Equality of Opportunity, Diversity and Inclusion

Equality of Opportunity, Diversity and Inclusion

All organisations are expected to accord their employees with various responsibilities and liabilities as per the Equality Act 2010. The Act has stipulated various responsibilities that include informing staff of various diversity and equality legal requirements, ensuring that employees are adhering to the stipulated policies, making adjustments to ensure inclusion of people with disability and take desirable measures on issues to do with harassment and discrimination complaint. These responsibilities are geared towards ensuring that the organisation provides a favourable working environment towards its employees. This is because there are organisations that have previously shown the tendency of exploiting employees due to lack of defined legal responsibilities. Organisations are liable for employees’ acts of harassment, victimization and discrimination. This is meant to ensure that the organisations follow through with upholding their responsibilities as required by the Equality Act 2010. However, organisations do not bear any legal responsibility for unlawful actions exhibited by the employees if reasonable preventive measures had been put in place.

Both organisations and individuals reap the benefits of effective equality of opportunity, diversity and inclusion. When equality is enhanced at the workplace, employees are treated fairly with regards to payments and promotions regardless of colour, race, gender, age among other differences. The organisation benefits from this aspect due to the fact that they are able to retain their best employees and employees’ productivity is enhanced since they become more engaged. In the long-run, there is increased creativity and innovation that helps the organisation to remain viable for as long as possible. On the other hand, benefits that accrue to individuals include improved job satisfaction, better working relationships, reassurances on the absence of workplace discrimination, access to superior facilities among others.

Equality of opportunity, diversity and inclusion within the organisation requires some support structures for positive results to be derived. There ought to be a certain language and behaviour being used to help in this realisation. The language and behaviour should be clear with regards to policy and action plan on issues to do with equality. These plans should be monitored and reviewed regularly in order to ensure that they are still viable. The language and behaviour should also incorporate diversity, which is to be engraved in the wider organisational strategy. This will mean that the organisation is not only incorporating diversity just as a way of showing that they are adhering to equality legislation. When something becomes part of the organisational strategy, it tends to receive the necessary attention it deserves. This is because failure on this issue would work as a stumbling block for the organisation in attaining its overall objective.

There are various aspects that can be used to measure diversity within the organisation. These measures are both qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative measures include individual employee satisfaction survey, organisational cultural analysis, and customer feedback. Through the surveys, employees tend to give their opinions based on the progress being experienced at the workplace. They are directly affected by the diversity issue hence, can provide an accurate account of events. Customer feedback helps assess how people of a different race were treated while interacting with the organisation. It becomes easy to tell whether different types of people are being valued and respected equally. Quantitative measures on the other hand include Workforce profiling in order to examine trends relating to race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion and belief. For an organisation that upholds diversity, the workforce should not indicate differences based on these attributes. Employees included within the workplace should be diverse with regards to these aspects.

 

References

Hearn, J., & Collinson, D. L. (2012). Men, Diversity at Work and Diversity Management.             Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Work, 14(5), 123-131.

O’Neil, S., & Kulisek, J. (2013). Bare Knuckle People Management: Creating Success with the     Team You Have – Winners, Losers, Misfits, and All. Dallas: BenBella Books.

Özbiligin, M. (2010). Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Work.

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