Cultural Diversity Assignment: Workshop On Challenges Faced By Employees

Question

Task: Your task is to create a Professional Workshop
Assessment Description This individual assignment requires students to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of Learning Outcomes 1 to 5 covering topics between Weeks 1 to12.
Assessment Instructions
You are an independent consultant and are asked to prepare a Professional Development Workshop on one of the topics discussed in class during weeks 1 to 12. Develop an Interactive Workshop based on what you have learned in this subject
1. Part 1 of the assignment consists of a schedule of the practical activities of the workshop (approximately 1200 words) and is based on topics discussed in class. You can be as creative as you wish in this part as long as you apply practically the chosen topic in the form of a professional workshop.
Please take care to consider the following factors when designing your workshop:

The inclusion of activities that are relevant and interesting.
The appropriate timing allocated to each of those activities.
The way in which the topics and activities are integrated.
The instructions that ensure the activities are facilitated well.
The potential barriers to the successful implementation of the activities.
The diversity of activities to suit the varied personalities of the participants.

2. Part 2 consists of final comments (approximately 300 words) summarising what you have hoped to accomplish through the workshop. None of the parts require any referencing.

Answer

Part 1
Introduction: The workshop explored in this cultural diversity assignment has been designed to understand the challenges that are faced by the employees in the business organizations due to the differences in cultural diversity. To understand the opportunities and challenges that the managers in the organizations face due to the positive and negative impact of cultural differences and diversity has been explained to the selected group members in the workshop that has been organized. The purpose activities and the time of the workshop have been described in detail in the report, and the description of the events has been summarized. The report therefore helps to understand the challenges in the workplace due to the diversity differences in culture.

Timing, Activities and Purpose: The duration of the workshop is one day. The activities that are to be undertaken and the purpose of those activities are described in the table below. The timing of those activities has also been mentioned.

Description of the activities: The workshop  examined in this cultural diversity assignment has been arranged for one day, and it started from morning 10 am. The first two activities in the workshop that have been developed to understand the diversity challenges at the workplace is held by the ice-breaking stage where each team members are introduced among themselves.

Icebreaker: The ice-breaking period is developed by a meet and greets session of the individual group members by introducing each other and presenting a short symbol to represent their diversity. At this phase of the workshop, the purpose of the workshop has been informed to the group members and how the matter is relevant to the current day business environment have been discussed in the phase.

Group discovery and discussion within this cultural diversity assignment: After looking at the signs or symbols that have been chosen by the participants, they will be asked to demonstrate what they know about the surface-diversity and deep-diversity factors. Based on their logos, the facilitator will divide them into five respective groups. They will be asked to identify their diversity factors and find whether the members in their group share the same elements or not. They need to complete this process within half an hour and then present their findings. In the next half an hour, they will require to discuss the diversity factors amongst themselves. The primary purpose is to enhance their knowledge about diversity factors that may affect an individual at the workplace.

Smartphone activity: After completing their discussion on the diversity factors, the facilitator will allot them certain groups including migrants, women, older people, people with disabilities and indigenous Australians. They will need to perform thorough research using their smartphones to determine the challenges faced by these groups accordingly. Then they will make a list of those challenges and search for opportunities for these groups using their smartphone. This should be done within half an hour, and then a report needs to be prepared by each group.

Group presentation and charades: After preparing the reports, the group representatives will come up to present those to the other groups and the facilitator. They also need to describe their findings. Next, the group representative will choose a member from his group who will present certain recommendations or strategies to overcome the challenges faced due to diversity at the workplace. In other words, they will describe the interpersonal skills that are required by managers to train a diverse team to avoid issues and challenges in the future. After listening to the demonstration and findings of the groups, the facilitator will provide handouts to each group covering diverse groups of individuals. Each group will send a member to play charades. The other groups need to identify about which diverse group the individual is trying to portray without speaking or writing. After this playful activity, the groups will nominate each member for the next event.

Storytelling: The last activity of the workshop will require the nominated members of the groups to share a story about their own experience or others' experience. The stories will be based on diversity-related incivility. They will share the reaction of the employees as well as the managers at such situations. They will also share what they would have done in such a case if they were the managers. This will help in analysing the extent to which the participants have been able to gather knowledge about the diversity challenges and opportunities at the workplace.

Potential barriers: The potential barrier in the workshop is the difference in the personalities and attitudes of the participants. It may give rise to conflicts. However, it depends on the group engagement and active participation.

Part 2
Final comments and summary: Culture is considered as the underlying value that influences people's behaviour in the workplace environment. Cultural diversity in the business environment is a result of practices, values, traditions and beliefs based on their demographic culture, race, gender and religious beliefs.  The main component of cultural diversity is the economic globalization in the business environment. Therefore, in order to meet the various challenges and opportunities of a diversified workforce communication is a practical driving force as until and unless people from cross cultures interact and communicate with each other they will not understand the problem and various workplace complexities. The main purpose of this workshop discussed in this cultural diversity assignment is to develop an idea and knowledge about the relevance of workplace diversity and is negative and positive impacts on the global business environment. Through the various activities that have been presented in the workshop, the factors that are associated with cultural diversity at the workplace have been discussed.

The feedback and the discussion session helps to evaluate the problems that individual employee faces due to the diversified work culture and the cross-cultural differences that exist within the business environment. These differences can be for many reasons like language barrier, communication gaps, race, gender inequality and cultural beliefs and thought process. The workshop also gave the group members opportunities and an open forum to discuss their individual issues that they have faced within their working atmosphere and how that has impacted their personal as well as professional life. Through the implementation and application of the smartphone activities and the story, telling sessions in the workshop the group members can develop effective diversified strategies to ensure that they can overcome the cultural challenges and address the issues of the diversified workforce.