Conclusion
Introduction
As a reader you will find that my report contains a summary of the arduous work and my journey in the COOP training at Holiday Inn Hotel in Yanbu, which operates under the famous Holiday Inn chain around the world. You will find me talking about the hotel vision and mission as well as the HR department where I trained as hr coordinator and how I contribute to solve the diversity conflict problem. At the end you will find me listing the weaknesses I have experienced, the knowledge and skills that improved in me.
Holiday Inn Yanbu is a branch of the famous American brand that is a subsidiary of InterContinental Hotels group. Yanbu’s Holiday Inn was established in September 1981 by Hasan Abdulhadi Taher. The hotel vision is to positioning their name in the customer minds as the best 4-star hotels in Yanbu and around the world. Holiday Inn is looking forward to make a difference in the individuals lives they serve every day, by providing personalized service and a superior hospitality product and commit to the hotel strong moral system and actively participating in the community which is the hotel goal. Different services were offered to the customers besides the accommodation in rooms and suites which are the business services including equipped business conference and meeting rooms, health and fitness center with a fully-equipped gym and a trained fitness instructors.
Roles and Responsibilities
I was trained at HR department in Holiday Inn of Yanbu. This department is same as any HR department that concern about all procedure related to the workforce starting from attracting the employee till evaluating their performance. Also, the HR department is responsible to conduct the staff payroll and absence sheet, coordinating for employees’ daily transportation. In addition, the HR is handling the staff relation issues in a confidential manner, including disciplinarians, grievance and capability. Using the (Oasys system), working on governmental and insurance websites (muqeem, GOSI and Bupa website) and organizing the employees files including their contracts are some of the tasks that I have performed as an HR coordinator. Also, I was responsible to collect letters from other departments which need the HR manager approval such as vacations, warning.
One of the requirement to complete the COOP training program is to make a contribution in the workplace that I have trained in. So, I chose to improve the diversity management in the hotel as a contribution in order to utilize and manage diversity effectively without difficulties and obstacles in communication between all employees. Diversity in the workplace means having people together from different ethnic backgrounds, religions and exchanging experience and knowledge. Sometimes diversity will also have bad impact on the workplace and make some misunderstand and conflict between employees. After my training weeks at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Yanbu, I observed there is a lot of communication problems between employees because of the high rate of diversity and having different nationalities at the work place, so from there I came up with the idea of the contribution.
Contribution
Holiday Inn hotel is having a high rate of diversity in it staff. Multiple nationalities are working together under each department in the hotel. For example, the hotel has people coming different countries including India, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, Nepal, Philippines and more. As we know that having diversity in the work place may led to some problems that could affect the productivity at the hotel.
The addressed problem is lack of diversity management in the hotel which cause Some barriers between the employees to work effectively.
At the hotel the employees don’t know each other’s cultures so, what is okay for the Philippine supervisor is prohibit for an Indian employee. In addition, there are employees that English is not their first langue, this also a barrier to communicate for those who speak only English. Furthermore, there is a hidden racism among the employees, for example the Egyptian workers do not respect the employees who are not from Egypt! Also, there is a lot of conflict between the employees and they have many complaints towards each other, and the complaints file may explode from the huge amount of papers!. They are busy in having disagreements rather than being busy in performing their jobs. Having such problems create a huge gap between the employees which will affect their productivity at the end.
The solution for all these problem is to have an effective diversity management to make a great use and positive impact on the Holiday Inn hotel. Having a process of organizing and controlling the diversity in the workplace is much better than acting randomly with all these people who are coming from different background. The diversity management aims to create an attractive environment that is suitable for all employees.
The suggested solution has many advantages can be gained, here are some of them:
- Enhancing the interpersonal communications among employees.
- Reducing the number of complaints
- Creating effective resolution of disputes.
- Increasing the fairness and equality in the workplace
- Increasing the employees’ productivity
- Achieving the organization goals ( high profits, high production… )
literature Review
Diversity Management :
Historically, organizations have used four ways to integrate the workplace—equal employment opportunity legislation, affirmative action, valuing differences/awareness-based diversity training, and managing diversity efforts. Equal employment opportunity is a commitment not to discriminate in the workplace, based on various categories protected by law (e.g., race, sex, religion, disability, age). Affirmative action is first of all a federal regulation that places an obligation on public agencies and many other organizations that receive federal grants or contracts. Affirmative action has been highly controversial in the United States, and its effectiveness in creating a truly integrated workforce has been moderate.
Managing a culturally diverse workforce may include changes in various HRD and HRM programs and processes. HRD professionals must be able to adapt current socialization, orientation, and career development processes to the needs of the new workforce. Training programs need to address all forms of workplace harassment. HRM professionals should consider adapting other policies (e.g., benefits) in order to meet the needs of the current workforce, including such things as day-care services, flextime, interpreters, and multilingual supervisors.
According to Robin Kramar the concept of diversity management is understood in very different ways. There are different understandings of the nature of decent diversity. Diversity has been utilized to allude to simply singular individual attributes such as gender , race, family obligations and age, but it has been utilized all the more extensively to allude to an assortment of different contrasts and likenesses between individuals taking the necessary steps of associations and different partners. According to this broader view, measurements of diversity can allude to an extensive variety of individual attributes, including sexual introduction, physical and mental abilities, and also differences relating to functional and operational groups, the legally binding arrangements of partners of the association and the interests of an variety of external partners. (Kramar 2011). The nature of the processes used to manage diversity will depend on the dimensions identified by an organization.
Dealing with diversity workforce:
According to Patrick J. Highland improving managers have created specific projects to manage the work-force diversity issue. Some of these projects, known as “valuing differences programs,” are prepare to the individual and relational level. The goal is to improve relational connections among employees and to limit impolite expressions of racism and sexism. Regularly these projects focus on the ways that men and women or individuals of various races or cultures have unique values, attitudes, behavior styles, and ways of thinking. These instructive sessions can be in one day to a few days. They usually concentrate on one or several of the following general objectives:
- Enhance awareness and acceptance of human various
- Enhance a greater understanding of the nature and dynamics of individual differences
- Helping members understand their own emotions and attitudes about people who are different from themselves
- Exploring how differences might be tapped as assets in the work environment
Analysis of the problem:
Data Collection Types:
- Observation
The observation is considered under qualitative method of data collection. As me work in Holiday Inn Hotel my office was located in the middle of the administration near to HRM office in my capacity as Assistant of the Human Resource Manager, so I dealt with so many cases of complaint submitted to the HRM about conflict of employees with each other. There are many reasons why they always conflict, but the main reason is they are from different background even they are from same country.
- Survey
I conduct a survey with 30 employees who are working in Holiday Inn Hotel in Yanbu. This survey aims to know, explore and study the effect of diversity on employees, on their working environment, on their relationship between each other, on their productivity, and on the profit of the company. To help this hotel if there is any negative affect caused by diversity by founding a proper solution.
Most of the employees work in Holiday Inn Hotel are from 3 to 6 years (46.7%), while only 20% work for more than 7 years which is a good thing. But 33.3% contains new employees and who have up to 2 years with Holiday Inn Hotel.
43.3% of employees are from 31-40 years old, 40 % from 21-30 years old, and 16.7% from 41-50 years old. This makes me feel little comfortable because most of the employee’s age is above 21 years, which allow me to take the answers which are somewhat convince.
Most of the employees are male (around 77%), and the remaining are female.
This survey was conducted with employees from different departments. 30% from kitchen, 20% from sales and purchasing, 16.7% from housekeeping, 13.3% from finance, 10% from front office, and 10% from human resources.
43.3% from employees are strongly agree with company commitment to diversity, 30% agree, 16.7% disagree, around 7% are neutral, and only 3% are strongly disagree.
40% are disagree for the company respecting to their individuals and valuing their differences, which is a big percentage which is an indicator for existing unrespecting for others. This because of lacking in diversity management. 26.7% are strongly agree for company’s respecting, 20% agree, 10% neutral, and 3.3% strongly disagree. Even though, I looked for the 40%, and I did not hesitate to this percentage.
36.7% of employees are disagree and they did not saw that other employees appreciate others race and ethnicity. 26.7% are neutral, 20% are agreed to the appreciation between employees. 13.3% are strongly disagree to the appreciation between employees, and only 3.3% are strongly agree.
Around 70% of employees sense a discrimination between each other, which is not a percentage we can ignore it. This make employees feel uncomfortable because of unfairness between them.
43.3% of employees disagreed to the existing of cultural diversity among emplotess when a job candidate visit the hotel for the first time. 26.7% agreed to this expresion, 13.3% are neutral employees, 10% are stongly agreed to that, and 6.7% are dtrongly disagreed.
63.3% think that the employees did not understand the importance of diversity and its benefits to the hotel. While 13.3% are neutral employees, and 23.4% saw that the employees understand the diversity and its importance for them. I can recognize that the employees does not have that much of awareness regarding the importance of diversity. This make the courses which will be about the importance of diversity a mandatory solution in this case.
53.3% see that the company’s policies and procedures did not discourage the discrimination between employees, and 6.7% strongly agree about this. 23.3% agree and find that company’s policies and procedures discourage discrimination and 10% strongly agreed to that. 6.7% are neutral.
33.3% disagreed with the expression of that, the company will take appropriate action in order to response to incidents of discrimination, 16.7% strongly disagreed, 16.7% neutral employees, 26.7% agreed to that expression, and 6.6% are strongly agreed. The percentage of disagreed employees is more than the agreed employees. I think this may because of the unconfident between employees and the company.
Around 33% of employees are disagreed about that the company provides a free environment for them and allow to exchange their ideas, opinions, and beliefs between each other, and 3.4% are strongly disagreed to that. Only 10% are strongly agreed, and 23.3% are agreed. The remaining employees are neutral. This question evaluate the employee’s impression about the working environment’s flexibility in the company.
Most of the employees saw that their supervisor does not handle the matters of diversity satisfactorily (around 77%), while 20% of them are neutral, and only 3% of employees saw that their supervisor can handle diversity issues successfully. That means most of the supervisors need basic courses about how to handle diversity matters successfully. And if there is a big problem which they cannot handle, they can refer to the management of diversity.
More than half of employees see and agreed to the affect which will the education about diversity will make it, and how this will enhance the relationship and communication between them. 13.3% are neutral, while around 23% did not see that effect.
Because they are employees who are working inside the company and see how the work is done, I asked them about their opinion about the effectiveness from learning about the importance of diversity on the company’s profitability. 46.7% strongly agreed about that effectiveness, 20% agreed, 13.3% are neutral, and around 20% of employees are disagreed about that effectiveness.
After this analysis, I found there is a lot of problem caused by less aware the importance of diversity in workplace also the employees didn’t know how to deal with other culture in positive way. employees and all the staff about the importance of diversity, and how it effect on the company in general. Teach them the positive impact of diversity on company. Actually, I can evaluate the situation of this company, due to non-understanding of the importance of managing diversity. Make a new position which is responsible for managing diversity will enhance the communication between employees, as well as effects on their productivity. As a result, this will lead to a profitable company.
Proposed Solution:
There is the solution of problem have been proposed because of diversity in workplace
- Found new position in the hotel which is called (Management of diversity). The diversity manager supervises the diversity coordinator. The diversity manager works closely with the director of human resources regarding diversity initiatives. The job description of diversity manager is: improve, perform and observes programs that promote and support diversity inside the company. This role is accountable for developing training and initiatives to create and reinforce an open and comprehensive environment. The diversity manager serves as the HR ombudsman for diversity issues.
The Basis Functions of Diversity Manager:
* Assists with the improve of policies and programs to attract, retain and promote a diverse workforce for the company.
* Determines the appropriateness of introducing diversity initiatives and considers the unique needs of the organization.
* Improve training schedules to educate employees and managers on how to recognize, accommodate and appreciate individual differences and how these can be bridged back to assist in meeting company business plans.
* Conduct some purchase of e-learning diversity training materials and coordinates online training.
* Updating older diversity training materials for transitioning into e-learning formats.
* Enhance metrics for measuring the effectiveness of corporate diversity initiatives implemented and prepares quarterly reports to senior management on the value of the initiatives.
The competencies that should be in the diversity manager:
* Communication Skills.
* High Level of Consultation.
* Global & Cultural Awareness.
* Leadership & Navigation.
* Relationship Management.
Work Environment:
This job operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as laptop computers, phones and photocopiers.
Required Education and Experience
Indicate education based on requirements that are job-related and consistent with business necessity.
Bachelor’s degree in human resource management, business administration or closely related field; five years of related human resource experience, including preparation and implementation of training materials and diversity initiatives; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
Preferred Education and Experience
Indicate education based on requirements that are job-related and consistent with business necessity.
Graduate/master’s degree in human resource management, business or public administration or closely related field.
Two years of management-level experience.
Implementation
It is crucial to include a good plan to increase awareness of diversity and respect other cultures, age, gender, ethnic background, sense of humor, religious beliefs, and political affiliations. To maximize positive effect of diversity such as increase productivity and enhance overall work environment must recruit diversity manager as soon as possible. In order to recruit diversity manager first of all it should put clear strategy.
All of these strategy will implement and take into account after recruit manager diversity in Holiday Inn Yanbu by the end of 2018
* First strategy is to minimize the discrimination as possible between the employees.
*Second is to create professional work environment to make employees To make the employees focus on performance of their work and not take any racist actions.
*Third is make all employees aware about the benefit of diversity by provide training courses to them.
References :
1- Holiday Inn Yanbu. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ihg.com/holidayinn/hotels/us/en/yanbu/yansa/hoteldetail
2- (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ihg.com/content/us/en/about/brands
3- DeSimone, R. L., & Werner, J. M. (2012). HRD and Diversity: Diversity Training and Beyond: Summary. In Human Resource Development, 6th International ed. (p. 546). Mason, OH: South-Western. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=yanbu&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CCX2967700266&asid=b713a311a7ae9dd1094e2105154cad74
4- Kramar, R. (2012). Diversity management in Australia: a mosaic of concepts,practice and rhetoric.Asia Pacific Journal Of Human Resources,50(2), 245-261. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-7941.2011.00010.x
5- Highland, P. J. (2007). Diversity in the Workplace. In B. S. Kaliski (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Business and Finance (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 205-207). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=yanbu&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CCX1552100094&asid=7bef52f43aff7ab61ad8789826f94105
