PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

MANAGING DIVERSITY POLICIES AS TO

PROMOTE WELL-PERFORMING WORKFORCE
Submitted to Dr. Maria Jacinta Arquisola, Ph.D., MHRM

MGT-HRM 2016
Inanda Meitasari (014201600071)

Students of
Management Study Program
President University
2018
 MANAGING DIVERSITY POLICIES AS TO
PROMOTE WELL-PERFORMING WORKFORCE

Nowadays, many organizations or companies characterized by its operation as a

network of teams, enhance on empowerment, encourage open-minded, and
comprehensive working styles. Mostly, leading companies (which run for global
operation) currently focused on diversity and inclusion as a comprehensive strategy
which link into every aspect of the organizational life cycle in which to enhance
employee engagement, build brand reputation, and drive performance. If the company
can link with the diversity and inclusion in the workplace, then the company can
maintain their workforce to retain and perform beyond the standard which for the future
impact is long-term sustainability of the company itself. Based on Human Capital
Trends 2017, 48 percent of companies pondered themselves sufficient at focusing on
global cultural diversity, yet 69 percent of the samples believe they already provide
good or excellent facilities as to support a variety of family models in the workforce
(Deloitte University Press, 2017). Diversity issue becomes wide-ranging than the
average business case and requires complex strategy because there are many factors
which need to be considered in order to avoid any offensive policy or regulation for
certain party. Those factors which involved in the consideration planning commonly
the minorities, such as diversity of gender, nationality, elder employees, people who
have to do childcare or nursing care, disability, beliefs, and LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex) community. This kind of issues draw the
customers, suppliers, shareholders, and the whole public’s attentions. If the
stakeholders are getting close to the issue which mean the company needs to be
aware of it or if the company does not follow the ‘trend’, people may turn for another
company which has good image and reputation.

Cross-generations Workforce As Diversity

Year-to-year, the workforce ages and the older worker would be regenerated with
the younger worker. As awareness for diversity and inclusion raises, it become
essential for talent acquisition and a company’s employment brand. Many companies
tried to create transparency in the workplace as to build the trust among its employees
and employers, then the companies need to listen what being demanded by the
employees. The diversity of generational workforce makes the organization or
company’s job a bit extra. Because each generation has its own characteristic and

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ideal workplace or work environment. Commonly older worker, such as baby boomers,
do not think too much about ideal workplace, except for the financial or compensation
support which given from the company to them. They do not think about other things
as long as the pay is good and their job is secured (NFS Technology Group, 2015).
Yet, generation X are typically pay attention for organizations that recognize and
develop employees’ skills in which they like challenges (Kovary, 2012). While the
younger workers, such as millennials, one of the requirement of an ideal workplace for
them is the company should have diversity program and everybody can voice-up their
opinion since the millennials like to be listened by others, especially for any new ideas
or innovation. They believe inclusion is not only assembling diverse groups, yet it also
connecting all the members so that everyone is perceived attention and respect (PwC
International, Ltd., 2011). Besides, the company needs to welcome the future
employment of the iGen (Generation Z) as well which may lead to another idealism.
The organization or company cannot force all the generation to work under the same
type of work style and keep using the same work environment for timelessly. Because,
the paradigm soon or later will shaped the way the company thinks and works. For
that reason, the company needs to adapt with the condition and keep on updating in
how to facing these day’s challenges, including in promoting the diversity and inclusion
for all of the workforce from every generation. Because diversity and inclusion become
one of the generating, transferring, and distributing knowledge from diversity of
organizational members. So then, the organization can understand each other
‘uniqueness’ in thinking and adapt to it.

According to the Deloitte’s report in 2017, many organization or companies stated

that employees are personally concerned to what they read and hear, and they want
their employers to present perspective, especially for the millennial employees who
seeing their employer as “a partner” for discussion. The business issue of diversity
and inclusion now touches issues of employee engagement, fairness, human rights,
and even social justice. For the cross-generations case, employee engagement
becomes the common issue. Because engaging different generations has different
challenge where different mindsets and visions has higher possibility lead to conflict,
especially if they belong in the same level in hierarchical. The condition might be the
older worker thought they were superior because of the seniority in the workplace,
while the younger worker might think they can intimidate others with the current

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technological advance because they are tech-savvy. Those kind of situations
obviously influenced the engagement among the employees. Therefore, the employer
need to unified them because they are the pioneers in order to obtain the
organizational goals. Diverse and inclusive employees are more advanced, engaged,
and innovative in their work. That is why people must feel included in order to speak
up and fully contribute.

Gender and Minority Communities Employment

Besides the workforce ages, gender equality and other minority communities, such
as disabilities, ethnicity, race, or LGBTI; also become the other factors which driven
the importance of diversity policy in the workplace. Started with gender-equality
employment which has massive progress for past few years, especially fight for
women’s rights to be part of the upper managerial level and equal payment. In fact,
many women still underestimated by some company which has narrow minded
towards women emancipation and they still put bias that women are not suitable in
leading the company (sexism). In many condition, sometimes company prefers men
to be employed compare to women. Not because of the job is not suitable for women,
but because of the gender. This issue is still debated among the business-owners.
They claimed that if a woman gets married and pregnant, the company need to give
her maternity leave and there must be some other leaves because of taking care of
their children. In which, the company does not want to do it because it is time
consuming and make them to pay more expense to find temporary-replace employee
for the woman during the maternity leaves. For that reason, the employers tried to
defense themselves by employed the men because they do not have to make so many
leaves compare to women. In addition, for some particular case, women can get lower
salary compare to men, even though both of them have done the same job, same
efforts, and same position. Barely in mind, classic stereotype and it also becomes part
of culture in many countries (most of it in Asia countries), men should be the superior
and they cannot be lower than women, including the pay (salary). This kind of mindset
should be changed because these days’ women emancipation become global women
where it is fight for the women’s dignity to have the same opportunity as the man’s,
especially in employment. For that issue, many leading companies are trying to apply
equality and gender pay equity because it has acknowledged by public’s attention.
Companies such as Google, Facebook, Salesforce, and others are publicly

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emphasizing gender equality. As an example, after Salesforce performed a deep
investigation and analysis of 17,000 employees, it identified a gender pay gap which
then the company spent approximately $3 million for the inequality payment (Deloitte
University Press, 2017). The company was responsible for the case.

While in the other communities’ cases which include disabilities, ethnicity, race, or
LGBTI, and so on, the most common case in the workplace is the way people treated
them and see the minorities differently. For many times, there are some people who
do not understand that these communities also need to make a living and they can
have opportunity to be employed as well because they are human being just like the
other people. When they (the minorities) demand for equality, it does not mean treating
everyone exactly the same way, all of the time. However, it is the matter of
consideration of the employer in accommodating those needs to enable all to
contribute to the best of their abilities. Because people come with their individual
circumstances, life experiences, culture, and needs. As such, in some circumstances,
people need to be treated differently to provide them with the same opportunities
(Australian Government, 2014). For instance, when legs paralyzed (disability)
employee has the same job as normal employee to do packaging, the disability
employee cannot be treated the same way as the normal employee to take the
wrapping cardboard by themselves, perhaps the supervisor already arrange other
employee to provide the cardboard on his/her desk in order to make the job easier.
This is what it means by the “different treatment” as to provide the same opportunity.

For the case of different race or ethnicity and LGBTI, this is when the literary “equal
treatment” should applied. Because there is no more different for all people, in such
as black people should be the inferior and cannot join white-collar employment level,
while the white people should be the superior among all the race, in these days’ era.
It is not the same as the colonialism era where people should be classified into certain
classes not because of the economic status or proficiency, but it was because of the
race or skin color. The world has change and human rights is being updated
accordance with the global needs in humanity. Who knows people from the minorities
has more ideas and talents which can be used in enhancing the performance of the
company itself or even make diversification towards the business products in order to
enrich the customer preferences. Attaining all available talents and ensuring a mix of
skills, perceptions and knowledge is critical to increasing capability of the company.

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Capitalizing on diversity of believed and experience provides powerful leverage to
problem solve more effectively, find the best decision, and create innovation. People
should focus on how a person is able to manage good change rather just focusing on
outside appearance.

As to make people realized and not underestimate other people because of their
“uniqueness”, especially in the workplace, the company need to promote the diversity
policy and its programs. Because a company is a place that fosters collaboration and
inclusion so then the company can find a lot of new ideas which can be promoted to
the public and make some earnings from it while doing “good” to others. This is also
become a place where talent is nurtured and leadership opportunities are widely open
to all with the capacity and drive to seek them. For example, one of the leading creative
content production in YouTube series named Buzzfeed Video, successfully make
competitive advantage through the diversity of the contributors who worked in the
company. There are many series in Buzzfeed Video channels, where each channel
tried to adopt many kinds of community such as for women, LGBT community, and so
on. The video purely made by the contributors’ ideas which mostly initiated by their
workplace environment. Buzzfeed Video massively promote that diversity is their value
and they can work with it. Because of its unique contents, there are almost 15 million
subscribers in their main YouTube channel and it has almost 13 million likes in their
Facebook fan page. These numbers are not including the other subs content of its.
From this, it can be said that adopting diversity can be promising competitive
advantage for organization. However, due to the diversity of the workforce, the
company need to be agile enough to provide the needs of different people as they
would get through various life and career stages as well as other employee.

Relationship between Diversity and Performance

Not without requirement a company can bluntly promote the diversity policy in
which the company expects something return, it can be in form of building the
sustainability or financial performance. It depends on the company goals and see the
application of the diversity itself. According to the complex analysis from Hunt and her
team (2015), they found that there is positive relation between diversity and financial
performance. The research was using financial data and leadership demographics
from 366 organizations and thousands of executives in the United Kingdom, Canada,

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Latin America, and the United States. From the data collected and had been well-
analyzed, it revealed that the top quartile for gender diversity had 15 percent tendency
to have financial returns above the average national industry. While the companies in
the top quartile for racial/ethnic diversity had 35 percent tendency to have financial
returns above their national industry average. This correlation does not mean that the
greater gender and ethnic diversity in a corporate, the more profit they would get.
Rather, it indicates that companies with diversity leadership policy has more
successful potential compare to other company which did not apply it.

Source: Hunt, Layton, & Prince (2015)

According to survey, United Kingdom had much more visible and powerful for the
relationship between gender diversity and performance compare to the other three
countries. The simultaneous benefit is an increase of 3.5 percent in EBIT for every 10
percent increase in gender diversity in the senior executive team (and 1.4 percent for
the board) (Hunt, Layton, & Prince, 2015). Before the diversity influenced into the
financial performance, need to be notice there were several progress which involved
in the relationship. Started with promoting the diversity in the company which mean
there would be diversity workforce because of the company attaining the talents with
different background. If there are many employees work in the company, then this
diversity can be massive movement (viral). Because of its popularity, people may
notice it and “labelled” the company as the company with high diversity employment.
Because of this good impression to the public, there might be many people from any
background supporting the company by buying its product or even promoting the
company because if they willing to promote the product, it means that they have
contribute something to the diversity program support. Besides grabbing the public

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(customer) attention, the potential shareholders can be interested to invest in it as well.
Because in financially, it has higher tendency to have return in investment due to the
customer intention to support the company since the existence of the diversity itself.
Another scenario can be happened in this relationship is from the employees itself. If
the diverse workforces are well-engaged and can tolerate to each other, the
organization can well-performed and the number of conflict because of cultural
different can be minimized. That is why promoting the diversity policy needs to be
promoted so then the employees can build understanding to each other.

Another reasons why leading companies insist to applied diversity in their

company is because of diversity has a positive impact on many key aspects of
organizational performance. Those aspects are 1) advantages in recruiting the best
talent, 2) stronger customer orientation, 3) increased employee satisfaction, and 4)
improved decision making. Firstly, emphasizing on diversity application may increase
the sourcing talent pool because the employer realized that it (the diversity policy)
should be reflected to every activity in the organization including in attaining talents.
The higher number of candidates may make the employer confused because there
are so many people need to be screened. However, excess number may give the
employer preference to attain the best talent, especially if the company is reputable.
Because commonly best talents apply their resume to reputable company or ideal for
them to work. Secondly, diversity employees may create stronger customer orientation
because they are the representative of the customer preference itself. According to a
survey, women and minority community had key purchasing power. For instance,
women have 80 percent of consumer purchases in United Kingdom (Hunt, Layton, &
Prince, 2015). In which, the company need to pay attention for the ideas which come
from many perspectives in order to get closer to the customers. Thirdly, diversity
workplace can contribute in increasing employee satisfaction because the sense of
being “minority” can be minimized. Working in diverse environment can boosts
employees’ confidence and self-esteem, while breaking down the bias and stereotype
that led to exclusion. Between peers and employers need to show support among
each other in order to create safe and comfort place to work. The feeling being
accepted by the surrounding is important because it would influence to their
satisfaction and further on it can led to physiological contract of them to retain in the
company. Lastly, diversity can contribute in improving decision making. Managers are

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often to face tough problems and they need diverse teams of thinkers to refresh the
ideas. By giving challenge to one another and improve the quality of their answers,
indirectly the managers can have preferences in choosing. A diversity of
knowledgeable opinions enables judgment and alternatives to be explored more
efficiently also solutions to arise more adoptable and has enough confidence.

Promote the Diversity in Workplace

In order to attain the advantages of having diversity in workplace, the company

need to start apply it and manage strategies which need to be applied. These days,
companies are transferring beyond training to focus on transparency, measurement,
and personal accountability. It does not mean that training is not important, but it plays
a crucial part in educating and create the awareness of the issue. While, promoting
diversity and inclusion is emphasized the adoption of it in actual workplace
organization case, such as make it as organizational culture and so on. Because it is
more effective in promoting it is as part of culture rather than just program. Culture
means identity and characters which mean it should be planted in every parts of the
company and the employees-employers as well. In addition, apply trending upward is
become one of the consideration of the employees. Trending upward is focus on
removing measurable bias from employment processes, including hiring, promoting,
leadership development, succession, performance management, and compensation.
For instance, organizations were experimenting with removing names on resumes
because candidates with ethnic-sounding names may have tendency to have lower
opportunity to be employed. Because many people do not see the talent objectively
rather putting bias as judgment. Deloitte researchers published in Deloitte university
press (2017) identified there are six traits of an inclusive leader in which commitment,
courage, knowledge of bias indication, inquisitiveness, cultural intelligence, and
teamwork. As to adopt diversity and inclusion in the workplace, start from the leaders
should manage changes in processes and systems. Because the leaders have to lead,
introduce, and directing how the system going to work as it is demanded. Applying this
culture is full of challenge and it must be practiced by everyone, not limited only
maintained by all line leaders or the HR department.

The leader can begin with a review that drawn the major steps in the recruitment
and promotion processes, especially where the upper-level manager owned the

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decisional latitude. The review also recognized the specific processes and systems
that could influence the impact of bias. Then, the leaders need to be initiative
redesigned new tips and practices to encourage managers toward the concern of
decisions to remove areas where bias could be present, while taking care to make the
new practices both practical and relevant to the business. After the plan has made,
new practices should be discussed with the managers, then the teams were
encouraged to deliberate ways to decrease bias in recruitment and performance
reviews. After the regulation is stable, the leader need to developed multiple measures
of success (metrics) and ways to track progress for later review. One key measure of
success was the impact on employees’ perceptions of inclusion and their willingness
to speak-up for their own opinion develop well.

Most of leadings company which already applied diversity policy commonly

American or European based company. In Asia, commonly company does not really
concern about the importance of having diversity workforce. Commonly they thought
that diversity only led to divorce in the organizations. Hence, Toyota Motor Corporation
has diversity and inclusion program in order to support their global business
sustainability. Known as one of the leading company from Japan, Toyota has
positioned diversity and inclusion as key performance management, also it is
employed to create widely open environments where human resources with variety of
skills and values can work and each individual can achieve self-realization (Toyota
Motor Corporation, 2017). Toyota’s work style reforms are intended to raise
productivity and support the balance between performing childcare or nursing care
and work. Working at Home Program was stretched and the Free Time & Location
(FTL) Program was introduced. The purpose is to maximize the abilities of each
individual and maximize outcomes by transforming to more flexible working styles. The
Working at Home Program covered only employees with children or who are providing
nursing care to a family member. While FTL Program can be used by other employees
as long as certain conditions are met, the employee agrees, and the employee’s
supervisor approval. Not only that, Toyota has another programs which support
women to work comfortably while taking care of their child, such as facilities of
daycare, hospital, Toyota Female Engineer Development Foundation (TFEDF), and
many more. Not only to support the women, there are still a lots of program and
facilities provided by the company in order to maintain the diversity and inclusion in

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their company. Toyota believes that diversity has benefits to the way ideas of
innovation is born and develop. For that reasons, the diversity programs are
concerned for several types of diversity in which gender, nationality, those performing
childcare or nursing care, elderly people, disability, and LGBT. Even, it has annual
evaluation whether the minorities community are satisfied with the engagement and
facilities they have or not. For Toyota, this kind of investment deserved by the
employees since they also worked hard and contribute a lot of effort to keep the
business well-sustain. In return of Toyota’s concerned to the diversity policy, it has
talented and well-performed employees until these days. For that reason, diversity
policy should be placed as one of the employers’ consideration. Because as many
leadings company has applied and gave testimonial, it can be seen how crucial it is to
be promoted in the organization.

As the conclusion, to put one step at a time is no need to be rush and full of forced.
Because diversity is part of natural process which adopting as one unified culture in
an organization is not easy. By keep on motivated and engaged to everyone in the
workplace, the sense of being accepted and not being step aside by the peers, it would
lead boundaries among each other. Besides, after the boundaries turned into
psychological contract, the employees may feel motivated to perform their jobs
because there is sense of belongings. Also, if their job is related with giving ideas
toward cultural phenomenon which currently happened, they may think diversely and
creatively because they have different backgrounds and experiences.

As suggestion, the company can start the change from ensuring that upper level
managers understand the importance of diversity and inclusion. Accountable through
metrics and apparent reports on diversity in promotion, employment, and
compensation should be involved in this steps. In addition, the use of technology and
data to recognize problems and measure progress are important as well, especially in
very quick analyzing. Analytics currently may help in identifying patterns of gender and
racial bias, inequalities in compensation and rewards, and bias in hiring and
promotion. For example like Entelo can directly monitor manager hiring practices,
including scoring patterns, identify racial and cultural bias, and so on (Deloitte
University Press, 2017). Last but not least, diversity and inclusion policy must be
applied by everyone and. Diversity and inclusion is a business responsibility, not only
one side responsibility.

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References
Australian Government. (2014). Defence Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2012-2017.
Australian Government, Department of Defence. Defence Publishing Service.
Retrieved February 2018, from http://www.defence.gov.au/dpg/
Deloitte University Press. (2017). Rewriting The Rules for The Digital Age. 2017
Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends, pp. 1-144. Retrieved February 2018,
from dupress.deloitte.com
Hunt, V., Layton, D., & Prince, S. (2015). Diversity Matters. London: McKinsey &
Company. Retrieved February 2018, from www.richlandcountyfoundation.org
Kovary, G. (2012, October 24). Engaging All Generations in Workplace Learning.
Retrieved February 2018, from n-gen People Performance Inc. Web site:
www.ngenperformance.com
NFS Technology Group. (2015). The Multigenerational Workplace - 5 Insights Every
CIO Needs Today. Retrieved February 2018
PwC International, Ltd. (2011). Millennials at Work: Reshaping the Workplace.
Retrieved February 2018, from PwC International Web site: www.pwc.com
Toyota Motor Corporation. (2017). Sustainability Data Book 2017. Toyota Motor
Corporation Press. Retrieved February 2018

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