Lisa Slevitch: Diversity at Workplace

In the international week, we had a lecture from Lisa Slevitch, who is a lecturer from Oklahoma State University. The lecture’s topic was diversity at workplace. When we are talking about diversity at workplace, first we have to define what diversity between humans is. Diversity means the physical and cultural differences between individuals. Examples of these two are age, gender, race, ethnic heritage, sexual orientation, education, work style, first language, religion, income, family status, and geographical location.

The workplace is changing and there are five factors that hospitality industry is facing at the moment. First factor is globalization of the business, the second is ageing of the workforce, and the third is that there are more women in the industry than men. The last two factors are the diminishing workforce and increasing number of immigrants.

All in all there are many advantages of diversity. One of them is that it promotes creativity and innovation at workplace. Diversity also improves organizational flexibility and companies that contain diversity have competitive advantage in the labor market. In addition diversity has a positive impact on employees: they become more loyal to the company, they are more productive in their work and they are more committed to their work.

There are many things that individual managers can do concerning diversity. Management should be aware of diversity at the workplace and help to understand the expectations, behavior, and outcomes between workers. It’s important to educate employers to diversity issues and focus on the positive differences between employees. It’s also important that managers motivate according to individual needs and recruit broadly and select fairly.

I think Lisa Slevitch’s lecture on the topic was great. We have had lectures about the topic before, but I think Lisa Slevitch managed to go well through the topic in two hours. I haven’t been thinking diversity that much in my daily life, but it’s still an important topic in the work culture for all. When I become a manager I want to be fair and create a multicultural team for me!