Some organisations still expect employees from minority groups to be assimilated, to fit in, with the majority. Such an approach simply leads to tension, unmet expectations, frustration,  increases likelihood of higher turn over of minority employees and puts off talented candidates conscious that their career may be limited by such a culture.

So what changes do organisations need to consider as their workforce becomes more diverse ? How do the cultural values of racial and religious minorities influence recruitment, reward systems, home working, paid leave, leadership styles, job design , reaction to the introduction of new technology, feedback from supervisors and team dynamics? The list is not exhaustive but illustrates the range of HR polices and management practises that need to be reviewed in light of an increasingly diverse workforce.

 Cultural values influence the way people expect their manager to behave they also affect the way employees relate to their manager. The management style within an organisation needs to be flexible enough to take account of different attitudes to  authority. The unquestioning deferential almost sycophantic approach to management is not the model in most organisations but some groups may find the informal approach where managers, even senior managers, are called by their first names over familiar or disrespectful.

In the same way some groups may expect to routinely check out actions with their manager before acting where as the manager may expect employees to use their own imitative and view the job as having a considerable amount of autonomy. The same would be true about the attitude to rules and procedures where one side may expect them to be followed rigidly and another view an action that is not specifically prohibited as acceptable in getting the job done.

The question of how individual feedback is conducted may be influenced by whether it’s viewed as a routine management activity or personal criticism, seen  as helpful guidance or an example of harassment and bullying. How an individual expresses themself be they manager or employee can easily be misinterpreted. What is considered assertive behave by one group can be experienced as aggressive by another.

It not hard to imagine how team dynamics might be affected by different attitudes to authority and different expectations about behaviour.

I came across an example of how it was appropriate to adjust the paid leave policy when I was working in a large West Midlands organisation. Like most organisations the policy was that employees could only take a maximum of two weeks annual paid leave at any one time. However employees from minority groups pointed out that a visit to extended family in the Caribbean or Pakistan was often a once every decade event and as such they wanted more than the two weeks allowed but could afford to take unpaid leave. The policy was changed allowing all employees to carry over half their annual leave entitlement to the following year, for up to 3 years, to allow for extended paid leave.

The UK is an increasingly diverse country in terms of race, religion and culture a fact which is reflected in the workforce. So how do the cultural values of racial and religious minorities influence management practices? The answer is there is not much research to guide organisations but the starting point is to recognise that current practices arrived at to reflect the values and culture of the majority can not be assumed to be appropriate for minority groups. Inclusion requires these areas and issues are reviewed.