Effects Of Diversity And Multiculturalism

Introduction

The significance of globalization is continually enhancing an international mobilization of human resources and cross-border exchanges, which cause a worldwide flow of immigration. In this regard, international organizations should ensure that they practice diversity and multiculturalism, to enhance effectiveness in all aspects (Parrillo, 2015). This report purposes to explore on the context of Human Resource Management (HRM), in which case, it will specifically it will explore on the effects of diversity and multiculturalism at Hyatt Company. The report will provide a detailed background of Hyatt Company, whereby, it will provide its strategy, policy, as well as procedures regarding diversity and multiculturalism. Secondly, this report will provide a detailed exploration of the concept of multiculturalism and diversity at Hyatt Company. Thereafter, it will provide the challenges, and opportunities that Hyatt Company faces from embracing multiculturalism and diversity. Finally, this report will provide a definitive conclusion, purposing to summarize its content.

The brief overview of Hyatt Company

Hyatt Hotels Corporation is a known global hospitality company, whose headquarters is located in Chicago, Illinois. The company develops, manages, franchises owns, and even operates a portfolio of properties which include full-service hotels, resorts, select-service hotels, as well as other properties such as timeshare, different forms of residential, and also vocational properties (Reuters, 2019). In total, Hyatt Company owns 750 properties. By 2018, Hyatt Company has approximately 45,000 employees across 54 countries, in six continents, and it purposes to embrace all cultures and engages the concept of diversity in its operations. The company’s culture purposes to empower all individuals to be their best and that connection inspire the way the individuals in the organization care for one another and for their guests (Hyatt, 2019). This poses as the company’s growth strategy and it is intended to attract and also retain its top employees, build a significant relationship with its customers, and also create value for its shareholders.

Hyatt Company is also noted to engage multiculturalism and diversity, in order to provide a welcoming workplace. In line with this, the company has adopted a major strategy, which aids in enhancing multiculturalism and diversity. This is anchored in its belief statement, which states that the company believes that the more globally inclusive it is, in terms of culture, diversity, race, gender, amongst other factors, the more culturally-invested, and valued the company will be globally (Bloomberg, 2019). This strategy is vested on three pillars; the company’s workforce, its workplace, and marketplace. Moreover, Hyatt Company has three minor strategies, which aid in enhancing multiculturalism and diversity. The first is that the company supports open dialogue regarding diversity and multiculturalism within the company. Secondly, the company shares best practices within its business community and finally, it expands unconscious-bias training to all individuals in the company (Neil, 2017).

In line with the above mentioned, Hyatt Company has formulated effective policies, which assist in ensuring that multiculturalism and diversity are involved in every aspect of the organization. The major policy of the organization is that human rights should be protected, and in this regard, the following policies support the same. First, the company mandates that every individual should be treated with kindness, and with adherence to professionalism, regardless of whether their ideas differ from the rest, how they look and where they come from (Hyatt, 2019). The second policy mandates that employment decisions should not be based on the characteristics that the law protects. Finally, all individuals should recognize that owing to the fact that Hyatt is a global company, it benefits whenever colleagues contribute towards different perspectives, background, as well as experiences. Such diversity is vital for the organizational success. Notably, the company has ensured significant procedures for diversity and multiculturalism. The company has laid a firm foundation, from ensuring an active employee-led diversity network and enhancing business-resource group to enhancing a focused diverse-leadership development, in order to enhance multi-culturalism and diversity (Weber, 2018). It is evident that whilst supporting such important initiatives, the company purposes to reinforce a significant commitment, which embeds inclusion, based on diversity and multiculturalism in all aspects of its operations.

Multiculturalism and diversity at Hyatt Company

Ferdman (2017) defines diversity as recognizing, appreciating, and utilizing every individual’s unique talents, and contributions regardless of their age culture, disability, background, ethnicity, gender, marital status, among other factors. It is evident that diversity matters at Hyatt as it makes the company unique, in that it can be able to appeal to every individual in different, yet various ways. On the other hand, Fuentes & Shannon (2016) point out that multiculturalism implies that the diverse perspectives of individuals are allowed to develop and are retained through various experiences, as well as background, stemming from gender, ethnicity, and or different classes in the society, among other factors. In other words, multiculturalism refers to the acceptance of various ethnic cultures.

Hyatt Company has signed into two major diversity and multiculturalism initiatives, which underscore its dedication towards creating a welcoming workplace for all individuals and most importantly, employees. The company became a member of the CEO action initiative for diversity and inclusion and as well adopted the UN global LGBTI Standards, meant for conducting business (Taylor, 2018). Before adopting these initiatives, Hyatt had already initiated a CEO-chaired global and national inclusion and diversity, tasked with enhancing the concept of diversity. Notably, the CEO action initiative is a program involving a unique collaboration of different chief executives across industries committed towards advancing their workplaces using discussions, training, as well as education. On the other hand, the UN LGBTI provides a set of five key standards, useful in preventing various forms of discrimination across various business sectors (Kostuch, 2018). Hyatt stands against discrimination, as it believes that in order to have an inclusive workplace, it should be able to create an environment, which enables all employees to better themselves or be better for others.

In light with the above mentioned, it is evident that various institutions have recognized Hyatt for its efforts towards supporting diversity in the workplace. As such, appeared in Forbes’ list of America’s top employers for diversity and was also ranked second on Fortune’s list of best workplaces for diversity in 2017 (Kauflin, 2018). It is also evident that Hyatt Company is presently the largest brand that promotes cultural difference, multiculturalism, as well as unity, being part of its loyalty programme to employees. The company has also purposed to enlist its frontline employees, without any form of discrimination, to become the brand ambassadors (Hyatt, 2019). Notably, in some time to come, Hyatt will regard the idea of cultural comprehension as a political stance. In this regard, the company has over the years, put into consideration, the fact that understanding multiculturalism and putting it into practice will be of great essence to the business, as it will provide a deep sense of understanding, as well as appreciation (Weber, 2018).

Having incorporated multiculturalism and diversity in its workplace, Hyatt gains the opportunity to continually increase its profit margin, enhance customer satisfaction, and create a positive image for the organization. On one hand, the company is able to reduce cases of conflicts that are noted to be frequent in organization, and also decrease the turnover rate. On the other hand, Hyatt increases the satisfaction, as well as the effectiveness of its employees and its customers (Ferdman, 2017). Moreover, it is also noted that Hyatt has gained the opportunity of strengthening creativity and innovation, owing to the fact that diversity leads to the creation of new ideas. On the same note, it is also evident that multiculturalism improves creative problem-solving skills within Hyatt. Noteworthy, Hyatt has been able to benefit from these outcomes, owing to the fact that its employees share similar preferences, based on the organizational culture, including goals and values (Fuentes & Shannon, 2016).

It is also significant to take note of the fact that multiculturalism and diversity have enabled Hyatt to have the opportunity of winning new markets, as well as products, which target certain markets, and some, which can be developed (Jansen et al., 2015). In addition, the company focuses on enhancing in-house culture talents, which consequently enables it to integrate smoothly into global foreign cultures, as well as workplace diversity that enables the company’s staff to overcome certain culture shock. Employees having different cultural backgrounds do speak several different languages, are highly motivated, and have cultural competencies (Gündemir et al., 2017). Another opportunity derived from multiculturalism and diversity is that culturally diverse employees have varied ways of thinking. As such, they are able to analyze and also solve situations, as well as problems. In line with this, they bring with them distinctive experiences, thus providing Hyatt with beneficially vast, as well as a sound base of knowledgeable information. Noteworthy, engaging multiculturalism and diversity have enabled Hyatt to overcome various differences gotten through shared experiences (Jansen et al., 2015).

Challenges

Despite the opportunities derived from multiculturalism and diversity, Hyatt also faces various challenges, which include the following. Firstly, in an instance where the company fails to handle diversity and multiculturalism properly, communication drawback is noted, owing to language barriers, as well as having different perceptions of non-verbal languages (Kymlicka, 2016). Notably, employees from different cultural backgrounds do encode and also decode messages differently, thus leading to misunderstandings, tension, as well as collusion. Additionally, barriers and difficulties generally can be created, based on religious differences, as well as dysfunctional adaption behavior. A challenge is also noted, whereby, Hyatt faces cases where employees get involved in interpersonal conflicts, due to dissimilar beliefs, opinions, norms, values, and even customs (Fuentes & Shannon, 2016). Another challenge that Hyatt faces is that multiculturalism and diversity incited inter-group bias that leads to negative outcomes. The primary diversity dimensions are often highly visible and can lead to high cases of discrimination, prejudice, as well as stereotypes. However, Hyatt purposes to fight them, in order to enhance productivity. Evidently, a deep level of similarities in terms of equal values, and thoughts enhance a positive cohesion of the workers. However, deep-level dissimilarity poses negative consequences for workers and can lead to intense tension between employees (Ferdman, 2017).

Conclusion

Based on this report, it is evident that Hyatt Company has adopted the practices of multiculturalism and diversity, which have brought forth benefits to the organization, of importance being that the company has gained the opportunity of continually increase its profit margin, enhance customer satisfaction, and create a positive image for the organization. However, this report also notes that Hyatt also faces challenges associated with multiculturalism and diversity, and the most common challenge is communication drawback. Overall, it is evident that multicultural and diversity has enabled the company to prospers in the global market.

References

• Bloomberg. (2019). Company Overview of Hyatt Hotels Corporation. Retrieved [online]
• Ferdman, B. M. (2017). Paradoxes of inclusion: Understanding and managing the tensions of diversity and multiculturalism. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 53(2), 235-263.
• Fuentes, M. A., & Shannon, C. R. (2016). The state of multiculturalism and diversity in undergraduate psychology training. Teaching of Psychology, 43(3), 197-203.
• Gündemir, S., Dovidio, J. F., Homan, A. C., & De Dreu, C. K. (2017). The impact of organizational diversity policies on minority employees’ leadership self-perceptions and goals. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 24(2), 172-188.
• Jansen, W. S., Otten, S., & van der Zee, K. I. (2015). Being part of diversity: The effects of an all-inclusive multicultural diversity approach on majority members’ perceived inclusion and support for organizational diversity efforts. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 18(6), 817-832.
• Kymlicka, W. (2016). Defending diversity in an era of populism: Multiculturalism and interculturalism compared. Multiculturalism and interculturalism: Debating the dividing lines, 158-177.
• Neil, A. (2017). Hyatt Join the Battle for Cultural Diversity with New Marketing Campaign. Retrieved [online] from
• Parrillo, V. N. (2015). Diversity in America. Routledge. Reuters. (2019). Profile: Hyatt Hotels Corp (H.N). Retrieved [online] from
• Taylor, M. (2018). Hyatt Signs Major Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives. Retrieved [online] from
• Weber, F. (2018). Hyatt Signs on to Support Major Diversity & Inclusion Initiatives. Retrieved [online] from

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