Equality and Diversity

 What are equality and diversity?

Market globalization has made business environments become different with their liability to include employees from different cultural background and demographic characteristics. Worldwide trends in business support diversity and support employing people from different cultures and bearing various expectations. This makes it necessary for the human resources management to realize the different needs and feelings of employees and understand the factors and reasons for any potential conflicts and tensions that may occur within the workplace. Harmony of the workplace is recommended when there is high level of diversity so human resources management in such work environment usually tend to apply diversity policy and equity policy. (Sharma, 2016)

Equality in the workplace refers to the fair treatment of all employees and regarding them according to their work performance and without putting any consideration to their differences such as race, gender, religion, age, disability, cultural background or color. Equality means to ensure the fairness of opportunities for all employees ensuring equal chances for all employees to be promoted and trained based on the organizational rules and goals and according to the recruitment targets and programs without any racial or any type discrimination. Equality of opportunity should include learning chances and progress within the organization for all employees and should also include insurance and safety measurements to be implemented on all employees according to local and international laws. (Flood et al, 2010) Equality in the workplace requires the participation of all actors in the company and empowering them based on equal rules for ensuring respect and appreciation for all employees and raising their morale which makes them able to present their best and perform well within the workplace. The human resources management should focus on ensuring that the business environment is based on equality in all areas and departments ensuring the equal involvement for all employees and providing them all with opportunities to express their opinions and suggestions that can help in innovating the organizational performance. (Dike, 2013)

Diversity within the workplace refers to the different people who are working in the business organization and the varied characteristics that can be found within employees that identify each employee such as the cultural backgrounds, sexual orientation, religion, gender or any other differences. Diversity is always found in today's business organizations and multinational companies in particular, diversity requires effective diversity management that is different from different management strategies because it focuses on respecting and valuing differences among employees and treating all employees all equally without considering certain features for some employees based on discrimination rules and based on certain variables. Business organizations need to comply with the laws and legislative needs for recruiting employees at an equal level of treatment and evaluation based on their qualifications, skills and experiences that meet their needs and targets and can support the business performance. The workplace needs to apply programs for ensuring equality and solving the problems that may appear as a result of diversity in the workplace. This can help in solving problems resulting from language difficulties, misunderstanding and conflicts that may appear as a result of individual attitudes towards discriminations among individuals. Managers should analyze differences found in employees in relation to languages, feelings, religious rituals and festivals and show high respect and try hard to understand the way each group of people prefer to be treated with in order to keep human rights and find effective communicative strategies within the workplace. (Patrick and Kumar, 2012)

Diversity and equality management in Mazars

Diversity management represents the actions and strategies applied by the organization management for promoting employees from their various backgrounds to include them within the organization's structure. This should depend on the organizational goals and the type of the industry referring to the laws and policies the company should follow. Diversity can also be a factor that supports productivity and improves the organizational performance when the company is able to employ it properly. (Madera, 2013)

Mazars Oman is led by Omani national manager who can manage diversity in the workplace as Oman is a country that includes many different people from different cultural backgrounds. The company can make use of its employees who are coming from different diversified backgrounds and it can manage diversity by many different strategies. Demonstrating the best practices of equality and diversity can help the company improve its organizational performance as the E&D policy that focuses on employees' behavior within the business organization and can monitor stress, conflicts and bullying attitudes in the workplace and then applying a training framework for effective communication among employees that can raise employees' awareness towards how to treat with different people equally such as treating women, disabled and other minorities in the workplace and consider this as a part of the organization's training matrix as all employees need to learn how to communicate with each other in the workplace. The company can exert efforts for managing diversity and handling the different issues that arise among the diverse workforce in order to develop the competitive advantage and avoid any problems caused as a result of diversity. (EEO) or equal employment opportunities legislation refers to the force of law against discrimination in the work place and try to get a business benefit for managing diversity through policies and programs that can assert the equal opportunity on all employees.(Ebie and Djebarni, 2011)

An equality policy can provide the work environment with the safety level required for raising employees' trust in the company and that they can receive the same opportunities and chances even if they are different in any way, this can also make candidates for jobs sure that selection is done in the company on high levels of respect and that only their qualifications, skills and experiences are the measure for selecting them or not. An Equity policy that the organization can implement should include all the aspects related to employment starting from recruitment and till pay and promotion and should include employment benefits, facilities access and the discipline procedures and it should set clearly the different types of discrimination an employee may be liable to and that protection is provided by the management regarding any bullying or harassment related to their differences. The policy statement should declare the work environment type of the organization and how it can provide conduct and to show what behaviors that are not acceptable within the work environment and to present information about the way the policy is put into action related to any breaches for the policy by any employee and what punishment is done based on it and how complaints can be made by employees, clients or any other stakeholders, this can raise the level of trust and help employees work harder to improve the company's organizational performance and competitive advantage. In Mazars, the company has a team for managing diversity issues and leaders who are able to involve employees within the change process that can raise their awareness regarding the need to innovate and provide their creative ideas to develop the organization and develop their career at the same time as success in Mazars is not only belonging to the company but to its employees as well. Employees' involvement is also connected to empowerment of employees in leadership tasks that can raise competitiveness among them and help them overcome any differences. (Niroula, 2018)

Authors and researchers such as Ciobanua and Androniceanuhave, (2015) found that motivation and techniques of performance appraisal can have a role in managing issues related to diversity in the workplace such as the feelings of some employees that they don't belong to the organization as they come from another culture or country or the feeling of stress of some employees who may have differences in physical appearance or religion as motivation can help management support those employees who have differences and raise their morale and sense of belonging to the organization which can raise their effectiveness and raise the effectiveness of the organizational performance. This was confirmed by Procter, (2014) who added that there are levels of motivation that can be used in a diversified work environment and that motivation can be an effective tool for developing talents of employees based on the differences they have such as for example, making employees who master English as their native language train other employees whose English may not be strong and make use of the differences employees may have based on the diversity amongst them. Procter, (2014) explained that employees' motivation can help them take decisions that help the organization achieve its goals and raise the effectiveness of the organizational performance, there are many theories that can enhance motivation for the employees in the workplace such as the motivation theory that sheds the light on the need for motivation to maintain organizational stability and the content theory that deals with the internal and external factors affecting motivation so motivation can help the organization satisfy the different needs of employees and overcome any stress that may result from diversity and differences. Madera, (2013) explained that diversity management programs companies should make use of fresh ideas that are innovative and motivate them in a diversified workplace as they can improve the firm growth and promote the organizational attitudes of employees for their welfare and the welfare of the organization.    

Challenges Mazars face in relation to equality and diversity in the workplace

Umar et al, (2018) discussed the challenges that can face organizations with diversity in the workplace such as the ethnic and cultural differences that people have and the misunderstanding of some people for some cultural customs such as clothing and food which may lead to wasting times in efforts to make the others realize and understand the nature of people's cultural customs and this can delay work delivery and reduces effectiveness of business results, differences in languages can also work against the achievement of the business tasks as it also lead to misunderstanding of commands of leaders from different cultural backgrounds and talking a language that the employees may not realize properly, another challenge that can threaten the safety and stability of the work environment is hostility that may appear as a result of bullying based on differences in religion, color, languages or any other differences as hostility can lead to serious business conflicts and problems and there is also conflicting issues that occur within teams which can reduce the effectiveness of the teams and reduce productivity. Diversity in the workplace may lead to conflicts between employees when there is a need for taking risks as this may lead to the difficulty of taking decisions so effective leadership can manage such issues through coordination and utilizing the best skills in each employee and lead them towards the best techniques for taking the required risks.

Other authors discussed the benefits from having diversity in the workplace and how companies can manage equality to make full use of such benefits. Foma, (2014) discussed the impact of the workplace diversity and how the company can make benefits from that diversity through focusing on the talents and develop them in addition to exchanging information about different cultures to enhance the cultural backgrounds of employees within open discussions and meetings where employees can understand each other, accept each other and have more space for innovation and creativity. He added that training is an important tool for making benefits from the diversity in the workplace and to reassure equality as there should be a diversity training program that can support all employees equally and raise their experiences and skills, training can raise employees' satisfaction and improve their acceptance to different people in the workplace as they can all feel equal when they are engaged into a training program that can ensure equal promotion and development opportunities.

 Conclusion

In conclusion, it is important to refer to the changes that are occurring in today's business world and how human resources management can face the challenges associated with these changes. Changes include the diversity in the workplace which refers to the differences that are found within employees who can come from different areas to work in a new country and this can cause difficulties and problems that management should tackle. Equality refers to treating all employees fairly without considering any differences that may affect the assessment and management evaluation for their performance and to select employees based on their skills and qualifications with no regard to differences in race, color, sex, religion or any other cultural differences, equality needs to be managed by the company's management in order to make use of the benefits from diversity in the workplace. Challenges that can be faced from diversity in the workplace includes the stress and misunderstanding that can occur as a result of different ideas or suggestions that may not be well understood by some people from different countries. Lack of effective communication is another important challenge that companies with diversity among employees face because languages may be different and employees can't understand the way others express or some leaders order them which can reduce the effectiveness and success of the performance of the organization. Mazars is an international company that has a wide variety of employees, it faces the challenges associated with cultural diversity such as hostility but the company applied diversity management systems that can provide employees with different opportunities for promotion and leadership which can help motivate them and raise their morale and job satisfaction.