Diversity is often limited to heterogeneity in cultural backgrounds. It, however, is a multidimensional concept that cuts across ethnicity, gender, disability, national origin, education, sexual orientation and age. Businesses and societies are continuously taking steps to increase the diversity quotient and become places that have a culture of inclusion.
The inclusion of diversity across topics creates a series of perspective changes. Constantly encountering people of different societies and backgrounds, the perceived priorities, and mindsets of the world shifts. Moreover, on one hand, promoting diversity does not only limit itself to being a tolerant individual, but also diminishes discrimination. On the other hand, with reference to political influences and decision-making, the growing acceptance of diversity supports nations and regions to formulate their local and foreign policies. As you could already tell, embracing diversity could be envisioned as a ticket to becoming a true global citizen.
From a corporate perspective, employing a diverse workforce has become highly salient. The secret recipe for successful leadership, effective communication, and teamwork, is to contemplate the traditional preconditioned pool of talent.
Factors such as productivity and profitability are known to be directly proportional to increasing social harmony at work and society, rooted by diversity within workforces. Accenture, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, and Kaiser Permanente are all exceptional examples for successful firms that base their firms on the diversity of talents, backgrounds, abilities, and status of all participants involved. To Coca-Cola, diversity is perceived “as more than just policies and practices. It is an integral part of who we are as a company, how we operate and how we see our future.” Other efforts to establish Diversity education programmes were made by Coca-Cola, as diversity training. Outside of increasing productivity, becoming a world citizen, and gaining perspective, diversity also plays a role in creating a richer, tastier and colourful life experience! With the increasing diversity within the world; ideas, practices, and views are continuously evolving, deepening our understanding for the simpler and more common areas, such as food, festivities, and even love. Diversity and togetherness have increasingly endorsed the need for fair treatment, equality and true inclusivity from a home-setting, to that of a global one.
Involving the Trans-Atlantic Virtual Exchange and Collaboration Program into this
With the increasing awareness and morale to adhere to equality in human rights, the students of Hochschule Fresenius (Germany) and Adelphi University (USA) have had the opportunity to collaborate with one another. Being possible with the support of DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), the participants were assigned to teams to represent both universities as communal units.
The Human Resource Management Modules Evaluate The Area Of Diversity Across Societies And Corporations.
Examples of umbrella-topics under “diversity” that are being explored include gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, military status, religion, and many more. While also being challenged under a virtual cross-cultural setting, the said topics have been immersed into and evaluated to present a 5 minutes video on areas of company policies, statistics, discrimination and legal frameworks. Being presented in March 2021, during an official virtual student conference, the winning team will earn a travel grant to visit the partnering university, in Summer 2021. It has been established by the Harvard Business Review, that problem-solving skills are accelerated across diverse teams when compared to teams of cognitively akin people. Moreover, the grounds for linking our multicultural students together to pursue this project, is to bring diversity in the employed solutions, to improve results and team decision-making.
Sources
- AMP Global Youth
- Comparably
- Global Diversity Practice
- Harvard Business Review
- McKinsey & Company
- Image resource: @phc.vector – freepik.com