Aren't these collective differences what we strive to engage in our quest to create a diverse workforce? Politically motivated conversations in the workplace should never come at the expense of others. Conner Industries is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. Or are the things that youre doing designed more to mollify our own feelings than to tackle the real challenges brought up by diversity? Of the 81 Departmental Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries in Canberra, less than 5% come from non-European backgrounds. Governments make decisions that affect our everyday life. For example, more diversity can result in increased, and reduced turnover, as employees who feel included, accepted, and valued are happier and more engaged. Do you think they could really do this under pressure? All rights reserved. To give you some sense of how this stacks up in terms of representativeness, this would be equivalent to women comprising only 15% of total honours recipients. I want to talk to you about the old neighbourhood where I grew up, here in South West Sydney. The combination of different ideas from different backgrounds has made America the greatest country in the world its not too late to leverage this same strength in the workplace. Also politics in this my African continent is full of tribalism, nepotism, corruption and other social evils hence leading to the suffering of the societies. Which all goes back to some of those questions that I posed at the outset involving our imaginary, invisible discriminator. Follow James Adonis on Twitter. Be careful not to assume what side of the political chasm your co-workers occupy, and dont judge the person based on a stated candidate preference. When one lives life aware of the importance of politics, aware that every decision has an impact on an entire population, aware that your individual behaviour is not the result of just you and those immediately around you, but it is also a result of governance, one can acknowledge why its worth fighting for. Allowing for diverse perspectives can help your business thrive. Many of you will be familiar of course with the intense debate that has taken place during the past year and a half or two years around the Racial Discrimination Act, particularly the racial vilification provisions of 18C and 18D. This data suggests that both well-developed and high growth tech companies have a long way to go in terms of political diversity. Heres what we found by looking at some of the bell weathers across a variety of industries: While Wall Street has a reputation for being a bit on the conservative side, these banks are highly politically diverse with almost all firms hovering around a 50/50 split between the two parties. In a 2018 study conducted during my term at the Australian Human Rights Commission, we found only about 3 per cent of the federal ministry and 5 per cent of members of Federal Parliament had a non-European or Indigenous background. While companies have shifted a lot of focus on promoting a sense of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, there are inevitable changes that come with politics. Lets think about what the future Australian workforce is going to look like. Identify one way to improve your self-awareness.The improvement you identify here must be related to working with diverse people/children, such as speaking my mind but choosing my words carefully so I do not offend anyone. This can be connected to the belief system that is typically seen from the Republican Party. IBM has the most political diversity, but there is still nearly a 70% liberal majority. We have become more overtly religious with emphasis placed on the outward appearances and conformity. Our workplaces across the country are, of course, manifestations of the diversity that we have. What does this practically look like? As you mentioned in your article, Trump has done numerous actions against the LGBTQ+ community that are deemed unforgivable transgender individuals are banned from entering the military, discrimination can be placed against LGBTQ+ individuals looking for employment, and even some in the community can be rejected by doctors due to their beliefs, which goes against everything doctors swore to provide the public when they were introduced into practice. It promotes productivity when individuals are treated with equality. She made international news as someone who let her religious (and, by default, her political) views influence her work. What one person may regard, for example, as the qualities of being inoffensive and diligent and productive, can sound a lot like another way of saying passivity, acquiescence, subservience. Related to that is privilege. Diversity will endure. Improving political diversity in these industries is important because having such political homogeneity can be isolating for the few employees who do have differing views. Perhaps most pertinent to all of us here today, theres another scene, involving an interview. But if that is the case, if we have been a successful multicultural country, how then do we reconcile the persistence of racial discrimination, how do we reconcile the lingering, insidious presence of that invisible discriminator who continues to whisper in the ears of many, including in the workplace? In the authors' view, this is good news for SBS as a . This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. Can you really imagine them as a leader? While you should keep political diversity in mind when thinking about diversity as a whole at your business, supporting political diversity should never be taken as support for any form of intolerance or discrimination. Its vitally important that business leaders understand how these events will affect their employees and the possible responses from either side of the debate. Now you might say such findings relate only to discrimination at the entry level of employment. In the age of social media and accountability, comes the importance of one major factor that affects the decisions behind individuals that are seeking new employment. While people typically think of diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender, these may not be the only areas of diversity where businesses are falling short. People who are discriminated against face various disadvantages such as low pay at work, lower chances of getting a promotion, and experiencing negative feelings from others in society. We barely see any diversity within the highest levels of politics and government. There you had 5000 people gathering in this township to protest against new laws that had been introduced by the apartheid government, namely, the so-called pass laws which required all black men and women to carry personal identification papers. And its one that can be summed up in three words: empathy, power, privilege. Davis was jailed in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses after gay weddings became legal. Editing or omitting your personal political beliefs from friends, family, and colleagues has become a widespread common practice. Political factors play a role in the process of economic development including trade laws, regime type, policy management, and corruption. Perhaps avoiding political discussions in the office is prudent, but in this age of texts, tweets and posts the idea everyone can be politically agnostic is naive. This discrimination was targetting the category membership of those that go against conventional norms and thus are seen as the out-group rather than the in-group of society. In 1975, the Racial Discrimination Act came into force, making discrimination in different parts of public life against the law. There is no other country that has done so well at this as we have." This action can be used to dominant those higher in the social ladders. A less open preselection process, the failure to collect basic data and too little focus on improving diverse representation, culturally and linguistically, are factors across all parties. So is political diversity really an issue in some industries? There are only currently two who are of Indigenous background. For all of our cultural diversity, for all of our multicultural success, we dont seem to see this being replicated at the levels of leadership in our institutions. If you had an Italian sounding name, 12% more. That is a real pity. Ans. And to be politically conscious is to care about your life. It leads to situations where improvements only come with landslide victories, such as those in Victoria and Western Australia, which elected Asian Australians into seats that no one expected they would win. So the problem were talking about here is far from marginal; it is something much more prevalent than what you might expect. Which is totally fine, of course, but doing so opens them up immediately to the biases mentioned earlier, only this time theyre probably not so unconscious. Used to help protect the website against Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks. Governments make decisions that affect our everyday life. There is a powerful symbolism in improved political representation. And explain how cultural diversity can contribute to the misunderstandings? Recall two difficulties that can occur in the workplace as a teacher's aide in the classroom. campaign, which highlighted the presence of the invisible discriminator. The impact of diversity in the workplace is largely positive, bringing different viewpoints into the organization and broadening the company's perspective. From a political perspective, its almost certain left-wingers, when given the option to do so, would mostly choose to work with left-wingers, even though theyre unlikely to be consciously aware theyre making such a decision. Australia likes to see itself as punching above its weight as a middle power, but this boast does not hold true when it comes to the representation of cultural diversity in politics. Diversity has always been one of Americas strengths, but recently, political diversity has seemed to stop the free flow of ideas in its tracks. Many of you will have seen some advertisements not long ago from Beyond Blues Stop. Guidance: Select five (5) responses. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. For any reason. 4. Lastly, lets take a look at growth-stage technology companies: These high growth companies show extreme political homogeneity. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Other research shows that companies with high executive and board diversity had returns on equity that were on average 53% higher than those with low levels of diversity. Increased mutual respect and understanding can be used to create beautiful things, 3 Reasons to Leave Recycled Pallets in the Past. Past efforts to de-hyphenate India from Pakistan are giving way to very different leaders in changed circumstances. Political diversity in the workplace is all but unavoidable in 2021. It is important that we are able to identify this as a possible cause for the under-representation of diversity. While the leadership of President Obama lead us to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2010, it was quickly reversed under the leadership of President Trump (Zugelder, M . Are you doing enough? Retaining Long-Term Employees 3. Solomon Islands finds itself tangled in a web of deep grievances and duelling powers keen to curry favour. Now that has a slightly different ring to it. Growth Of Work Opportunities It is not about fairness alone. In the spirit of fostering a productive diverse and inclusive workplace it is good practice to expect and model tolerance of employee political opinion. Lets begin specifically with our Federal Parliament. The panel will be moderated by the ABC journalist Kumi Taguchi. Let me just read to you the list of the names of the 17 heads of Federal Government Departments. To put it another way, you could say that breaking the glass ceiling or cracking the cultural ceiling are things which are not to be regarded as mutually exclusive. Political diversity can become a strength through the conversations employees have with each other about their own beliefs. While most would know Labor Senator Penny Wong, there are few Asian-Australian federal MPs and not a single Asian-Australian federal minister. Cultural diversity brings different perceptions and values into touch with one another. We are told what to wear, what to do, how to behave and even what time to come home. Be the person who says: I respect your right to have a different view than me. Stick to topics that have less of a chance of hitting someone personally. Select Accept to consent or Reject to decline non-essential cookies for this use. Conner Industries is a leading provider of industrial wood and packaging solutions. ), Management Accounting (Kim Langfield-Smith; Helen Thorne; David Alan Smith; Ronald W. Hilton), Principles of Marketing (Philip Kotler; Gary Armstrong; Valerie Trifts; Peggy H. Cunningham), Lawyers' Professional Responsibility (Gino Dal Pont), Culture and Psychology (Matsumoto; David Matsumoto; Linda Juang), Financial Accounting: an Integrated Approach (Ken Trotman; Michael Gibbins), Il potere dei conflitti. The Holistic Approach to Employer Branding. They assumed the average hourly wage of an employee is . The image that Australia wants to project of being the most successful multicultural country in the world is shattered by a simple look at Australias parliament. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2008549/modules/items/27030730, Zugelder, M., & Champagne, P. (2018). The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Non Necessary". It also affects the ways organizations understand that employees holding diverse perspectives elevate the need to reduce conflicts among employees belonging to diverse identity groups. The quality of life enhances when people belonging to diverse social groups are accepted and treated equally. You might say well maybe its a bit unfair if we are just look at Departmental Secretaries; if we were to look the rung below, perhaps we might find a different, more positive, encouraging picture. What is exactly the role of Human Resources professionals in all of this? Ultimately, talented people come from all backgrounds this includes racial, ethnic, and even political backgrounds. The advertisements were aired to raise awareness about the harms of racism against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The one aberration that was found in the research was that in Melbourne it was in fact an advantage if you had an Italian sounding name, not a disadvantage. The cookie is used to tracks the users activity across the internet on the browser such as visit timestamp, IP address, and most recently visited webpages. There is a cognitive dissonance in championing a diverse, multicultural population and at the same time maintaining extremely unrepresentative corridors of power. The next scene, we see a woman walk into a corner shop getting herself a pint of milk: the invisible discriminator emerges to whisper in the shopkeepers ear: Are you sure you know what shes doing? Then you have a woman stepping onto a bus: the bus is almost full, theres one seat free next to an elderly Aboriginal man who picks up his bag to make the seat vacant. We specialize in supplying cut lumber (softwoods, hardwoods, and panel products) needed for pallets, crates, and skid parts, fully assembled custom pallets, crates, engineered packaging solutions, and a wide variety of services tailored to customer needs. Deciding that he wanted to understand racial segregation, Griffin, a white American, underwent ultraviolent treatments and began taking drugs in order to turn his fair skin into a darker pigmentation. This cookies is installed by Google Universal Analytics to throttle the request rate to limit the colllection of data on high traffic sites. One of the first things leaders can do to create a more open and honest environment is by simply addressing the situation. Were talking about a society where about 20% of Australians experience racial discrimination of some kind. Its clear that diversity should be something that businesses are thinking about, but what does diversity look like? Why Diversity Matters Promoting diversity can improve your company's brand and public image but offers numerous other benefits as well. Interesting blog entry! Two of these companies, Etsy and HubSpot, lack republican representation entirely. This situation can happen for a variety of unintended reasons, such as known executive opinion or local political leanings. Well go with mutual respect.. Explain how diverse political, social, economic and cultural factors impact on work and the lives of people in society. This cookie is used to measure the number and behavior of the visitors to the website anonymously. What the tool consists of is 30 items across areas including leadership, strategy, staff, culture and monetary. Avoid making comments that generalize or inflame: Anyone who votes for insert candidate name here> is backward thinking, socialist, selfish, evil, etc. Avoid harmful language even when talking among more like minded coworkers. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. (2017). Despite this recent trend, political diversity can still be used by leaders as one of their greatest tools. But I leave you with this question. This group is estimated to have around 12 million people and thus is a hot topic in politics. Candidate rhetoric and media hype is building, and individual passion and emotion run deep. The Director of Learning and Impact Strategies is a member of the URI senior management team and collaborates closely with the Global Programs and the Partnerships and Violence Prevention Teams to . Hayden was interview Answered over 90d ago 100 % So how then do we embrace diversity in the workplace? This post is written by a guest author. Thats correct. Of course even foreign policy, environment or taxes may hit a personal juggernaut so best to tread carefully and keep the tone light. Despite several inquiries attesting to its independent and objective news coverage, its journalists are still accused of being biased more to the left, as our former prime minister remarked in recent months. Also, employees with different political affiliations may have different approaches to problem-solving, allowing them to offer some invaluable insights. Trump enacted a controversial order to promote free speech and religion by allowing businesses to discriminate against individuals that identify with the LGBT group (2018). The process guarantees its owners to participating in the decision making process in policies that affect their political, social, and economical life. The purpose of the cookie is to enable LinkedIn functionalities on the page. In other words, stick to foreign policy and taxes and avoid immigration and abortion debates. Copyright Australian Human Rights Commission, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice. Ever. Fostering an open and honest work environment can be difficult sometimes. No matter how your employees vote, your companys ultimate goal should be to foster a culture of respect and inclusion by acknowledging an individuals right to his or her own opinion while also ensuring that all views that are expressed are respectful of all people. The Importance of Redundancies in Manufacturing. To note specific user identity. Lowy Institute. Lets return quickly to that ANU study involving resumes, which found that people with Chinese sounding names or Middle-Eastern sounding names suffered from ostensible discrimination. It has on it a number of inscriptions in a number of different languages, in Chinese, in Vietnamese, in Khmer, in Lao and in English. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. So what is personal and social identity? If we were to think though about why embracing or being explicit about celebrating diversity matters, I think we can put it in the following terms: it is about capturing talent, it is about boosting innovation, it is about encouraging productivity. The cookie is set by Google Analytics and is used to throttle the request rate. And explain how social diversity contributed to the misunderstanding? More than 5% of New Zealand parliamentarians have Asian heritage, as do 12.8% of Canadian MPs and 3.8% of members of the US Congress. I salute you for having the courage to write what should have been written eons ago. Please try again later. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. But I also would like to challenge you about how you should deal with cultural diversity, because too often we think of diversity as just being about festivals, about being about lunches or maybe an event or two that we should have in our workplace to celebrate our diversity and show how inclusive we are. Lets consider as well our universities and the senior leadership of our universities. Moraitis, Glyde, Clarke, Richardson, Paul, Leon, Tune, Varghese, Halton, Campbell, Bowles, Beauchamp, Mrdak, Pratt, de Brouwer, Thawley, Lewis, Fraser. Cleanr theme by WPShoppe. Leveraging political diversity in 2021 can take a delicate touch, so weve put some guidelines together to help you. Journal of Business Diversity,18(1). Applied Social Psychology (ASP). Forcibly putting your opinion forward as fact with the intent to intimidate, harass or call out a team member is simply not O.K. What we do with the campaign is we invite organisations across the country interested in demonstrating their commitment to tolerance and diversity and inclusion to join as supporters, to undertake some work in countering prejudice. Many of you would have had delicious lunches in your workplace; you might have might have encouraged workers to dress up in their ancestral costumes or do something to express their cultural heritage. Do you think they really have the right fit? Society changes according to politics. Politics isnt just about the government. If you look at our public service, you see a similar pattern as well. All for decency, I presume, and ironic indeed. Well, based on an exercise I did in 2014, of the 64 Deputy Secretaries in the Australian Public Service at the time, there were only a handful of those with non-European backgrounds. The Advantage Of Skilled Labor International Business Devising Profitable Strategies Expanding Markets Quality Resources Guaranteed Success Plans Improving Brand Image 4. Consider the honours lists around Australia Day and the Queens Birthday. You may think you know your co-workers, but you likely dont know them as well as you think you do. A. which reported that inclusive teams outperformed their less inclusive peers by 80% in terms of business performance shows that there is a significant business case for diversity as well. Whats Next for the #Quiet Hashtag Trend? The data includes the number of visits, average duration of the visit on the website, pages visited, etc. Political affiliation is largely a reflection of collective personal experiences, and it is important no employee is discounted or rejected for their views. I absolutely agree with you! Pharmaceuticals, Food & Beverage, Consumer Goods, Heavy Industrial, Pipe, Steel & Heavy Equipment. According to an analysis in last months Journal of Organizational Behavior, this may be due to the increasing divisiveness of politics, the willingness to be more vocal, and the availability of different platforms [such as social media] to express and identify opinions, ultimately invading the workplace where its normally expected that you leave your personal life at the door. Despite its relative success as a socially cohesive society, Australia is seen to have a poor global reputation on race relations compared to other English-speaking Western democracies. Surely, if this is a stereotype, it is a good stereotype; it doesnt reflect any adverse judgement based on culture or ethnicity. In the Financial Times, there was a report about a study by the American Sociological Association which found that every 1% rise in gender ethnic diversity results in a 3-9% rise in the sales revenue. This cookie is set bu scorecardresearch.com. It wont come as a shock to anyone. For better or for worse, gone are the days of pretending that politics stay at the door when employees come to work. If leaders are informed, have clarified company expectations of mutual respect, and have created an open and honest environment in their office, political diversity can become a strength, rather than a weakness. Her job description was quite simple: issue marriage licences thats it. Now I think its worth reflecting on where Harmony Day comes from. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form. Home|Careers|Press|About. Its an unfortunate view because politics is about life. It is about ensuring that the status quo does not serve to advantage others and disadvantage others. 2020 500 Words Magazine. There are some interesting statistics from America, which illustrate that share prices for publicly listed companies can drop significantly within 24 hours when a diversity related complaint becomes public. There is, naturally enough, an organisational interest in harmony, in stability, ensuring that people can get along. This can lead to some employees being excluded or silenced. political social economic cultural legal and ethical considerations (international, national, state/territory, local) for working with diversity, how these impact individual workers, and the consequences of breaches: discrimination: age disability racial sex human rights: Universal declaration of human rights Ive spoken to some who have suggested to me that if youre really serious about diversity and inclusion, you cant put your faith in human resources, at least in human resources alone. Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. Weve all referred to how the women used to wear short dresses and bars were open to the public. This government has failed to prioritise health and education, has failed to better our standards of living, has failed to keep its people happy, and the list is a bottomless one.. with allegiance to Australia and a sense of national unity which cuts across ethnic groups. Social identity is the coming together of those personal identities amongst a group of similar interests and similar emotional investment. Cultural diversity is viewed as beneficial to the country as a whole, bringing But the way that such responses can be interpreted by those in leadership positions can be quite different. Once we realise that a better government is not one that would just have the banner of democratically elected, improve infrastructure here and there and resolve our economic woes, but one that will actively contribute to our everyday life for the better, then maybe well decide that that is something worth fighting for. They featured a number of scenarios. And also identify one way to improve social awareness. M.F.M. Its ultimately about power. The threat to pre-empt and target Pakistan nuclear weapons is a false promise, and one that is fraught with serious risks. Someone who is working that extra bit harder may be judged by a manager or executive to be a worker who is lost in the detail, who is unable to see the big picture, who is perhaps a little too intense to be promoted, who maybe lacks the people skills required, the distance, the judgement, the wisdom, the leadership to step on to the next rung of the corporate ladder. Although many companies have faced increased pressure to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace, a lack of diverse hiring teams, limited recruiting processes that fail to reach a broad candidate pool, and unconscious similarity biases have contributed to many companies continued struggle to improve diversity in their workplace. PSYCH 424, Section 001: Applied Soc Psy. To think that the next report or the next pitch is going to be even better than the last one to be convinced that sheer work and merit will ensure that their boss cannot overlook them for that next promotion. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. Quite often, it begins with just asking people about their experiences and listening. Let me speak now about the responses that can be made to all of this and some of the work we do at the Australian Human Rights Commission. Let me ask you: is that enough? It is a sort of 'hetero-nationalism' (Comaroff, 1996) which attempts to accommodate cultural diversity within a European-style nation state. These cookies can only be read from the domain that it is set on so it will not track any data while browsing through another sites. How would these diversity . There are three additional parts to these groups, age, sex, and arbitrary set (PSU, 2019). Recent complaints from conservative employees about liberal bias at their companies suggest that there may be a lack of political diversity in certain industries as well. In order for leaders to leverage political diversity in the workplace, they must foster an open and honest environment among employees, preventing hostility when it comes to inappropriate political conversation, and keep up with the most current events that could affect their business or employees. The cookie is set by Instagram. Now we dont need to do anything as radical as that to be able to empathise. The 2018 Leading for Change report from the Australian Human Rights Commission showed that only 4% of federal MPs had non-European ancestry, compared to 19% of the Australian population.