Yesterday we attended the first #DiversityInTheBoardroom think tank meeting to discuss what we can do about a lack of diverse leadership in Birmingham. It got us thinking about managing diversity in the workplace - our CEO Joy Warmington has spoken about this before: Unlike outside in our real lives where we don’t have to talk to a neighbour if we don’t want to we don’t have to say hello to someone as they come down the street, within a workplace context we’re actually all thrown together. And it’s that throwing together that we have to find a way of navigating. And most of the time, it doesnt matter. Most of the time people rub along quite well together but when we bring ourselves to work we’re not just brining us, we’re often brining our religion, our culture, our colour, our identity – all of those things become part of workplace culture. The challenge around that is when our values butt against one another in the context of a workplace environment, and often our ability to manage that is actually quite challenged by what we know of how we are supposed to act and be together at work. So, we’re often told it’s good to have diversity, it’s good to have different cultures coming together, what we don’t seem to be able to understand is where our own personal values and beliefs stop and the contract that we have to deliver our work begins. And it’s that edge that managers often find difficult, so ‘should I be accepting of people’s values and beliefs and cultures’ yes, but the degree to which I should be accepting of that in the context of the work that’s got to be delivered, less clear to me Watch the video here:
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 10:30:18 +0000
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