Diversity Management: The Business Case and The Moral Case

Diversity Management: The business case and the moral case

The purpose of writing this essay is to determine the linkage between the business case and moral case for diversity management in the organisations. Besides that, the author also need to justify the claims for managing diversity by sourcing diversity statement which disseminated or publicised by Malaysian organisations. Moreover, this essay will highlight critically on what are the best practices of diversity management for different organisation. Furthermore, the human resource management need to face the challenge of diversity management through planning, organizing, leading and controlling their human resources. Nowadays, the role of Human Resource Manager is evolving with the change in competitive market environment. Besides that, the Human Resource Management must play a more strategic role in order to success of an organisations. Organisations may find themselves in a dire consequences, if they do not put their emphasis on attracting and retaining talents, as their competitors may be outplayed them in the strategic employment of their human resources. Moreover, the organisations must become more adaptable, innovative and customer-focused due to the increasing of competitors in the markets. Besides that, Human Resource Management must become a business driven function with an understanding of organisation’s big picture and also be able to influence the key decisions as well as policies of organisations. Generally, the main focus of Human Resource Manager is on strategic personnel retention by motivate their employees and their loyalty as well as talent development (Diversity Management: case studies 2018). Furthermore, Human Resource Managers also promote to fight for values, ethics, beliefs and spirituality within their organisations, especially in diversity management.

What is diversity management? When it comes to Human Resource, diversity management is a process which intended to create and maintain a positive work environment where the similarities and differences of individuals are valued, at the same time meet several internal and external challenges (Patrick and Kumar 2014, p2). Besides that, managers can also maximise the employees’ knowledge and expertise to have a better achievement of organisational goals by a successful diversity management (Lillevik 2013, p230). Nowadays, it is requisite for any successful workplace strategy due to competitive pressure in organisation in order to sustain and improve business performance as well as changing expectations and aspirations of society. Furthermore, the increasing of competitive pressure is forcing attention on the requirement to address the contextual realities which have been ignored or discriminated for many years. According to Saxena (2014, p77), diversity means people’s similarities and differences as well as the variety of characteristics which make every people unique such as gender, religions, ability or disability and others. As a result, Human Resource Manager is playing an important roles to deal with all diversity issues and challenges as well as they need to provide and create solutions in order to solve it within the organisation. The higher the diversity issues within the organisations, the higher the employees turnover rate. However, if the organisation’s Human resource managers manage well in diversity management, it will bring benefits and positive impact to the organisations. It is because there are variety of skill and ideas which come from different people with different background. The first thing that when most of the people think of diversity is ethnics and races, gender and others. However, diversity is much wider than that. Thus, it is important to understand on how these diversity dimensions affect the performance, motivations, interaction with each other of the employees. Besides that, organisation structures and practices that have presented barriers to some dimensions of diversity should be examined, challenged and removed within the organisations. According to kandola and Fullerton (1998), the basic concept of diversity management accepts the workforce which consists of a diverse population of people. Besides that, the researchers also said that diversity consists of visible and non-visible differences that will include factors such as gender, age, background, race, personality, and others. It is founded that the premise that harnessing these diversity and will create a productive environment which everybody within the organisations feel valued, where their talents are being fully utilised as well as organisational goals are met.

However, some of the organisations have not concrete plans to enhance diversity in the workplace. Some multinationals countries are using metrics or diversity scorecards in order to measure progress of hiring, promoting and retaining their workforce whilst in most organisations. “Diversity” is deemed of buzzword, not core focus of their people initiatives (Suksuwan 2015). Thus, Human resource managers need to influence their business leaders because a diverse workforce will make a difference to the business. According to Suksuwan (2015), the business case for diversity can be targeted on these key reasons which are as the future workforce and it will drive a better business performance in organisation. For instance, Maybank is one of the practicing more on business case of diversity approach (leaderonomics 2015). According to one of the Maybank quote (annual report Maybank 2017), they said: “We want to build an inclusive and engaged workplace to help us connect with customers and also make them better, more informed decisions for our business. We have made sure that we have a flexible, open and supportive working environment, where employees feel they can speak up, and everyone is valued and respected”. Besides that, according to the Maybank’s group Chief Human Capital Officer, Nora (flexworklife 2015), she said: “We believe that creating a positive work climate will not only bring out the best in our employees but also give them a sense of belonging which will translate into greater productivity and also better customer experience. At the same time, we also create a culture where everyone works together to achieve our goals”. From the quote above, Maybank believe that in fostering an inclusive environment that is rich in diversity, acknowledge each of different people’s uniqueness and promote respect which would help drive innovation, growth and also performance within the organisation. Besides that, they also believe that with a work-life business approach, employees of Maybank become more creative as well as innovative, and able to focus outward which will have more on customer-focussed.

Nowadays, business people have many reasons to be concerned with the moral standards of their organisations. According to Khalidah et al. (2012), one of the main reasons is that values and societal norms have somewhat undergone a lot of change in the past few decades, especially the younger generation. For instance, at the workplace, generation Y employees who grew up in the information and communication technology era are more likely than others to see immoral behaviour are justifiable in pursuit their goals. As a result, they become more liberal. Most of them want instant rewards and gratification. They may believe that sometimes it is necessary to cheat, plagiarize or lie in order to succeed in their work performance (SnapComms, 2010). Hence realizing this challenge, nowadays many business organisations have formally developed either compliance or integrity-based code of morality as well as business moral guidelines to remind employees of the importance of moral and ethics at the workplace. One of the company that practicing moral value case by using diversity approach is Petroliam Nasional Bhd (PETRONAS). It is distributed to all employees in an effort in order to emphasize moral case in the conduct of its global business. The share value which emphasis on moral case of PETRONAS is about loyalty, professionalism, integrity and cohesiveness (petronas.com).  According to the PETRONAS quote (petronas.com), they said: “our value are embedded in our culture as the backbone of our business conduct, which reflecting our sense of duty and responsibility in upholding our commitment towards contributing to the well-being of people and nations wherever we operate”. From the quote above, the company want their employees being loyalty to their company, being honest and upright between each other, strive for excellence as well as united, trusted and respect with each other. Many organisations have realized that the importance of moral case which need to apply at the workplace as well as the need to manage business ethically and morally in order to keep the existing customers, attract new customers, to avoid lawsuits and reduce the employees turnover rate at the same time, improve the business performance.

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