Diversity at workplace

Introduction
Diversity is having people of different background working under same roof. Diversity
encompasses broad range of definitions. Simple possible definition as defined by Cambridge
Dictionary “many different types of people or things”. Traditionally, workplace place diversity is
inclusion of people from distinctive groups such as people belonging specific race, gender, ethnic
group, age, immigrants and disabilities. But changing environment at workplace, diversity also
include topic like social class and marital status.
Surface-level-Diversity means easily conceived differences , surface level diversity provides one
pillar of theoretical foundation for dealing diversity at workplace. As we know that some
differences are easily vivid and prominent, for instance as individual outliers in mean age of
organization could easily be discriminated by fellow co-workers or by employers. Misperception
held by some HR managers that performance with old employees might be dangerous for positive
image of organization.
Deep-level-Diversity is second pillar of theoretical foundation of dealing diversity at workplace.
It refers to differences in values, personality, and work professions. These deep level differences
can affect way people view organizational work environment. These differences are not easily
noticeable and measurable because they are communicated through verbal and non-verbal cues.
For instance, personal differences in attitude, values and beliefs. Deep-level diversity usually starts
identifying surface-level differences and people get to know each other, then they start noticing
the deep level personal differences and tend to accept or dislike it. With passage of time, some
factors of deep level diversity might dissipate.
Diversity provides a large pool of ideas and experience. The organization can draw from that pool
to meet business strategy needs and needs of customers more effectively. Companies generally
encourage diversity in the workplace inspire all their employees to perform to their highest ability
.
Schools are constantly encouraged to employ a diverse faculty. In today’s enhanced mobile
environment, people are travelling more, and working inter-cities has become a lot more
accessible. People of all walks of life can easily travel across cities to exchange ideas and share
knowledge with each other. Plus, the growth of online programes makes it easier for remote faculty
members to engage with students all over the world. It has thus become easier for schools to make
their faculty more diverse, yet many still haven’t fully embraced just how important it is.

Methodology
It is common to notice that diverse gender-based workforce at co-education institution is
maintained but it is deliberately ignored at separate campus of girls and boys. Because of inherent
nature of conservative society in Pakistan, lots of parents don’t like to send their children to co-
education institution. In the perspective of gender diversity, it is interesting case to observe the
girls campus to check if there exists any kind of gender discrimination at level of administration.
Our sample of research was Kips girls campus whereby our overall population to gauge was all
kips girls campuses at Lahore. It is worthwhile to establish that purpose of this informational and
qualitative research is to gauge overall level diversity at girls campuses of Kips school at Lahore.
We have conducted interview of HR department of Kips schools system. Then we visited one of
randomly selected girls campus, thereby conducting two separate interviews from administration.
with common observation by interviewees, we tried to locate the inconsistencies from claims of
interviewed managers and common practices seen by naked eyes of our observers. We have
prepared informal questionnaire where we included some objective and subjective questions.
Below we will merge theory generalized workplace diversity and our finding simultaneously .

Types of Workplace Diversity

Workplace is not restricted to certain categories because diversity is relative term and each
individual take meaning of diversity subjectively. We can include countless attributes. Diversity
has become buzzword where even feminist school of thought exploit this term to further gain of
this movement. However, based foundational principles of surface and deep diversity in
organization, we are narrowing down following types of workplace diversity.

Gender
Gender-based-diversity is perhaps most sensitive kind of diversity. Despite many waves of
feminist movements and progress towards egalitarian society, gender disparity is considered one
of debatable topic. Many people enthusiastically favour the gender inclusivity yet there are lot of
people who fervently oppose the inclusion of more woman in workplace environment. One reason
for this trend is masculine nature of men in society and woman is often discriminated for less
mental and physical abilities. However, it is found that women actually sometimes show weakness
because they tend to be more willing sometimes for resolution of problem and men on contrary
behave more subtly. At kips girls campus, there is around 55% percent male-to female gender ratio
faculty level. However, there is no such apparent discrimination because principal of school is
female and head of different departments are male. There are certain sensitive issues like men and
women can’t take informal tea and lunch together, but they can eat dinner or take tea together if
there is some rare or scheduled official meetings.

Age
It is another factor which can trigger discrimination among co-workers. Surface level diversity can
trigger to individuals that you can’t along with old employees because young categorize old
employees as people from distinct group or vice versa. However, with interaction of all ages, we
can find that people from different age groups have common traits and believes. It is quite common
for employers to discriminate old aged working group because there is misperception that old aged
are not agile to work with full energy. On the flip side, young employees can also be discriminated
by their bosses because of belief that novice employees are liable to do mistakes, and they are not
well experienced. In our case study, Kips administration has informed us there is no discrimination
of any sort. However due to seniority of old employees, senior faculty members can choose their
task themselves. In the workplace environment, they sit together at lunch and tea breaks.

Race and Ethnicity

Through surface level diversity, this attribute of diversity might be more visible in organization.
People belonging from different races can have more knowledge about different areas, hence it
would create acculturation and assimilation. Because workplace diversity can easily trigger surface
level diversity issues, it is duty of managers to handle any excessive discrimination. However, it
is undeniable to when can’t notice misfit in the organization. Some people might extreme
differences which can be handle through more informal contact. Stereotyping is making false
assumption that man belongs from particular group and it must that quality. For example,
assumption that single man can’t be trusted because there is no guarantee he will stay up to mark.
Prejudices can really influence the decision making of top manager. In our case study, school
maintains no distinction between upper managers and lowers managers. Race stereotyping is
almost equal to non-existence because administration of Kips school believes that there is no racial
profiling of any sort at all. Administration receive complain from faculty members and students
about any teacher of being racist or ethnically biased.
Race is biological lineage (social skin colour and social traits) prevalent among single group.
Ethnicity is related to race but it refers to individual’s commitment and loyalty to stay in that group
and persistently adopt social traits of that group. It is relatively common that you would support
and encourage your ethnic members within organization. You will feel more comfortable among
them. Kips school system does not believe on dictating people how to live strictly but it promotes
diversity through amalgamating people of different ethnic groups with job distribution.

Disability
Although there are laws in Pakistan dealing with disability and rehabilitation and welfare of
disable people plus government of Pakistan endorses UN convention of right of persons with
disabilities. However, government places no restriction or legal obligation on private sector to
provide job opportunities as par with government practice of recruitment at least 2% disable
people in government department. In our case, Kips campus has three disable persons working
there. We found that there is conducive environment for physical impaired people in organization.
There is slide for wheelchair at entrance. There is no single definition of disability. It generally
refers to person who has any physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more
major life activities. For instance, deafness, chronic back pain, AIDS, missing limbs, seizure
disorder, schizophrenia, diabetes, and alcoholism would all qualify. It is quite obvious that
organization can’t accommodate every disability. In accordance with the law, a disabled person is
the one " who on account of injury, disease or congenital deformity, is handicapped for undertaking
professional employment in order to earn his livelihood, and it includes a person who is
Deaf
Blind
Physically handicapped or
Mentally retarded

Religion
It is another embroiling type of diversity in organization however it is more problematic for more
heterogenous societies. We often hear in news that in west girls are fired from the jobs for wearing
headscarf. Since people are more committed toward their religion, they can’t sacrifice for any
discriminatory attitude on basis of their religion. So some of woman in west have went judiciary,
some companies have to pay huge sum in compensation of loss to those Muslim girls. Diversity in
religion can be ensured if there is mutual trust of each other that there would no discrimination by
employer and co-workers in the organization. As Pakistan is homogenous society in terms of
religion, it has no big issue of religious diversity. However, there exists the minority syndrome,
because religious minorities are so small in Pakistan. Whenever they work in organization, they
are prominent. For example, Sikh employee working in an organization would be prominent by
his turban, because minority syndrome, more people would pay tribute and respect to him.
However, our religion Islam has also diversity within it. In an organization, there are chances that
some kind of discrimination and hot debates could happen in the organization. In our inquiry to
Kips school administration, no one ask for in their organization to which sect he/she follows. If
someone follows the symbolical gesture of that sect, he/she is not discouraged. Moreover they
maintain no data of such kind of diversity however it is clear that there is no staff member
belonging from any other religion than Islam.

Gender Identity
We are living in twenty first century where people have more acceptability towards stereotypes
and people have flexible attitude. Many organization are now endorsing the idea of inclusivity
where transgender people are not discriminated. Constitution of Pakistan clearly states that there
should not be discrimination based on caste, race, religion and gender and colour. Due to surface-
level-diversity there would be always chances of stereotypes, hooting of third genders. It is up to
managers to deal any untoward and discriminatory attitudes among employees. Surprisingly, in
our inquiry at Kips school during interview, It has employed one transgender employee in
administration.

Other types
Due to deep lever diversity, there are new emerging diversity concept such as marital status. There
is practice of discrimination in the organization of hiring single person or married man because of
respective reasons. For example, some HR managers would like hire single person because of
believe that he can spend more time for upbringing of organization, he would no tensions of
martial affairs. On other side, some HR managers would like to hire married man because of
believe that married men are more committed towards their job and more mature in nature. HR
manager at kips school system categorically said they hire people based on education, experience
and professionalism. There is another type of diversity is social status. Not all employee come with
similar social status in the organization. Those employee who belong unprivileged segment of
society can be discriminated by well-off employees in organization .

Challenges for diversity at workplace

Personal bias
It refers to tendency to follow particular spectrum of thought based on perceived notions. Our
conceived perception about people often contributes negativity. In our daily life, we tend to
categorize people based on their appearance. Angry looking can be kind hearted, but our prejudices
(preconceived judgement of individual and group) urges us believe what we apparently see.
A major contributing factor for prejudices is stereotyping, it refers to examining individual on
basis of one’s perception of that group where he/she belongs. Some stereotypes might be accurate
but not all are correct. For instance, asking economist’s about economic problem is right
assumption. However, believing that people having reddish face have bad temper, elder drivers
are dangerously susceptible to accidents and working mothers are not well determined for work is
most common. These prejudices and stereotypes lead to discrimination of induvial from target
community. Discrimination refers to treat some people unequally because of prejudices and
stereotyping. In Kips school system, despite our effort we could find any popular stereotypes over
there. No employees was willing to jeopardize his job by giving this information.

Glass Ceiling
It refers to discriminatory attitude whereby women and minorities could not move on ladder of
career because there exists invisible barrier for them. Many stereotyping and prejudices contributes
to discrimination. These accumulated attitudes creates the invisible career blockage for minorities
and women. In our case, this phenomenon proves is disapproved. Because at top management of
Kips girls campus, there are more women.

Tackling diversity at workplace

Role of Manager in promoting diversity

Unfortunately, there is no single recipe for success. It mainly depends on the manager’s ability to
understand what is best for the organization based on teamwork and the dynamics of the
workplace. Managing diversity is a comprehensive process for creating a work environment that
includes everyone. When creating a successful diverse workforce, an effective manager should
focus on personal awareness of employees .Managers should maintain constant communication
with employees . To manage the diversity effectively, managers need to creatively collaborate,
discuss issues with employees, seek for mutual resolution of issues. This continuous
communication can happen only if workplace environment is motivated by manger’s speeches and
charisma of his leadership skills

Monitoring
It refers to providing advice to less experienced employee by experienced mentor in the
organization . This process of providing advice can help less informed or novice employees to get
along diverse nature of organization, learn new technical expertise, and to fill the loopholes not
knowing organization properly. Mentor is not assigned to just give advice, he can constructively
criticize the behaviour and help him tread his path in organization in right direction.

Diversity Skill training

It is comprehensive program where employees are taught how to deal, communicate and work
effectively in diverse environment. This program start with ‘diversity awareness’ where employees
are taught what prejudices and stereotypes, they possess. After this recognition, they are formally
shifted towards toward training program where they are taught various techniques of how to
control not say certain phrases or express certain attitudes in order to avoid creating fault lines.

Employee resource group.

It is voluntary group formed by employees themselves for maintaining diversity in their
organization. Group align itself with organization’s mission and goal. Employees are connected
by some common dimensions of diversity. It is important to support these groups. In this way,
group identity is appreciated and recognized. Most of these organization support existence of such
groups.

Conclusion
Workplace Diversity is inevitable in an organization because very human society has some degree
of diversity which encompasses various strands of dimensions in it. With various types of
diversities, there are always chances of personal biases and glass ceiling, it is up to organizational
goals and managers to deal the diversity appropriately. To balance diverse environment,
organization needs to allocate some funds form promotion of diversity in the organization. At kips
school system, we can extrapolate our analysis towards all girl school campuses that they recognize
the concept of diversity and manage the diversity. However, there are still some loopholes, there
is still sensitive environment at front of gender diversity because inherent nature of conservative
trends in the society.