Women And Work Forse Right
Diversity in todays globalized competitive business world is a must for success. But it requires lot of work from manager’s point of view. A research study by Jill Bisco, Suzanne Gradisher and Barry Mulholland (2018) on Women and diversity in financial services clearly shows how it is possible to make a positive impact through various initiatives to educate the target groups and as a result to increase the participation of diverse work force and more specifically the women in different work areas.
According to Debra L. Nelson and James Campbell Quick (2013) diversity includes all sorts of differences like gender, age race, religion, personality and so on. They also mentioned in their book ‘Organizational Behavior(5th edition)’ that the participation rate of women in U.S. labor force has dropped significantly(from 1999 to 2013) and even though the women are better prepared for various work areas than ever before their share of authority and compensation is not increasing at the same pace. The authors also pointed out the fact that if the managers of today’s business world do not manage to utilize the increasing numbers of female employees achieve their potential, the country would potentially be missing out half of its workforce.
As it has been clear from numerous findings that there is a significant relationship between a more diverse leadership and better financial performance(1) many organizations has already started to take steps forward to make it work to have a successful diverse work force and specifically through increasing women’s participation in different fields.
The above mentioned research paper by Jill Bisco showed us that the financial advising professions are concerned that there will not be sufficient talents in the workforce to replace in the future and also it is lacking diversity. This paper focuses on the University of Akron’s women and diversity symposium that was aimed to address the lack of diversity in this sector and to increase the number of women and people of diverse background along with the young talents in the financial service industry. Based upon research it has been determined that unawareness of the opportunities, poor perception of the profession and viewing this service as a sales oriented career are the primary reasons for low participation the field. There has been many initiatives taken to address these issues by CFP(center for financial planning),FPA(financial planning association),different Universities and industries to advance diversity and inclusion in the work place. The two symposium named ‘The women and Diversity’ held in 2017 and 2018 from the Arkon university were part of the initiatives taken to provide a forum to discuss the new opportunities and break the stereotype concept about the discussed profession.
To measure the opinions and perceptions of the participants and to see whether there was a shift in impressions following the symposium, a dual survey process was used. The beginning survey was done at the beginning of the symposium and the ending survey was done at the end of the program. Each survey instrument was designed to get the answer only to one of the five choices as strongly agree, agree, no opinion, disagree and strongly disagree. Because the participants were of diverse group, the survey gathered demographic information and the profession as well.
The result of the survey shows that the symposium certainly improved the impression of the financial service industry among those who attended it more importantly among the female and non-Caucasians as the minorities. This kind of program left the possibility for the diverse group and the women to enter the financial service industry with confidence and enthusiasm.
The first two chapters of the text book discussing organizational behavior and opportunity and challenges for managers were intriguing but I was especially interested in the area where it discussed valuing diversity and gender diversity. We can all understand that women are underutilized talents in U.S. work force at the present but there is hope. With proper initiatives and programs like the women and diversity symposium discussed earlier can create doors of opportunities for the target groups and thus make a positive change in the near future.
