-75%
Question
Learning Outcome 4: Understand the key interrelationships between organisational commitment to ethics, sustainability, diversity and wellbeing.
Critically discuss how Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) efforts could be more impactful in your own organisation, or one that is familiar to you.
Solution
Organisation demonstrating commitment to EDI
For all organisations, promotion and delivery of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in workplace is a core aspect of appropriate people management. According to CIPD (2023a) it entails creation of work environments and cultures where all people have a feeling of safety and sense of belonging and empowerment for achieving full potential. Adopting the definition in Chang and Milkman (2020), equality I workplace is a process of enhancing equality in accessing, treatment, outcomes and impact in employment and service delivery. In Saudi Aramco case, diversity is implemented by ensuring recognition that all people are unique in different visible and non-visible ways with the differences requiring recognition, respect, value, promoted and celebrated (Dale-Olsen & Finseraas, 2020). Also, in Saudi Aramco, they operate through identifying all people as being unique in different visible and non-visible ways with the differences requiring recognition, respect, value, promoted and celebrated (Dale-Olsen & Finseraas, 2020). Inclusion on the other hand is identified as an initiative of including individuals in a manner that is fair to all with all differences valued and empowered.
2 Ways Saudi Aramco could be Impactful
Talent– By successfully promoting psychological contract, Saudi Aramco would have a highly impactful EDI. As evidenced in Herrera and De Las Heras-Rosas (2021) by embrace of appropriate psychological contract evidence the willingness of people in working for an employer with appropriate employment practices. For achieving competitiveness, Saudi Aramco would need to ensure all their employees are putting their optimum input to their operations. This is while appreciating relevance of EDI in resourcing and retaining required skills and talents. According to Nowak (2022) an embrace of flexible working and job design would mean that Saudi Aramco is embracing appropriate diversity strategies and included in attraction and retention of broad talent pools. The drawback of this include mismatched expectations. This is through different expectations pertaining to job functions, responsibilities and organisation culture hence an increased conflicts/misunderstandings.
Better business performance– By embracing openness to diversity, Gomez and Bernet (2019) argue that this tend to broaden the ability of accessing to best talents. Similarly, for Saudi Aramco, inclusion would allow for effective inclusion and engaging all talents holistically. This is with equality facilitating delivery of fair-based outcomes. Cumulatively, these activities would contribute to enhanced innovativeness, creativity, performance increase, improved reputation, engagement and appropriate business outcomes.
For drawbacks, in CIPD (2023a) factsheet, it evidence on the need for having a strategic EDI policy in an organisation. In Saudi Aramco, this would be affirmed by organisation values and leader and manage behaviours reflecting the relevance of EDI. Lack of these skills hinder successful EDI implementation successfully.
Corporate Reputation– For Saudi Aramco, to have a more impactful EDI efforts, they need to prioritise on corporate responsibility. According to Gould et al. (2020) for the case of diversity, corporate responsibility is critical as issues of Saudi Aramco social exclusion and reduced economic activities could be limiting organisation industry and growth. This factor would be anchored on the environment issues both onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration regions where the entire staff would see the entire image of the organisation as core to attract and retain clients and employees. The drawbacks of this include cost intensive to alter an organisation reputation. Also, it consume immense time to be able to build the organisation reputation which is done over time.
Conclusion of Key Points
In modern workplace, EDI efforts are defined in Hawkins et al. (2019) as the activities pursued by the employees in performance for achieving responsibilities and goals of their roles. Hence, for Saudi Aramco, for improving workplace behaviour to improve EDI would entail starting with an assessment of their current organisation behaviours. The outcome of this for Saudi Aramco would be what Mousa et al. (2020) identify as embracing a culture with appropriate behaviours supporting equality, diversity and inclusion. Starting with resourcing, Saudi Aramco would be required to priories on accountability, transparency, meritocracy, competencies and using potential as background of making decisions. Also, harassment and bullying management would be introduced clearly stipulating lack of toleration of such behaviours.
From a basic point of view, an effective communication on EDI issues in official meetings and conversations with executive teams and management leads to facilitation of development of a sense of inclusion and belonging (Wolfgruber et al., 2022). In this regard, there would be a need for Saudi Aramco to initiate open culture with appropriate communication channels based on an open dialogue and active listening. The outcome of this would be what Umeh et al. (2023) identify as appropriate employee voice which make sure relevant channels are adopted for various groups feeling being best positioned in accessing them. Through a series of improvement, Saudi Aramco would also adopt the application of various and accessible approaches including newsletters, in-house magazines, notice boards and intranets for maintaining communication, ensuring all individuals are updated with their policies and initiatives.
As noted earlier, lack of an elaborate awareness on EDI represent……
Please click the following icon to access this assessment in full
