Before coming to UBC, I was living in Mexico. I was studying in one of the most prestigious Mexican universities, called TEC de Monterrey, as a result, I was never immersed in a diversity prone workplace amongst my classmates. Everyone was Mexican and more or less same social class, therefore similar values. This meant that whenever I had to make a group project, the team members were all very similar to me.
At that time my opinion was that the lack of diversity only brought benefits. I was able to get understood and to understand my colleagues very easy, mostly because all of us shared the same ideas. This made it possible to get the work done in an easygoing way, due to the lack of discussions.
It was at UBC when I realized that diversity has many benefits as well. Here you get to work with people from all around the world, that always brings up good and different ideas.
My classmate Isabel Alfonso, recently made a blog talking about the advantages and disadvantages of having diversity in the workplace. She states that having diversity is helpful because you get many different opinions or ways to approach problems, which leads to better conclusions or solutions. On the other hand, she states that diversity creates a language barrier that is bad for a company and that it can also create discrimination within the employees.
As we saw in COMM 292, we can conclude diversity is a good thing to have in the workplace, if you know how to adjust it. Yes, there can be problems by having diversity in the company, but they can be solved. Changing the company´s/school policy over diversity will make the company/school to have more diversity among the employees or students. By changing the policy, you will just get the disadvantages of diversity because many of the workers will not share the same opinion about the new policy. In order to get the advantages, you must create or shape the culture of the organization.
By having a pro-diversity culture in the organization, you will have employees that value diversity and that know they can get better results by working with people that think different. I just want to add, that it is amazing how schools are being more pro-diversity, this prepares students to know by experience that diversity is the key to success.
Word count: 395
References:
Alfonso, Isabel. “Diversity in the Workplace – Isabel Alfonso’s Blog.” Isabel Alfonso´s Blog. The University of British Columbia, 2 Feb. 2017. Web. 01 Apr. 2017.
Langton, Stephen P., and Nancy Robbins. Organizational Behaviour: Concepts, Controversies, Applications. N.p.: Pearson Education Canada, 2009. Print.
Microsoft. “Diversity Clip Art Free | Clipart Panda – Free Clipart Images.” Diversity Clip Art Free | Clipart Panda – Free Clipart Images. Clipart Panda, 2014. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.
