Chapter 17 | Workforce Diversity and Wellness

I. WORKFORCE DIVERSITY AND WELLNESS

This chapter presents two additional human resources management interventions in organizations.

 Increasing workforce diversity provides an especially challenging environment for human resources
management, and an attractive opportunity for line managers looking for a source of innovation.
 The mix of age, gender, race, sexual orientation, disabilities, and culture and value orientations in the
modern workforce is increasingly varied.
 Management’s perspectives, strategic responses, and implementation approaches can help address
pressures posed by this diversity and leverage this resource for organization effectiveness.

 Wellness interventions, such as stress management programs and employee assistance programs (EAPs), are
addressing several important social trends, such as the relationship and interaction between professional and
personal roles and lives, fitness and health consciousness, and drug and alcohol abuse.

1. WORKFORCE DIVERSITY INTERVENTIONS

Employees represent every ethnic background and color; range from highly educated to illiterate; vary in age from
18 to 80; may appear perfectly healthy or may have a terminal illness; may be single parents or part of dual-income,
divorced, same-sex, or traditional families; and may be physically or mentally challenged.

Workforce diversity is more than a euphemism for cultural or racial differences.

Such a definition is too narrow and focuses attention away from the broad range of issues that a diverse workforce poses.
Diversity results from people who bring different resources and perspectives to the workplace and who have distinctive
needs, preferences, expectations, and lifestyles.
 Organizations must design human resources systems that account for these differences if they are to
attract and retain a productive workforce and if they want to turn diversity into a competitive advantage.

a. What Are the Goals?

Figure 17.1 presents a general framework for managing diversity in organizations.

 First, the model suggests that an organization’s diversity approach is a function of internal and external
pressures for and against diversity. Social norms and globalization support the belief that organization
performance is enhanced when the workforce’s diversity is embraced as an opportunity. But diversity is often
discouraged by those who fear that too many perspectives, beliefs, values, and attitudes dilute concerted action.

 Second, management’s perspective and priorities with respect to diversity can range from resistance to active
learning and from marginal to strategic.
 For example, organizations can resist diversity by implementing only legally mandated policies such as affirmative
action, equal employment opportunity (EEO), or Americans with Disabilities Act requirements. On the other hand,
a learning and strategic perspective can lead management to view diversity as a source of competitive
advantage.

 Third, within management’s priorities, the organization’s strategic responses can range from reactive to
proactive.
Diversity efforts at Texaco and Denny’s had little momentum until a series of embarrassing race-based events
forced a response.

 Fourth, the organization’s implementation style can range from episodic to systemic. A diversity approach will
be most effective when the strategic responses and implementation style fit with management’s intent and internal
and external pressures.

Unfortunately, organizations have tended to address workforce diversity pressures in a piecemeal fashion; only
16% of companies surveyed in 2010 thought their diversity practices were “very effective.” As each trend makes
itself felt, the organization reacts with appropriate but narrow responses.

For example, as the percentage of women in the workforce increased, many organizations simply added maternity leaves
to their benefits packages; as the number of physically challenged workers increased and when Congress passed the
Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, organizations changed their physical settings to accommodate wheelchairs.
Demographers warn, however, that these trends are not only powerful by themselves but will likely interact with
each other to force organizational change. Thus, a growing number of organizations, such as L’Oreal, PepsiCo, Procter &
Gamble, American Airlines, and Carrefour, are taking bolder steps. They are not only adopting learning perspectives with
respect to diversity, but systemically weaving diversity-friendly values and practices into the cultural fabric of the
organization.

b. Application Stages
c. The Results for Diversity Interventions

 Workforce diversity interventions have been growing rapidly in OD for more than three decades. Despite this
growth, most evaluation efforts are survey oriented and somewhat cursory. A 2010 survey by the Society of
Human Resource Management found that 68% of firms have diversity practices in place.
 Research suggests that diversity interventions are especially prevalent in large organizations with diversity
friendly senior management and human resources policies,14 and an internal evaluation of a diversity training
program in a large manufacturing firm showed positive attitudinal changes over a three-month period with respect
to emotional reactions, making judgments, behavioral reactions, and organizational impacts.
 Although existing evidence shows that diversity interventions are growing in popularity, there is still
ambiguity about the depth of organizational commitment to such practices and the contingencies that moderate
the relationship between commitment and performance.

2. Employee Stress and Wellness Interventions

In the past two decades, organizations have become increasingly aware of the relationship between employee wellness
and productivity.

At the high end, the American Institue of Stress (AIS, www.stress.org) estimated that job stress costs U.S. business over
$300 billion annually due to increased absenteeism, employee turnover, diminished productivity, medical, legal and
insurance expenses, and Workers’ Compensation payments.

Stress management and wellness interventions, including employee assistance programs (EAPs), have grown
because organizations are interested in retaining a skilled workforce and concerned for the welfare of their employees.
Data also suggest that the greater emphasis on workforce health can vary significantly by region.

In Asia, the focus is the need to compete for top talent, while in the United States, cost containment continues to
be the primary concern. European multinationals are interested in reducing absenteeism and improving
employees’ health and safety. Companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Weyerhaeuser, Federal Express, Quaker
Oats, and Abbott Laboratories are sponsoring a wide range of fitness, wellness, and stress management
programs.

a. What Are the Goals?

Individual well-being or wellness comprises “the various life/non work satisfactions enjoyed by individuals, work and
job-related satisfactions, and general health.”
Health is a subcomponent of well-being and includes both mental/psychological and physical/physiological factors. In
addition, a person’s work setting, personality traits, and stress coping skills affect overall well-being.

In turn, well-being impacts personal and organizational outcomes, including absenteeism, productivity, and health
insurance costs.

b. Applications Stages

Stress and wellness interventions involve (1) diagnosing stress and being aware of its causes and (2) alleviating and
coping with stress to improve wellness.

 Diagnosing Stress and Becoming Aware of Its Causes

 Stress refers to the reaction of people to their environments. It involves both physiological and
psychological responses to environmental conditions, causing people to change or adjust their behaviors.
 Stress is generally viewed in terms of the fit of people’s needs, abilities, and expectations with environmental
demands, changes, and opportunities.

 A good person–environment fit results in positive reactions to stress; a poor fit leads to the negative
consequences already described. Stress is generally positive when it occurs at moderate levels and
contributes to effective motivation, innovation, and learning.

For example, a promotion is a stressful event that is experienced positively by most employees. On the other
hand, stress can be dysfunctional when it is excessively high (or low) or persists over a long period of time. It can
overpower a person’s coping abilities and cause physical and emotional exhaustion.

For example, a boss who is excessively demanding and unsupportive can cause subordinates undue tension,
anxiety, and dissatisfaction. Those factors, in turn, can lead to withdrawal behaviors, such as absenteeism and
turnover; to ailments, such as headaches and high blood pressure; and to lowered performance. Situations in
which there is a poor fit between employees and the organization produce negative stress consequences.

Workplace Stressors - Extensive research has been done on three key individual sources of stress: the
individual items related to work overload, role conflict, and role ambiguity.
 Individual Differences –
 Cognitive/Affective : Type A or B, hardiness, social support, negative affectivity
 Biological/Demographic: age, gender, occupation, race

 Alleviating and Coping with Stress to Improve Wellness After diagnosing the presence and causes of stress,
the next step in stress management is to do something about it. OD interventions for reducing negative stress
tend to fall into two groups: those aimed at changing the organizational conditions causing stress and those
directed at helping people to cope better with stress. Because stress results from the interaction between people
and the environment, both strategies are needed for effective stress management.

 Five such interventions are described below:

 Role Clarification. - Role Clarification. This involves helping employees better understand the demands
of their work roles.
 Supportive Relationships. Building supportive relationships is aimed at helping employees cope with
stress rather than at changing the stressors themselves.
 Work Leaves
 Health Facilities. A growing number of organizations are providing facilities for helping employees cope
with stress.
 Employee Assistance Programs. This final stress and wellness intervention is an organizational
intervention and a method for helping individuals directly.

c. The Results of Stress Management and Wellness Interventions

The variety of stress management and wellness interventions makes it difficult to provide overall conclusions, but the
numerous studies about stress and any particular intervention do add up to a positive recommendation.

 For example, the research on role clarification supports this intervention. One study found that it reduced
stress and role ambiguity and increased job satisfaction.

 Another study reported that it improved interpersonal relationships among group members and contributed to
improved production and quality.

 Like many of the other studies in this area, the findings should be interpreted carefully because of weak
research designs and perceptual measures.