Introduction
The contemporary, diverse US society faces a lot of challenges related to freedom, equity, and equality in both personal and professional life spheres. Multiculturalism and democracy freedoms are incorporated in the most decisive approaches that aim at guaranteeing equal opportunities for everyone. In the workplace, it is vital to implement freedom-oriented policies that would address the needs of each employee for the successful performance of the company which significantly depends on the operation of every participant of the working process. It takes all employees’ effort to preserve a comfortable work atmosphere for a diverse population that constitutes the staff of the company.
Political Freedom
The concept of political freedom concerns many spheres of an individual’s life in modern American society. Freedom in connection with morality is manifested in “resisting unfreedom” (Klausen, 2016, p. 3). Thus, political freedom addresses the rights of humans to express their opinions openly and freely in a way that might influence politics. Since politics embraces a variety of areas, political freedom impacts the individuals’ economic well-being, health-care, education, transportation, and professional realization.
Equality of Opportunity
Political freedom concerns the equality of opportunity in the workplace, too. This concept implies that since every individual has political freedom for development in any sphere, he or she has to have equal conditions with the others to obtain an opportunity to compete for advantage and welfare (Mancilla, 2017). When applied to the company’s corporate environment, every employee is given equal opportunities and should apply their knowledge, skill, and professional competence to perform and receive benefits.
Equity and Equality in the Workplace
The issue of equality of opportunity leads to the discussion of two important concepts of freedom – equity and equality. Representing similar notions, they are different and concern contradictory approaches to workforce management. Equality aims at the equalization of the opportunities for everyone that will give a valid result only in case if everyone was in equal conditions from the very beginning (Gilead, 2018). On the contrary, equity might be defined as the attempt to provide everyone with the same degree of welfare concerning the difference between them at the starting point.
There are different ways equality and equality affect individuals’ lives. It concerns gender issues that imply equal rights for men and women, race diversity that imposes unprejudiced attitude toward different races and nationalities, and the class difference that should be eliminated as a reason for inequality. Also, equality and equity concern the sphere of health-related issues that deal with disabled people at the workplace.
Finally, the discussed concepts apply to the sphere of political views where each should be respected regardless of his or her political preferences. The aim of the implementation of the workplace culture policy is to guarantee adherence to both concepts. Both equity and equality need to become integral parts of the company’s corporate culture not only to ensure the equalization of benefits for each individual but also to provide them with opportunities and assistance corresponding to their needs.
Conclusion and Policy Implementation
In conclusion, the task the company needs to accomplish is to implement the policy of equity and equality as the core concepts of the workplace culture. The human resource department and the managers will initiate programs and training that will be based on the codes presenting information aimed at the elimination of any inequality in the company working environment. The company that employs specialists of different genders, races, classes, with varying political views and health conditions must be guaranteed with equal rights and opportunities in their workplace. The training, discussions, and overall raising awareness of the issue should be prioritized as the measures for workplace welfare improvement.
References
Gilead, T. (2018). Equality and equity in education finance: A conceptual analysis. In I. BenDavid-Hadar (Ed.), Education finance, equality, and equity (pp. 167-178). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Klausen, J. C. (2016). Fugitive Rousseau: Slavery, primitivism, and political freedom. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Mancilla, A. (2017). Theories of justice. T. Campbell & A. Mancilla (Eds.). New York, NY: Routledge.