A research was conducted (by Kandola & Fullerton) amongst organizations who are pursuing diversity policies and the following 10 initiatives were termed as the most successful initiatives to allow managing diversity:

1. Part time workers being given equal rights & benefits as full time workers
2. Flexibility in uniform/dress requirements
3. Extension in time-off to care for dependents, beyond that given by law. Example:  extended maternity/paternity leave
4. Benefits to employees’ partners equally available to same-sex & different-sex partners
5. Provision of specialized equipment. Example: Braille keyboards
6. Employing helpers/signers for people who need them
7. Imparting training to trainers in equal opportunities
8. Elimination of age criteria from selection decisions
9. Provision of child care assistance
10.  Allowing career breaks to staff

Equal Opportunities as a concept, a policy and as a law was brought into being to focus on issues of discrimination; to ensure that all workers were given a fair chance to employment & once employed were not cast aside on the basis of differences related to gender, religion and disability. Hence it is seen as an issue to do with women, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities and advocates positive action training.

On the contrary Managing Diversity does not rely on positive action training  as it adopts a strategic approach to ensure all employees maximise their potential and enhance their contribution to meeting business objectives. It embraces all people and does not focus on  a particular group eg. women.

Sounds like these people have too much attitude ..huh!  who are they anyway

  Well this is where open-mindedness comes in; diversification comes in. Thereby allowing prevention of classification of certain people in certain categories – also known as StereoTyping.

There is positive stereotyping & there is negative stereotyping. This depends on which ‘type’ of group one has placed a person into, depending on one’s ‘perspective’ of the other person. It can also be a mix of good & bad wherein certain positive & certain negative traits are ‘expected’ according to the classification.

Stereotyping is easy to generate and often it meets with a lot of agreement from oneself and/or others hence making it very difficult to change because it is accepted as the truth with very less evidence supporting it. Stereotyping overemphasizes the similarities between people who are seen to belong to the same group while under-emphasizing the similarities of people in different groups.

So keep an open mind about the people you know & give everyone a fair chance…You never know what category you might have been placed into

To manage diversity is to understand that differences will always exist & make an organization’s culture heterogeneous. These differences if managed properly are an asset to effectiveness at work.

Acknowledging, understanding & appreciating the differences, the diversity, by being flexible enough to meet needs & preferences is what managing diversity strives to achieve thereby creating a motivating & rewarding environment and utilising full potential of individuals by maximum participation.

The concept of managing diversity does not mean white males are managing women & minorities rather it is more about ‘all managers managing all employees’. Without any group being advantaged by irrelevant classification or accident of birth it is the proper leveraging to add value to problem solving, creativity and innovation.

Organizations can focus on creating an inclusive environment wherein everyones needs & values are taken into account. Harnessing these differences uilises maximum participation of all strengthening the organization as a whole and creating a ‘we’ environment

As one has to deal with a diverse array of information, people & situations, managing change is also about managing diversity. At times facts, reasoning & logical binary thinking may not suffice, neither would dividing data into logical halves make decision making possible or even feasible. So, comes in the concept of ‘fuzzy logic’

Fuzzy logic does not mean logic is fuzzy but the phenomena it deals with might be, as the complexity of our systems increases,decisions would then be taken not by clearly classifying a manager as good or bad, analysis of data as correct or incorrect, policies as right or wrong etc but by approximate reasoning, good boundary management and using multi variables. This is the key to successful organizational and personal change management.

An example of a washing machine would be apt to understand fuzzy logic more- we’re not required to set a wash as hot or cold anymore but the machine itself efficientlydetermines the time required for a particular wash depending on the size of the load,kind of material,quantity of dirt etc.

Well so much for washing machines !