Diversity and Inclusion in the Global Workplace

Every successful company gains its success from those who put their time and effort into it. Whether it be your ideas, hard work or collaboration it takes something from everyone for it all to come together. Ideas, hard work and collaboration all come from striving to be successful and performing to the best of your ability for the success of the team you are working on and with. Above the team is the leader or manager who helps develop group workmanship and collaboration. The hardest part of coming together is learning to value everyone’s opinions and consider all ideas as if they are your own. Learning how to consider others ideas, listen to people and develop further solutions off those ideas are key to a successful team and company. Implementing them harmoniously after developing the plan is the icing on the cake.
In large companies you have people from all over the United States and highly likely people from all over the world. The chances of your customer base being outside of the U.S. are highly likely as well. It is a well-known fact that diversity and inclusion in the workplace help a workplace flourish and grow and if it was that easy to achieve everyone would be ideally diverse and successful. Ted Childs is the former vice president of Global Workforce Diversity at IBM and he wrote an article about global diversity workplace strategies and he points out some points to help people grasp how important it is to learn and understand diversity:
• In the United States, 49 cities have at least 100,000 people, and an ethnic minority population is the majority of that city.
• In 18 of America’s top 50 cities, and in nine of our state capitals, the mayor is a woman or ethnic minority.
• In the U.S. Senate, there are 16 women, two Asians, one black and three Hispanics. In the House of Representatives, there are 71 women, four Asians, 42 blacks, including the first Muslim member of Congress, 27 Hispanics, one Native American and three gay and “out” representatives.
• Sixty-nine countries have some form of workforce diversity legislation intended to define expectations of corporate conduct, and 24 of them require the submission of reports.
Those facts show us that the U.S. alone has become global whether we knew it or not.

With globalization happening in our back yard it is important to understand where managers lack and “the challenge is to innovate ways to improve human commitment and performance at work. (Moran, 2011, p. 164)” Managers understanding their employees is key to an employees happiness, listening to their concerns and responding are very good for employee relationships. When it comes to a group of people, each person in the group should be treated the same way and each employee should act as if the other team members are just as crucial to the success and happiness of the team as they are. It is a large help to listen to everyone and make them feel as though their opinions are valued.
In a group all ideas are good ideas, none are pointless or a waste of breath. Each person no matter their diversity blueprint has a background and experience of some sort that can help the teamwork through the toughest problems and come up with groundbreaking solutions. Including everyone in the team and using everyone’s ideas no matter who they are based off of their input and experience will help a team be successful. In the economy today, it is most important to understand that “a diverse workforce can capture a greater share of the consumer market. (Kerby, 2012)”

Happiness at work starts with inclusion, inclusion helps understanding diversity and working with both inclusion and diversity will help grow the business to be a global workforce in today’s society.

References:
Childs, T. (2008, September 23). Four Critical Global Workforce Diversity Strategies . Retrieved March 16, 2015, from http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/diversity/articles/pages/fourcriticalglobal.aspx

Kerby, S., & Burns, C. (2012, July 12). The Top 10 Economic Facts of Diversity in the Workplace. Retrieved March 16, 2015, from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/news/2012/07/12/11900/the-top-10-economic-facts-of-diversity-in-the-workplace/

Moran, R., Harris, P., & Moran, S. (2011). Motivating the Global Workforce. In Managing cultural differences global leadership strategies for cross-cultural business success (8th ed., pp. 156-179). New York, NY: Routledge.