Practices And Challenges Of Managing Workforce Diversity: Case Of United Nation Economic Commission For Africa (UNECA)
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Date
2018-06-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Advances in technology and the advent of a global economy bring the people of the world closer together than ever before. Given this fact, businesses, educational systems and other entities are investigating ways to better recruit their workforce by attracting and retaining the best and most qualified workers. The principal objective of this study was to assess the practical implementations of managing diversity and exploring the challenges and identify the opportunities that ECA has due to having diversified workforce. Because the area of diversity and diversity management is so broad, there was a need to focus mainly on the areas of three selected dimensions of diversity (gender, ethnicity and educational back ground) with the four identified best diversity management practices (Management commitment, Diversity Training, Employee Involvement and Recruitment &Selection).
The methodological framework consisted of a combination of quantitative and qualitative research approach. The design which have been used in this study were exploratory and descriptive research design. Based on March 2018 HR data of the organization, out of 772 employees sample size of 234 non-supervisory employees and 137 supervisory level managers were selected for the study. Stratified sample design was used to determine the sample size from each strata based on the organographies of the case organization and simple random sampling method used to distribute the questionnaires in each strata. The sampling techniques that used in this study were both probability (simple random) and non-probability (purposive) sampling. Beside to this, secondary data has been used for crosschecking purpose.
The Data collected through the questionnaire was analyzed statistically by using the Software Package for Social Science (SPSS) Ve.20. It was then summarized using frequency, mean and standard deviation. The major findings have been presented based on the objective of the study, there is less management commitment and some problems related with employee involvement are also found in ECA. And also there are some challenges in the process of managing diversity like: the presence of insufficient career advancement program. Experience sharing and effective communications were the opportunities which have not been used by the organization. The researcher recommended that the HR procedure needs some review related with how diversities are handle and should properly develop trainings under diversity issue.
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Keywords
Diversity, Diversity Management, Workforce Diversity