Personal Experience of Diversity and Inclusion in Bussiness and Education

Since I’m from a diverse country for me diversity is viewed from two prime perspectives in organizations: demographic diversity which refers to a visible difference that includes race, ethnicity, gender, and age; the other being more invisible in association to religious beliefs, national origins, and lifestyle or socio-economic differences. I chose to write “Diversity and inclusion” essay to share my examples of personal experience of these processes in my life.

As firms become more and more diverse, understanding and managing them is becoming increasingly important for companies. The people of various backgrounds, cultures, morality create a talented resource. To achieve better performance, it is good to have a diverse workforce. There are certain aspects of operating distinct personnel, which requires business leaders and managers of being responsible for attaining qualified and skilled human resources. Whereas, an inclusive culture is a combined set of attitudes and behaviours which shape the industry. Culture can hugely influence an employee’s experience in the workplace both positively and negatively. It is impressive to note that diversity celebrates differences between individuals but inclusion unites the diverse members into a cohesive group.

Initially, when I joined work in an MNC, I had to leave my hometown and shift to a different state which is new in terms of culture, ethnicity, religious belief, and happen to face different nationality, work culture and lifestyle. It was difficult at first since I was young among the whole team, but subsequently, I coped up by engaging with the people with a various thought process, and this made me improve in work productivity, creativity, a wider range of skills and improved cultural insights. These morals took me to better heights by moving to the next position.

Later, I had an opportunity to lead a small group in the team by mentoring and assessing the performance and well-being of the staff. By utilizing this opportunity, I ensured my group was able to engage with everyone to improve cross-group collaboration, transparent communication, increased competitiveness among other peers, motivated, recognized for hard work, enhanced creativity skills and engage in organization held team events like Powering the Possible, WISE (Women Empowerment) and CSR activities. This inclusion practice helped me in bringing the best from them for the betterment of business and self-improvement.

Subsequently, now I had placed myself to a different situation by coming abroad for higher education where I need to engage with different nationality and races. Even though it was not new, still I had to face people with different attitude, belief, lifestyle and thought process. Eventually, this boosted my confidence level, broadening world views, ways of thinking exceptionally and developing intrapersonal and interpersonal skills.

Finally, having experienced diversity and inclusion in both business and educational life, I have significantly learned and will learn new things, and should be able to incorporate to proper operations. It helps me to assess myself continually so that I can develop in fields that are wanting as well as adjust respectively to match the changing times in the business world.

References

• Lewis, K. (2019). Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace.
• Shore, L., Cleveland, J. and Sanchez, D. (2018). Inclusive workplaces: A review and model. Human Resource Management Review, 28(2), pp.176-189.
• Moss, S., Ennis, G., Zander, K., Bartram, T. and Hedley, D. (2018). Can workplaces foster an openness to diversity surreptitiously? | Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal | Vol 37, No 8, pp.750-762.