Introduction
Multinational firms continue to establish diverse policies and initiatives regarding recruitment, promotion, management, attraction, selection and retention of workers from different echelons of society. Essentially, diverse management policies have been critical in enabling the underprivileged people to access employment prospects. However, several challenges exist in the management of diversity within the workplace (Kirton & Greene, 2012). As such, multinational firms must come up with initiatives and policies to solve myriads of challenges related to diversity within the workplace. Therefore, the case study explores challenges related to diversity within the workplace.
Challenges
Current human resources management experiences numerous problems in relation to recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce in European nations. For instance, rigid work practices characterized by discriminative policies that are principally intended for immigrants, disabled and adult employees are common across European nations such as UK (Cornelius, 2002). Additionally, the multinational firms often fail to recognize the proficiencies and experiences of the underprivileged workers. In most cases, firms show stereotypical ideas on the potentials of these workers thereby obstructing their career needs.
Occupational segregation especially based on sexual orientation is common within the European labor market. Actually, women are given tasks perceived to be female-dominated such as clerical and sales services. Studies show that males occupy seventy percent of managerial jobs across Europe. Additionally, immigration policies and procedures in attaining citizenship in European nations are discriminative in nature. In fact, immigration policies technically exclude minority ethnic cultures within the mainstream job market. For instance, immigrants are often denied employment contracts through the application of such policies (Cornelius, 2002).
Further, job recruitment processes are often inclined to nationality, gender, age and race. As such, potential employees are discouraged. Actually, the discrimination of ethno-cultural minorities that are not considered Europeans or Caucasians regarding employment opportunities is a common problem in most European multinational companies. For example, Afghanis are employed within the lowest-paid jobs in the UK. Moreover, many multinationals fail to recognize employees’ rights such as equal opportunities irrespective of cultural background (Holt-Larsen & Mayrhofer, 2006). The international corporations also fail to adjust communication systems to meet the needs of employees from diverse backgrounds. Failure to accommodate employees’ needs including language, religion and family responsibilities is also a major form of discrimination.
Recommendations and Solutions
Embracing inclusivity of all employees in the operations of the multinational corporations is critical in providing solution to managing workplace diversity (Leibold & Voelpel, 2007). Currently, European multinational firms should come up with legislations advocating for workers’ equal rights to achieve equivalent opportunities for all employees irrespective of cultural background. In addition, firms should pursue affirmative action to attain fairness in employment prospects by focusing on specific groups of employees as well as correcting the wrongs committed in the past.
In other words, the multinational firms should encompass improvements and sensitivity of workplace diversity as well as carry out cultural audit and tactics to attain the organization results. Through diversity improvement, the firms should alter the organizational traditions by selecting, recruiting and retaining personnel from different backgrounds. Additionally, firms should be sensitive to diversity through accommodation of employees’ needs including language, religion and family responsibilities. In other words, to conquer adversity firms should promote open communication as well as teamwork among employees (Wilton, 2010). Besides, through cultural audit, firms are capable of identifying the bottlenecks faced by personnel and modify the practices to meet employees’ needs.
Conclusion
Numerous problems are experienced in the management, recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce in European nations ranging from discriminative policies to failure in accommodating employees’ needs including language, religion and family responsibilities. As such, embracing inclusivity of employees in the operations of the multinational corporations is critical in providing solution to managing workplace diversity.
References
Cornelius, N. (2002). Building workplace equality: Ethics, diversity and inclusion. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
Holt-Larsen, H. & Mayrhofer, W. (2006). Managing human resources in Europe. Oxford, UK: Taylor & Francis.
Kirton, G. & Greene, A. (2012). The Dynamics of managing diversity. London, UK: Routledge.
Leibold, M. & Voelpel, S. C. (2007). Managing the aging workforce: Challenges and solutions. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Wilton, N. (2010). An introduction to human resource management. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.