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| Yes | 28% | 50 votes | Total: 178 votes | |
| No | 72% | 128 votes |
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Add to FavoritesOver time, yes.
I've decided to take the unpopular side of this debate in order to give it its due.
Encouraging no, mandating workplace diversity has gone a long way towards ensuring equality amongst all employees. Look at how far we've come over the past fifty years. Fifty years ago, working women's careers were relegated to low-paying assistant roles for men. Fifty years ago, African Americans were relegated to the same roles, or even worse as menial laborers who weren't considered competent enough to deserve a better paying job with more responsibility. There were no options for promotion and growth.
In addition, those in leadership roles hired people they easily identified with people who looked just like them. It's part of the human condition: we identify with those who are most like us. Fifty years ago, the people who were in a position to hire others were overwhelmingly white males. As such, they tended to hire other white males that is, until they had to start accounting for the demographics of those they hired.
At that point, they had to step out of their comfort zone and hire other people people who looked or sounded different from them. Over time, attitudes towards these other people have softened as people with different skin colors and different sexual organs and different accents have proven that they, too, are competent people worthy of decent jobs, decent pay, and promotion opportunities.
Slowly, people of more diverse backgrounds have moved up the ladder and are occupying roles that give them the opportunity to hire others. It has become easier for them to hire other diverse people, and the lonely voices of the others are stronger and more confident now. As they've gotten to know each other, workers of different backgrounds have begun to accept and respect each other, and fear of the unknown is giving way to familiarity.
Equality has certainly not come without a fight, and the fighting's certainly not over. But mandating workplace diversity has forced people to interact with others unlike themselves and has helped people to realize that competence in the workplace is not based upon skin color, gender, religious background or sexual preference, but on individual abilities and skills. Although there will always be individuals who hold prejudicial views of those who are unlike themselves, as a whole, promoting workplace diversity is succeeding in ensuring equality for all workers. It's a process, and like all processes, it takes a while.
Learn more about this author, Kelly Nelsen.
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No
Diversity in the workplace may not ensure equality, however, the potential for social enrichment, and more effective employee output, is significant. This environment may indeed lead to increased equality of personnel.
By itself, the diversity of personnel in a work environment doesn't ensure that the complex of cultural, or language differences, will inform their status. However, depending upon the need, and complexity, of the staff to interact daily on a professional level, opportunity to achieve equality is likely to appear. Competition may also contribute to mutual respect, and recognition of equality as well. This may occur in any group of people over a period of time, and if supported by management, will establish a positive result for everyone.
How the workplace is managed, the rules, mutual obligations and respect of workspace, as well as the opportunity to gather aside from formal meetings, will positively impact the human energy that informs the environment.
The experience of working with people from different cultures, and of different ages, offers a significant opportunity to learn, and work together to create better, more creative, and more productive projects. This is true so long as people really listen to each other, and are treated with equal respect by those in charge. This may be the key. Any personnel, anywhere, will take a cue from management. Management may indeed set the tone for dissension, and once a negative energy is verified by everyone else, there is small chance the problems caused will be easily resolved. Rather than diversity of culture contributing to a stronger, more cohesive, staff, the situation may be aggravated by personality traits within the group.
In consideration of the various jobs held, salaries offered, and office geography, it would seem the management has a very strong place in creating an atmosphere of camaraderie in what is otherwise a formal diverse gathering of people with different skills. Lunchrooms, company picnics and general support of families, as well as staff, will have a strong impact on socialization issues.
Diversity in the workplace delivers enormous potential to support a success oriented company. Clearly, the equality of the personnel is the result of intention and creativity. So, although diversity does not ensure equality, there is much opportunity for equality to be a proportionate result of the effort made to achieve it.
Once the business infrastructure is clearly supportive, diversity in the workplace will ensure equality and the successful working partnership of those involved.
Learn more about this author, Jacquie Schmall.
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