People tend to think of diversity as simply demographic, a matter of colour, gender or age. However, groups can be disparate in many ways...
India is a diverse nation with a heterogeneous mix of people spread across four major regions. Each region has its unique regional blend, where the same blend extends to corporate organisations as well. HR managers in India are aware of this mix and have been handling the same with deftness.
People tend to think of diversity as simply demographic, a matter of colour, gender or age. However, groups can be disparate in many ways. Diversity is also based on informational differences, reflecting a person’s education and experience, and values or goals.
Employee-diversity can lead to better performance when it comes to out-of-the-ordinary creative tasks such as product development or cracking new markets. Managers have been trying to increase diversity to achieve the benefits of innovation and fresh ideas. Currently India is waking up to the reality of a global workforce. Today Bangalore’s IT companies have a good mix of European, Scandinavian and American employees.
This mix gives these companies a truly global outlook for their teams, the cultural learnings and perspectives required for global engagements. For example, a product design team working in the automobile space can probably have a mix of Indian and Italian designers. Such a mix helps them to establish an instant connection with the client. And internally, the company can invest in a resource, which when groomed will certainly become an asset. Double-edged sword
While diversity brings in a slew of new perspectives in terms of creativity and variety, it can also be a breeding ground for conflicts arising from the very same reasons. HR managers have to work doubly hard to infuse oneness in the team especially in the initial stages to avoid unpleasant situations later on. It takes a lot of incubation time to fine-tune a bright yet raw idea to a certain level and finally implement it. A lot of team activities such as brainstorming sessions and team-building exercises need to be held regularly to keep the team together while ironing out differences that might surface.
IT companies nowadays are working in small groups that are better focused with higher deliverable-expectancies. Conflicts in goals and values are perceived as huge threats that could be potentially detrimental to productivity. It is really important for teams to recognise and accept goals that are common and for mutual benefit. Apart from conflicts in goals and values, IT companies today need to address diversity at other levels such as constructive conflicts and demographic diversity levels.
Constructive conflicts can be resolved through debates and other team building exercises. Demographic diversity, a cause of interpersonal conflict, needs to be handled tactfully. For successfully resolving it, every team member must be reasonable enough to first accept ideas and next break down the idea’s feasibility aspects What studies say… HR practitioners worldwide are doing extensive research wherein they measure informational diversity and value-goal diversity among employees. They also obtain actual group performance-data and supervisor assessments of teams’ in terms of on-time delivery and services rendered.
The findings so far are interesting: the effects of diversity are more pronounced while engaging in complex tasks that require the interdependent efforts of several groups. The more the teams work together, the greater is the effect. Think creatively
HR managers are busy exploring innovative ways to create cohesive teams that are creative in execution and agile in decision-making. The heat is on HR managers to put on the thinking hat and think creatively and effectively engage teams on a daily basis.
