Diversity in Companies. A Case Study of Google

I. Table of contents:

II. Executive summary

III. Introduction

IV. Impact of diversity on the workforce.

V. Diversity in Google
a) Women’s position in Google
b) Ethnic groups in Google
c) The Google’s initiatives
d) Recommendations for Google

VI. Conclusion

VII. References:

II. Executive summary

This paper will highlight the importance of diversity. Firstly, I will explain, what diversity is in general. Secondly, I will focus on the diversity’s impact on the workforce. I will emphasise benefits and drawbacks of this phenomenon. I will also adduce some models associated with diversity. Furthermore, I will stress the main issues associated with diversity in Google. I will introduce the situation of women and ethnic groups in this enterprise. In addition, I will stress the initiatives, which Google is involved in and recommend some actions, which company should take to encourage more individuals to technical industry.

III. Introduction

Diversity is a critical ability to innovate and adapt in fast-changing environment. Managing diversity focuses on maximizing the ability of all employees to contribute to organizational goals. Affirmative action concentrates on specific groups because of historical discrimination, such as people of color and women. Affirmative action highlights legal necessity and social responsibility; managing diversity emphasizes business necessity (Roosevelt 2010).

According to Mazur (2010), the diversity is conditioned by primary, secondary and tertiary dimensions. The gender, ethnicity, race, age, disability are counted as the primary dimensions. These characteristics influence the workplace and society the most, shape self-image and world view. The secondary dimensions are less visible than the primary ones, have impact on the individual’s self-esteem and include features such as educational background, religion, culture, work experience, family status, geographic origin, nationality, lifestyle, sexual orientation. The employee’s beliefs, feelings and attitudes are classified as tertiary dimensions.

According to Roosevelt (2010) to success as a diverse company, managers must recognize that the diversity is not only based on race or gender, but also it includes many various dimension such as e.g. personality traits, culture or religion. He argues that the diversity is conditioned by four factors:

1. Personality (e.g. skills and abilities)
2. Internal (e.g. gender, ethnicity)
3. External (e.g. religion, nationality)
4. Organizational (e.g. position, department).

According to Roosevelt (2010), the diversity in business is strong associated with multicultural and multi-ethnic objects of the workforce. He argues that the diversity is a mixture of the aspects conditioned by differences and similarities.

IV. Impact of diversity on the workforce.

Diversity has a positive influence on the prosperity and the growth of the firm. Moreover, this phenomenon breeds innovation, which has great impact on the business success. According to Mckinsey (Walter 2014), the firms, which hire diverse workforce, receive higher earnings and returns on equity. Moreover, Lu Hong and Scott Page (Walter 2014) argue that the diverse groups outperform high ability groups in problem solutions. The Forbes studies (Walter 2014) show that multicultural organizations promote creativity, innovation and influence a business growth.

However, the diversity can lead to frustration and confusion, on the meetings its difficult take arrangements or actions if its disagreement because of cultural conflicts. Traditionally, the majority has always right, thus minorities and women can feel discriminated in some point. According to Peretz (2015), the diversity has connection with lower levels of psychological identification, what result lower productivity, absenteeism and turnover. Moreover, the homogeneus groups outperform multicultural ones because of serious communication problems.

According to Peretz (2015), the diversity has both positive and negative impact on the organization. First of all, the diversity can have affective outcomes, which can lead to lower level of engagement and productivity, because people enjoy working with similar people. Secondly, he emphasizes the cognitive effects, which result in higher level of innovation and creativity. The third consequence is symbolic, which refer to equality in the workforce, what has impact on the organization’s reputation.

According to Basset-Jones (Hudson 2014), the implementing of diversity into the workplace is difficult because of two reasons. First of all, the employees prefer to work in homogeneous groups. Secondly, generally people avoid and resist the change. The adaption of the change associated with diversity according to Lewin’s Model (Kotter 2012) is a complex activity, which relies on three stages: unfreezing, movement, refreezing. In the first stage, the recognition of the change and preparation to transform occur, secondly the company incorporate new attitudes visible new trends, finally stabilization incorporate new policies and regulations.

The organization has to should utilize the number of methods to avoid complications in the adaptation. According to John Kotter and Leo Schlesinger model (Kotter 2012), the resistance is the result of the misunderstanding and inaccurate information, thus the organization has to inform and educate individuals through trainings or group meetings about the phenomenon such as diversity. According to John Kotter (2012), the organization should first of all create a vision, communicate the vision, and empower people to act on the vision to success implement the change.

Diversity has a significant impact on changing human processes. According to Aronson (2011), to success, the organization has to take everyday actions and involve all levels of employees. The companies should incorporate variety of policies and regulations in order to motivate diversity initiatives and make sure that workplace works for everyone.

According to GAO’s report (2013), the management should particularly focus on the specific practices in order to successfully incorporate diversity into the company. First of all, the company should start recruiting more diverse people and organize training to enhance awareness on the diversity among existing employees. Diversity can help improve the organizational performance and should be linked to strategic plan of the organization. Moreover, the engagement of the leadership, which manifest in demonstrating and communicating a vision of diversity, is crucial to understand and adapt the changes.

However, according to the Aronson’s analysis (Aronson 2011), first of all the employee’s engagement is critical to build a successful diversity at workplace. All employees should be involved in the activities such as trainings and workshops, which improve their understanding of diverse workforce.

V. Diversity in Google

This chapter presents the structure of the workforce in terms of gender and ethnicity in the various sectors of the company.

Figure 5.1: The overall percentage of the workforce in Google.

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Sources: Google website

Figure 5.2: The percentage of the workforce in terms of leadership.

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Source: Google website

Figure 5.3: The percentage of the employees in technological sector.

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthaltenSource: Google website

Figure 5.4: The percent of the workforce in non-technological sector.

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Source: Google website

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