The Benefits of Workforce Diversity and Empowerment

Businesses now face an increasingly complex and uncertain environment which has generated a demand for the development of more flexible forms of organizations, the strengthening of corporate culture and the determination to make continuous improvements in the quality of products and services. Development and progress cannot occur in a vacuum. It needs the rich soil of multiple experiences in order to flourish - an intuitive personality combined with an analytical personality or marketing abilities with technical abilities that can provide better results in terms of solutions; in as much as multiple cultural perspectives can provide innovation and new perspectives. We have reached a situation today where the value of a company is measured by its intellectual strength, and its ability to initiate and innovate. Thus for an organization to function smooth, effective interaction among diverse employees is most paramount and businesses must be concerned with and address issues related to diversity and empowerment of their workforce. The recent interests in the development and application of the principles of employee empowerment may well be traced to the growing opinion of many managers that companies have reached their ultimate limits of Taylorism1. The key method of improving productivity and of meeting the challenges of the new environment seems to be the empowerment of employees by allowing them to express their personal interest, autonomy, free will and desire. Diversity in recent times has become a pivotal component of major organizations. As companies move towards flatter organizational structures and with the increasing movement of labour across boundaries precipitated by moves towards a global economy, it should not be surprising that diversity is now a dominant organizational issue. To develop this flexible response to the new environmental challenges, managers must forfeit their long-cherished, and at times, abusive privileges and move towards a new form of organization where the employee is seen as an active and willing participant in the organization. By doing so, businesses will increasingly see the need to switch focus to becoming people centred. This should be characterized by the shift from a command-and-control approach to a facilitate-and-empower – a trend towards an information-based organization which relies upon teams and task forces to tackle problems and exploit opportunities together with greater self-discipline and individual responsibility for managing relationships and communications. This, viewed from the benefits accrued to the organization due to the variety in the attributes of its workforce. The future of how companies thrive will not only be influenced by their policies of inclusion but truly, by an internal shift to accepting diversity in all its aspects as a competitive advantage and a contributor and source of innovation, ideas and potential based on empowerment. Much of the diversity literature contends that workforce diversity is not a “fad" but an important strategic issue that must be addressed. The management of diversity therefore, is a primary challenge in today’s business world. Accordingly, workforce diversity researchers are unanimous in the view that to be competitive in the future, business organizations must accept the reality of individual differences in the workforce. In this vein, theorists have developed a variety of approaches and tactics for handling diversity issues. Banach (1990) for instance, discussed the need for organizations to train their workforce in diversity issues. Others like William (1990) theorized that the importance of managing workforce diversity is such that organizations would have to reengineer their personnel policies, and compensation and benefit systems, to be compatible with growing workforce diversity in such organizations. Lately, Benibo (1997) made a theoretical contribution by developing a conceptual framework to explain the relationship between diversity and technological development and proliferation. Despite the theoretical contributions highlighted, there have only been a few empirical investigation of workforce diversity in organizations. This is especially true in small and medium organizations where social shifts and the small population have made workforce diversity a practical issue in the exploitation of its vast financial resources. One important conclusion deductible from workforce diversity literature is its importance to modern organizations. It is true that workforce diversity has both advantages and disadvantages in the organization. The relative importance of the pros and cons of diversity however, is contingent upon the characteristics of the firm in question. Nevertheless, mismanaged diversity can have negative impacts on employee job satisfaction and productivity. Mismanaged diversity, such as unfavorable treatment of some employees, have the potential of repressing employee's abilities and motivation, consequently leading to diminished job attainment. The importance of workforce diversity is encapsulated from various dimensions. Proponents of workforce diversity are of the opinion that it enlarges the scope of viewpoints and ideas, and where properly utilized can enrich the quality of decision making in the firm. In addition, employing workers from a diverse range of sources gives the organization the potential to obtain highly skilled employees. Furthermore, more and more businesses are increasing the scope of their operations going far beyond their geographical locations. It is postulated that enterprises that internationalize their operations will have a higher chance of succeeding if they have diversified workforce. Despite the apparent advantages of workforce diversification it also poses a few predicaments. Recruiting, training and managing a diverse workforce is by no means an easy task. Integrating workers with different religious, cultural, social and political background is time consuming, costly, and leads to a conflict which in general leads to poor organizational performance. Milliken and Martin (1996) found that workforce diversity leads to higher turnover rate, especially among those employees who are different from the majority. However, despite these predicaments it is visible from the literature that the benefits of workforce diversity far outweigh its costs. Today, the case of empowerment comes from business needs that are central to the success of a company: fast response to customers, strong cross-functional links at multiple levels, and the need to take opportunities that are too local, too fleeting or too many in numbers to permit a centralized decision-making process. However in order for empowerment to take root and thrive, organizations must encourage participation, innovation, access to information, and accountability. These conditions are insufficient without the right kind of leadership however. When an organization's overall direction is clear and its overall structure and resource base are adequate to its needs then an empowered workforce with responsibility and authority for most day-to-day decision can have the following advantages: (a) better customer service: not only will employees in contact with customers be able to make decisions themselves and provide an appropriate response, they will also give the customer the (correct) impression that the customer is dealing with someone who has power and influence in the organization. (b) flexibility: empowered employees are ready to respond to changes and opportunities as they arise. (c) speed: when employees know responsibility for outcomes rests with them, they can take action swiftly and locally to solve problems. (d) formation of important cross-functional links: without having to raise most operational issues up the hierarchy, employees are free to make the horizontal connections appropriate to their business. Cross-functional teams can form and re-form as necessary without the say-so of top management. Because these links are not officially resources, they will tend to be efficient. Benefits come not from being on the teams itself but from what the team contributes to the employee's regular work. If a link ceases to add value, the participants will drop it. (e) morale: many employees will feel better about their work if they know that they have more control over it. Individuals' high morale, if widely shared, can also give an organization a positive quality that is often visible to outsiders, such as customers, and is reciprocated by them, resulting in a feedback loop of increasing positive feeling. (f) compensation for limited career paths: many employees in organizations now face the prospect of limited advancement, given recent demographic trends and the tendency toward flatter hierarchies. If promotion is unavailable, companies need to find other ways of increasing employees' responsibilities and rewards. One way in which this might be achieved is to broaden their responsibility and authority. Empowered employees may find their jobs challenging and rewarding enough that promotion ceases to be their only criterion for remaining loyal to the organization. (g) mistake encouraged: empowered employees' mistakes are considered as opportunities for coaching and guidance rather than opportunities to punish. The crucial indicators in an empowered workforce are the way employees interact with customers, managers and each other. Typical behaviours among employees that are evident within empowered workforce include: (i) showing an awareness of the goals and strategies of the organization and take an interest beyond their functional specialty, paying attention to company publications, press reports, and financial and competitive data. This, while discussing their work in terms of how it fits into the company's overall mission; (ii). taking personal responsibility for the outcomes of their work, showing by their behaviour that they feel responsible for the results of what they do; (iii) continuously monitoring their own performance, looking for indications of quality and showing a concern for how they are doing on all performance dimensions; making corrections and improvements in their performance without being asked to do so; and (iv) seeking additional resources, when those provided are limited, in order to perform well while assisting others to improve their performance. The same local action that can lead to increased customer service can also lead to conflicting messages being given to customers and across departments. One employee may be willing to go further than the next in taking care of a particular need, leaving customers with different levels of service. Departments may evolve different policies on everything from office hours to the choice of computers. Sometimes these conflicts will have to be resolved by statements of company policy. However, the more often this happens, the more the distribution of authority is under-cut. It is evident that this can transcend into a bureaucratic concept that leads to misconceptions and potential for chaos that include: (a) lack of clarity: the flexibility and speed that result from distributed decision making are likely to lead to a lack of clarity about who is responsible for what. Job definitions become less useful and people often find themselves under more pressure because there are fewer limits to their responsibilities. A need for "more breathing room" is a common complaint of employees in empowered organizations; (b) breakdown of hierarchical control: the emergence of more cross-functional links often signals the breakdown of the formal hierarchy for the carrying out of many decisions. Control ends up being shared not only across hierarchical levels but across functional boundaries as well. Cross-functional teams may do an excellent job of problem-solving (although this is by no means assured) but managers with ultimate responsibility for functional units are likely to feel a real loss of control, which they may reject as too risky; and (c) demoralization: although empowerment seems attractive to many people, not every employee wants the responsibility that comes with it. Managers have a habit of assuming everyone is like them - desirous of more power and the concomitant rewards. This is only true of some people; others would prefer not to be burdened with additional authority and the decisions that come with it. These people may become seriously demoralized if they are forced to take a more active role in the management of their organization. The new concept of empowerment brings more human aspects into picture, which follows what is called the "democratic Taylorism" model. According to Northcraft and Neale 1993, instead of Taylorism, these new methods and standards are determined by work teams themselves: workers are taught how to time their own jobs with a stop-watch; compare alternative procedures to determine the most efficient one; document the standard procedure to ensure that everyone can understand and implement it; and identify and propose improvements in that procedure. The nature and needs of the business and the personal characteristics of the owners generally influence workforce diversity. The nature of an organization, in terms of its practices, procedures and the goodwill of management characterizes the employee’s perception of what it is like to work in that organization. Based on this perception employees decide whether to expend their efforts and energies for the organization or not. The “practices” of an organization can advance or diminish the effectiveness of a diverse work force. Iverson (2000), in her study of workforce diversity in the hospitality industry, found that organizational practices that provide employees ample opportunities to develop their skills, where managers appreciate differences between workers, and recognize and respect them equally, generate a climate where diversity is highly valued. The merits of bureaucratic structure and hierarchical control have been challenged, in new management thinking. The traditional structures are criticized for their cost, lack of responsiveness and deadening effect upon employee initiative and productivity. To make our hierarchies function properly, it is essential to place the emphasis on accountability for getting work done. Authority is a secondary issue and flows from accountability in the sense that there should be just that amount of authority needed to discharge the accountability. Most significantly, traditional practices are seen to constrain the speed and quality of responsiveness to changing conditions. Consequently, there has emerged the new idea of a management based on a leaner, more creative organization which depends upon the commitment of all staff to shared values to generate an adaptive form of organization. Command is replaced by consent, as the key to corporate success is the development of employees capable of responding, with the minimum of managerial direction, to emergent opportunities and threats. The underpinning argument is that today we constantly talk about downsizing, de-layering, rightsizing, re-engineering and flattening business processes as a cost saving measure, but with our existing hierarchical and bureaucratic system, are we really achieving our cost saving targets? What are your views on Minister Ronald Thwaite's position on auxiliary fees charged by the nation’s high schools?