Cultural Diversity in the Work Place (Retail Industry).

Course:International Business Issues and Practices (MAN133).

Southampton Solent University.

-Table of contents:

1. Introduction. 3, 4, 5, 6

-Cultural diversity in general.

-Types of diversities in the workplace.

-Importance of diversity.

-How UK is getting more diverse.

2. Ways to support cultural diversity. 7, 8

3. Ways of managing diversity in the work place. 9, 10

4. Advantages of cultural diversity. 11, 12, 13

5. Disadvantages of cultural diversity. 14, 15

6. Conclusion. 16

7. References. 17, 18

1- Introduction:

Cultural diversity in retail industry has been a major area of concern lately, especially in food industry, especially that the main cause of this diversity is the increase of globalization in our world nowadays. Cultural diversity is when differences within a community are well represented. Which include race, religion, ability, language, nationality, gender, ethnicity, age, or sexual orientation. In fact, cultural diversity is recognized as being as important to the mental health / inspiration of mankind as biodiversity is to the future well-being of the natural systems of the planet (Anon. 2019) (1). The Culture immediately influences the behavior of the employees within their work, the environment, the interactions with the outside world and the expectations they have for their future. Culture and leadership also need to communicate and have a strong relationship, while leaders are the main builders of culture; an established culture influences what kind of leadership is doable.

In a workplace everyone should maintain and evolve an Organizational Culture in this way they will find easier how to interact with other people, to communicate and also behave in difficult situations. As a result, the company is not the one that distinguishes the organizational culture from its people. It is their responsibility to create the best environment, particularly the leaders, to assist each other and feel that they are satisfied with their profession and would like to be part of the workplace. Cultural diversity matters people with different backgrounds have different outlooks. Their contribution makes it possible for the group to look at issues from all angles. Often, the results are innovative and creative. It should be valued in corporate philosophy in order to bring strength to diversity. More importantly, it needs to be integrated into business practices. It takes time and commitment for diversity to be celebrated.

Workers must be willing for the value of differences to be open-minded and non-judgmental. Without this commitment, a group can be weakened by cultural diversity. Differences in event interpretation can result in miscommunication. Unless addressed, there will be awkwardness and hostilities. Prejudices are going to deteriorate that impact (Anon. 2019) (2). The right to prior consultation serves to protect ethnic and cultural diversity, is peoples, collective and relates to self determination, sustainable development, property, cultural biodiversity and identity (L.L.C, 2019).

Diversity is an important issue for employers and employees alike in today’s workplace. Although many may think that diversity is limited to race and gender, the inclusion of aspects such as disability and socioeconomic status goes far beyond that. In fact, when taking into consideration diverse candidates for their business, many organizations have included thinking style, personality, and life experience. The demands change day by day, and one of them is that most employees are looking to search the organizational culture of the company they’re going to work in the near future, and that’s because they want to be satisfied from their workplace. Job satisfaction refers to workers and is about their working environment, the reactions among the colleagues, earnings and opportunities. In “Job Satisfaction” is included the sense of happiness. Innovative cultures perceive their workplaces as more dynamic and satisfied in their roles, according to research (Researchgatenet, 2019).

Race and ethnicity, is one of the major types of diversities. Race is linked to the biological heritage of a person, which includes physical features such as skin color. While ethnicity is linked to race, it is more about the culture of a person than its biology. It is really important to have such diversity in the food industry, due to the benefits on this industry that may affect it positively. If leadership appears to lack representative cultural diversity, many important points of view on strategic challenges and opportunities may be missing from your organization. Seek more generational, gender, race, and ethnic diversity through deliberate recruiting efforts and succession planning (MCNALLY, 2017).

Also, we can have a look on Socioeconomic Status and Background. Employees with different socio-economic backgrounds are likely to also have different attitudes towards certain aspects of life, such as money. It is important to remember whether socioeconomic status accounts for the types of diversity of your organization (Ahmed, 2018). Various methods, such as recruiting through newspaper ads versus online job search sites, may be required to reach different classes. This type of diversity affects the employees performance who are working within food retailing industry, especially when they are performing in a multi cultural and social diverse place. Therefore, there are also many and many other types that may be under the name of cultural diversity.

In today’s global environment, the food industry recognizes areas of improvement in the area of work place cultural diversity, and more businesses in the industry are providing quality experts with leadership training. Brand public image, which requires a high product quality and safety standards, is crucial in the food industry and is built on effective teamwork to build a good reputation. Quality experts need to be able to see the “overall picture” and lead their teams towards common goals connected with the vision, mission and values of the company (Hoppe and Eckert, 2012). Diversity affects the industry and workplace environment; leaders in the food industry should view diversity as an asset instead of an obstacle or obligation. Especially that this diversity in the food industry is affecting groups of people behaviors, and making a special kind of market influence toward them since it is targeting peoples perspectives. Diversity can also be described as all the features and perspectives that characterize each of us as groups of people (USDC, 2001).

Cultural diversity is really affecting the food industry in a way that is showing its importance in different ways. Likewise, we can better serve people in other countries as well as in other languages by adopting employees from different backgrounds. In other words, it increases your ability to perform business on a larger geographical scale by hiring a diversified base of employees. When workers know that their work place embraces diversity, they seem to be more likely to feel themselves comfortable, and their performance will increase when they feel they can be themselves. Because if you are not embracing diversity in the workplace, you’re missing out on a big opportunity.

Diversity have resulted the enhancement of the employees competency and creativity in the workplace. However, we can notice easily that the more diverse the industry is, the better outcomes are achieved. In other words, we can realize the effect of the cultural diversity on the food industry in generating huge amount of profits compared to the old days when the market didn’t used to adopt diversity, whether inside the industry including employees and management or regarding the products they sell. A research by McKinsey and Company found that the performance of ethnically diverse firms is 35 percent more likely than non-diversity firms (Hunt, Layton and Prince, 2015). Using your workforce’s different skills and skills will lead to better productivity as each employee continues to play off the strengths and weaknesses of others. In addition, companies that are ready to invest in diversity see it as paying off in greater productivity since workers are usually more satisfied and incentivized due to the company’s commitment to which they work.

The United Kingdom is getting more diverse day by day; it is considered multicultural country because of the immigrations lately. It is becoming more ethnically diverse. This diversity in UK affected all sectors, especially retail industries, because you can find in any work place now a clear diversification.

2- Ways to support Cultural Diversity.

After considering the importance of cultural diversity in the work place, this diversity must be supported due to the benefits that it is getting for the business which is resulting growth and more productivity. Boosting the awareness of all other cultures by communicating outside of your own society with individuals, because due to the lack of understanding, meaningful relationships can never develop.

So the person in charge must eliminate attempting to impose values on everyone else that might conflict with cultures other than your own or contradict them. For example understanding that the English skill limitations of others do not reflect their level of intellectual functioning in any way while communicating with others who may not have English skills (Belfield, 2012).

Moreover, if you observe others willing to engage in behaviors that demonstrate cultural insensitivity, bias, or prejudice, intervene in an appropriate manner, such as to be proactive in being able to listen, accepting and respectful for different people and ideas.

Also, recognize and understand that concepts such as family, spirituality, gender roles, and emotional well-being within the assisting profession vary considerably between cultures and impact behavior. For example, in the workplace, clinical setting and educational setting, advocate the use of materials representing the different cultural parties inside the local society in general.

We also have to know the importance of offering cultural diversity training that might ensure a useful role in the workplace. Diversity training allows workers to understand the consequences of cultural differences on how people work and how they interact at job. From conceptual frameworks and styles of communication to self-identity and conflict management, it might encompass almost everything.

In addition to, mixing up the teams might look important. A diversified cross section model of skill enables for enhanced perspective that will stimulate the team creativity, especially if the team was homogenous, a person of different cultural background or different gender must be invited to the group. This is due to the major impact that this kind of diversities is creating, like creativity and innovation. Interaction among guests and beginners could also be seen as reflecting power relationships, with the combination of knowledge, power challenging the situation of strangers (WICKRAMAARARCHCHI and BURNS, 2017).

3- Ways of Managing Diversity in work place.

Regarding all this, it is important to manage cultural diversity in retail industry within certain ways to maintain the correct path of the work in the work place. The development of cultural skills leads to the ability to understand, communicate and interact effectively with people all over cultures and work with different cultural beliefs and schedules within the workplace. So this issue can be managed successfully through some points.

First, Communication in the place of work is an important factor to shed the light on to maintain effective work and team performance, providing information accurately and promptly is critical. This is especially important when a project is in trouble and requires immediate remedial action. People from different cultures, however, differ in how they interact to bad news, for example, because some people can be reluctant while others might exaggerate their reaction. So here comes the role of the leader to manage and influence people’s reaction and put them in the right path (Alpert, 2018).

Also, building a team has a big role to achieve the good management. We can notice a difference in the culture between people from different places, for example some people are individualistic and likes to work alone, while other cultures are cooperative and encourages people to work together. Team building concerns may become more difficult as teams are made up of individuals from a mix of these types of culture, so here comes the role of a strong leader to have the skill of effective cross culture team building, which is necessary in order to benefit from the potential advantages of workplace cultural diversity.

Moreover, managing time is considered one of the major areas of interest, since culture differ in their way in viewing time, such as maintaining balance between family time and work time, other disparities include overtime perception, or maybe even a deadline’s exact meaning. Different perceptions of time, especially with scheduling and deadlines, may cause serious misconception and mishap in the workplace. So Time conceptions underline the relevance of workplace cultural diversity and how this could impact daily job.

Furthermore, Schedules process should be taken into consideration, due to a main factor that the work might be impacted by cultural and religious incidents that affects the work place directly. For example, times of holidays for some occasions differ among cultures, such as people who depend on various calendars to decide holidays and New Year, and a good example may be the prayer days, between Christian people and Islam; such differences directly impact the workplace because people need time off to observe their vacation. So managers must be careful of this issue and arrange schedules for people regarding to their priorities related to their culture in a way that does not affect the organization in a bad way.

So managing diversity in the workplace in not that easy thing to do, a manager or leader must be taking into consideration many issues together, and at the same time he is required to manage them successfully without affecting the business in a bad way. Managing the diversity requires also on applying awareness, attitudes and beliefs, and knowledge and skills. They should interact all together to enable managing cultural diversity.

4- Advantages of Cultural diversity in work place:

As demographic workforce shifts and global markets emerge, work place diversity gets closer and closer towards becoming a industry requirement rather than a banner that industries wave to make a commitment to embrace disparities and change. Both employees and customers reap tangible and intangible benefits, in the work place and in the whole market and industry for the buyers. Workplace diversity means the business hires a wide variety of different individuals.

Effective organisations require both tactical and strategic thinking as well as the culture building by its leaders. This way helps the company to create the vision of an agency’s future. The vision may also determine the characteristics of the organization’s culture. The four factors of the Oranisational Culture may influence the leaders. There are two types of leaders · the transformational and the transactional. The transformational leader is creative, persistence and energetic. In contrast, transactional leaders are characterized by management-by-exception leadership (BASS and AVOLIO, 1993).

In another way, people who have different characteristics are included in a diverse workforce; including all the differences starting from gender, race, ethnicity, religion, education, abilities and many other types. To summarize it, inside an economic environment, we can see many advantages of cultural diversity, as well as for tourism, it enhances personal skills, expands innovation and creativity, increases teamwork, expresses different patterns of behavior, increases the credibility of the company, needs and develops skills and a wide variety of languages spoken, and increases productivity in complex tasks (WICKRAMAARARCHCHI and BURNS, 2017).

First, we can notice easily the inspiration of cultural diversity for creativity and diverse innovation. The culture we live in influences the people in the way they view the world. A variety of points of view along with an international group’s widely ranging personal and professional experience may present modern perspectives that motivate colleagues to look differently at the workplace and the world. Diversity of thinking have been shown to foster creativeness and encourage innovation, assisting in new and interesting ways to solve the problems and satisfy customer needs ( Reynolds, 2019).

Then, a clear benefit of this diversity is that the local market knowledge and insight makes a business more competitive and profitable. When expanding into new markets, a multi cultural workforce may give an organization a significant advantage. Often it is necessary to evolve a product or service to succeed abroad. And ultimately being more competitive means becoming more profitable. Every year, Diversity Incorporation realizes the top 50 most diverse firms and measures their achievement against by the wider market (Reynolds, K., 2019).

Furthermore, one of the benefits that cultural sensitivity and local knowledge are creating is higher quality and targeted marketing. Together with local market knowledge, cross-cultural understanding gives itself to producing more effective marketing approach and materials. In terms of imaging and design, market specific insight and knowledge is essential, too.

Moreover, cultural diverse skills base enabled the industry to offer a wider and more adaptable product and service business plan. Companies benefit from recruiting experts with a wide range of skills that are not always reachable when recruiting locally by drawing from a culturally diverse talent pool. Globally focused businesses may add to their range of services by utilizing their skills and bringing their international staff to the table, however, more potentially diversified product and service offerings will also help your industry to benefit from a competitive adaptability advantage.

A big example can be applied on the food retail industry, such as ASDA super market, which used to be in the old days offering only English food to the local customers, but now due to the culturally diverse market that is resulted from globalization, ASDA nowadays hires culturally diverse employees, but the main important issue that it is offering a variety of foods and products, by covering most of the kinds of food for the different people living in the UK, in another words, it is targeting the market well.

Solving problems in faster way is due to the diversity in the industry. Workers from a variety of backgrounds have diverse experiences and views, and they can drag various solutions to the desk. The best option can therefore be chosen earlier, leading to faster problem solving. Due to the different backgrounds, every person views the problem with a different perspective, and brings out a unique solution, so gathering the employees solutions will result the best solving for the problem.

5- Disadvantages of Cultural Diversity in work place.

Regardless all the mentioned advantages that cultural diversity benefits the work place and the customer by in the retail industry, it also carries negative effects. These disadvantages provide barriers to achievement of realizing the opportunities of diversity.

Communicational issues are the first example as a disadvantage of cultural diversity. Effective communication is a success motivating factor. Unfortunately, due to a shortage of cohesiveness, diversity can be in the way and can have a direct impact on productivity; this describes why certain businesses hire multilingual or multilingual customer service representatives for international customers. (Lombardo, C., 2019).

In a diverse work place, lack of freedom of speech is resulted because the individuals can’t fully express their opinions independently or share stories whenever they wish for fear of being judged as discriminating. Generally speaking, a worker must be sensitive to the race, beliefs, cultural background etc. of others in a diverse workplace.

Moreover, increased training costs are due to this wide variety. With the exception of the usual training, an organization has to invest in workplace diversity seminars, programs and lectures (Lombardo, C., 2019). The business may continue to hire employees and may continue to spend on training, which will be affecting negatively on the industry in general.

Furthermore, cultural diversity may increase the percentage of competition. Regardless to the point that the competition makes a workplace better and drives to success and more productivity, and rather than becoming collaborative team members, they are likely to compete with each other. This issue is resulted when people starts preferring to work separately. This may have a negative impact on the company due to the slow movement of progress.

In addition to, diversity in the Workplace creates a fear of future outsourcing. The threat of one day losing their jobs is one of the most significant concerns that workers have during a diversity effort, especially if someone with a lower cost living may reproduce the same outcomes as high wage earners, then the risk of outsourcing will become a real threat.

We can also capture one of the negative outcomes, which is slowing down the work in industry because of the diversity. Even if there is an advantage in having more ideas to solve the problems in the place of work, this advantage may also easily become a disadvantage. Teams that continuously discussing ideas will sometimes find themselves probably slower.

And finally we can notice conflicting working styles across teams, working styles and attitudes towards work, though, may be very distinct, highlighting cultural values and aggregating variances. If not clearly identified and accounted, the brakes on productivity can be placed by conflicting approaches to work, for example, teamwork and collaborative effort methods can vary considerably.

6- Conclusion.

Cultural diversity is very important nowadays inside the work place, especially in retail industry. Workplace culture affects the entire workplace environment and is identified as a factor in determining in how people conduct themselves inside the organization. Each function will also be influenced, and this effect will lead to success by knowing the organization’s vision and mission. Employees nowadays are not only looking for a good salary or a good job, they are also looking for the best working environment. For the most part, the impacts of workplace cultural diversity rely on how well organizational leaders handle them. A positive leader is a creative thinker, and workers choose to feel secure. Individuals have to act, not words and ethics are actions, and leaders want an ethical culture to be created. The effect on the working environment of cultural diversity can be either beneficial or unfavorable. Many negative impacts provide corrupt conflicts, loss of productivity, and also in team configuration difficulty achieving harmony (MARTIN, 2014). Finally, with proper strategic planning, top management can enhance the positive effects of workplace diversity and reduce the negative effects of cultural diversity.

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