same knowledge and unique skills. Training programs will include organizing workshops and conferences which will be used to motivate and engage the culturally diverse workforce at Lollipop Company.

Creating incentives is a good plan that I would use to encourage teamwork among the diverse workforce to make meaningful and valuable contributions to team projects and tasks. Incentives like bonuses, rewards, gift vouchers, and even holiday vacations are good ways of encouraging teamwork. Members will work competitively in a group to make meaningful contributions to projects because they know that the best performing employee will earn themselves certain reward from the company.

A company that seeks to offer motivational rewards to the employees often witnesses considerable success (Vohra et al., 2015). Making use of performance appraisal is another plan I would wholly utilize to encourage teamwork in Lollipop Company. Being in charge of motivating the employees in a culturally diverse workplace like Lollipop, I would empower the employees positively and help them to get out of their comfort zones. This will all be for the primary purpose of making them become the best employees the company has ever had.

References

Bah, A. B. (2015). The Impact of a Diverse Workforce on an Organization: Challenges and Opportunities. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://sophia.stkate.edu/maolhonors/18

Shaban, A. (2016). Managing and Leading a Diverse Workforce: One of the Main Challenges in Management. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 230, 76-84. Retrieved March 8, 2019 from doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.09.010

Vohra, N., Chari, V., Mathur, P., Sudarshan, P., Verma, N., Mathur, N., & Dasmahapatra, V. (2015). Inclusive workplaces: Lessons from theory and practice. Vikalpa, 40(3), 324-362. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://doi.org/10.1177/0256090915601515