Supporting Cultural Diversity in the Workplace

Organisations are no doubt aware of the need to comply with anti-discrimination legislation, but actively encouraging cultural diversity in the workplace is becoming increasingly important – it can offer potential benefits far beyond simple compliance with the law.

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits, and how organisations can manage cultural diversity.

THE definition of cultural diversity

According to Diversity Council Australia, cultural diversity is “the variation between people in terms of how they identify on a range of dimensions, including ancestry, ethnicity, ethno-religiosity, language, national origin, race and/or religion“.

Having a culturally diverse workplace simply means that you employ staff with a range of different backgrounds.

why is cultural diversity important?

Staff members from a variety of cultures offer different perspectives, knowledge and experience, which can be very valuable to organisations.

Some of the benefits of cultural diversity include:

• Thanks to the internet, many businesses now have clients spread out across the globe. Having a culturally diverse staff can help facilitate stronger relationships with these clients, potentially providing a competitive advantage and even boosting market share.
• Having a variety of different backgrounds and experiences in your workforce can encourage innovation and ‘out of the box’ creative thinking and decision making.
• Fostering a tolerant, inclusive workplace is important from an employee point of view – staff are likely to be happier and more productive working in an environment where it is clear that everyone is respected for their differences.
• A diverse and inclusive workplace can also help attract and retain top talent.

So how can organisations support diversity?

 Some tips for managing diversity include:

• Celebrating regular diversity days to recognise and support differences in your employees. However, it is important to be aware of cultural sensitivities, and avoid the appearance of tokenism.
• Creating policies that support an inclusive environment for people from a range of cultural backgrounds and set out what behaviour will be regarded as discriminatory or prejudiced.
• Communicating these policies to all staff members.
• Imposing penalties in circumstances where inclusion policies are not being followed.
• Making sure that those in management positions set a good example for inclusive behaviour.
• Being clear about what each staff member is accountable for, so everyone is treated fairly.
• Offering all staff training in cultural awareness and understanding. This could take the form of seminars or workshops, and perhaps including first-hand accounts of what it’s like to be from a particular cultural background.
• Ensuring that the business has some flexibility to fit in with cultural needs. For example, a business with a high number of Muslim employees may wish to offer a prayer room, or those with Indigenous members of staff may wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land prior to formal meetings or events.
• Being flexible enough to allow employees from different backgrounds to take time away for important religious and cultural rites.

Research has found that business performance improves when employees feel highly included and think their workplace is strongly committed to supporting diversity.

If your workplace is having issues with managing diversity, WISE Workplace provides a number of services to assist you, including cultural surveys and mediation.