work force diversity

background:The rapid increase in globalization has increased competition of survival and profit making among organizations in developing countries like Nigeria. Through globalization, the advances in technology and the advent of a global economy have brought the people of the world at the same place closer to each other. Businesses, educational systems and other entities are investigating ways to better serve their business environment so as to attract and retain the best and most qualified workers. It has become a challenge for modern organizations to efficiently manage such a diverse work force. The world’s increasing globalization requires more interaction among people from diverse cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds than ever before. People no longer live and work in an insular marketplace; they are now part of a worldwide economy with competition coming from nearly every continent. For this reason, some organizations seems to have fully started accessing the need for diversity so as to become more creative and open to change in order to increase service delivery and profitability of the organizations.  

Some organizations seem to have employed the use of diversity to increase their performances. This is because they may have probably seen diversity as a way of accepting qualified people from different cultures, values, age, and background to improve their organizational performance. However, this may come from the definition of workforce diversity of Babalola (2014) which states that workforce diversity is acknowledging, understanding, accepting, valuing and celebrating differences among people with respect to age, class, ethnicity, gender, physical, and mental ability. Over the past decade, Afolabi and Omole (2015) opined that workforce in developed industrialized countries has become increasingly heterogeneous. These countries are spending huge amount for diversifying the workforce. Thus, diversity is increasingly recognized and utilized as an important organizational resource in regards to whether the goal is to be an employer of choice to provide an excellent customer service or to maintain a competitive edge.

Nevertheless, Mustapha (2015) stated that workforce diversity within an organization can evoke an array of emotions. Many researchers have the opinions that the results of diversity conscious organizations add value to their performance, profitability, and maximizing their performances; and while capitalizing on workplace diversity, it becomes an important tool for the managements to improve on their performances.

However, Osaghae and Suberu (2013) posited that the primary goal of workforce diversity in an organization is to bring in availability and equal opportunities in the workplace. This equal opportunity philosophy is aimed at ensuring that the organizations make the most out of the differences from a diverse workforce rather than losing talent which might assist the organization to be more efficient and effective. The performance of workforce diversity in an organization can be measured in different criteria among them is service delivery, productivity, profits, growth, turnover, stability, cohesion and above all.

In developing countries like Nigeria, it is still controversial to find an answer to whether workforce diversity has a negative or positive impact on organizational performance. Some organizations such as the Breweries Plc Enugu seem to recruit its employees from across the country and also foreigners alike. However, this maybe suggested that its workforce is diverse and this may have been the reason for improvement and sustainability of the organizational performances (Lawrence, 2011). More so, it is also important to understand that workforce diversity has important implications toward management practices and policies which may either increase the performance of the organization or destroys it.

Despite seeing diversity having implications toward management practices and policies, diversity is sometimes viewed in some organizations in a limited fashion, primarily addressing issues of race, ethnicity, cultural or gender differences without thinking on how to use the potentials of workforce diversity to improve their organizational performances. With regard to this reasoning, Ojo (2011) stated that some organizations seem to have not adopted the use of the potentials of workforce diversity, and for this reason, they have not used it to encompass most characteristics that individuals possess; and this therefore seems to have affected the way they think and do things thereby giving room to discrimination and affecting the performance of the organizations.

The inability of carefully understanding workforce diversity, might affect the organizational performance of the company. This is because organizational performance is the ability of an organization to achieve organizational goals more effectively and efficiently. It involves all aspects which directly or indirectly affect and relate to the work of the employees. For performance to be effective, employers have to recognize the regiment desires and needs of the employees and how to make them work as a team in a diversify environment. However, Otite (2012) opined that ways in which employee performance can be increased when considering workforce diversity might include ethnicity, gender, age, mental ability, cultural background, and educational background of the employees. This should be observed after identifying the needs and desires of employees that can be satisfied hence increased performance.

Nevertheless, Tajfel (2014) stated that workforce diversity aims at exchanging of information, profitability, flexibility, and adaptability among colleagues within a working environment. This implies that if organizations exist to unite diverse perspectives, capabilities, and talents in pursuit of common purposes and mutually beneficial results, there must be exchanges of information, profitability, flexibility, and adaptability so as to seek sameness, discourage individuality, promote conformance, reward uniformity, and punish nonconformity. This is because diversity unifies ages, cultural background, and educational status among others for the improvement of an organization. Though, managing diversity is harder than managing the challenges, expenses, time consuming, demanding, stressful, and prone to fail.

However, Nigerian Breweries Plc, Enugu, seems to have employed the use of diversity in running and managing the affairs of the organizations. But the question that remains in mind is how workforce diversity has improved the performance of the company despite the competitive market of brewery industries and the economic challenges of Nigeria. Based on this, it becomes imperative to examine whether workforce diversity has been the brain behind the increased performance of the company and it is against this background that this study seeks to examine workforce diversity and performance of Nigerian Breweries Plc, Enugu.


problem of work force diversity 

A good quality decision can be made from a wider choice of alternatives. When the organization has a conducive and enabling environment for practicing workforce diversity, employees will enjoy all the positive benefits such as motivation, knowledge and skill transfer, creativity and better decision making and thus, they will become catalysts for the organization’s growth. On the other hand, if workforce diversity is not handled correctly, the formation of various groups will occur; this could lead to miscommunication, emotional conflicts, power struggle and ultimately to high turnover of employees. The diverse workforce will then become an inhibitor for organizational growth. When workforce diversity, that is, considering the age, educational background, cultural background, ethnicity, and sex of the employees are relegated to the background, the service delivery, competitive edge, profitability among others of the organization seems to collapse due to lack of team work among the employees. This becomes imperative to examine Nigerian Breweries Plc, Enugu which seems to adopt the idea of workforce diversity to know whether workforce diversity has improved the service delivery, competitive edge, profitability of the company. It is against this backdrop that this study seeks to examine workforce diversity and performance of Nigerian Breweries Plc, Enugu.