8000-261 Diversity in the Workplace

8000-261 Diversity in the Workplace is a unit within the ILM Level 2 module that prepares the leaders of teams and the organisation in general to facilitate culturally diverse activities within the organisation. The modern corporate environment is characterised by embracing diversity which is important in building both an environment supporting the autonomous nature of team members as well as creating ethical and legal compliance to the expected values and standards within the organisations.

This unit provides the learners with the opportunity to understand the role that diversity plays in creating a conducive working environment to boost the performance of a team. Additionally, the unit promotes understanding of the legal and ethical obligations of the leaders to ensure that they treat all employees with respect despite their differences hence promoting an ethical team. The main purpose and aims of the unit are to develop an understanding of the importance of implementing diversity within teams, approaches to managing diversity and acting ethically within the workplace as a practising or potential team or cell leader within the organisation.

This is critical information that any leader should be able to acquire and implement effectively in their areas of responsibility. The unit is completed in 6 guided learning hours, after which the learners are assessed and is equivalent to 1 credit value.

Suitability for the course

This course is important for both leaders and stakeholders in general within the workplace. The unit is designed to provide relevant information to the team leaders and supervisors within the organisation. Since the unit guides learners to understand the role of diversity within a team context, it improves the practice and theory for these groups of stakeholders hence ensuring that they positively contribute to designing a conducive work environment and team culture.

The unit is also applicable to top management and departmental managers in their initial stages of understanding the role of diversity within the workplace. These are leaders tasked with dealing with teams at different levels, such as the strategic decision-making level and the tactical level. As such, they also need to understand the critical principles applied when managing diversity within teams.

The unit can also be applied to external consultants who provide relevant support for decision-makers within the organisation. These critical stakeholders need to understand the principles of diversity hence providing reliable services and support to other manager. General employees can pursue the course to understand the contributions they can make in creating an enabling and supportive work environment, as well as prepare them for future leadership positions within teams in the organisation.

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners should be able to:

• Understand organisational policies that are aligned to Equality and diversity within the workplace

• Show knowledge of the roles of a team leader in promoting equality and diversity within their teams

• Identify inappropriate behaviours related to equality and diversity within the workplace or their specific teams and set up effective strategies to address these behaviours or practices.

• Outline effective strategies and processes that are implemented within their organisation to handle inappropriate behaviours in relation to diversity that is beyond the authority of the team leader.

• Identify effective situations where the organisational expectations and diversity principles could conflict and put up effective measures that can be used in reporting such conflicts that could compromise team performance

• Show understanding of the role of a team leader in handling conflicts between individual values and organisational expectations at the team level.

Key Learning Areas

This is a significantly wide unit that covers critical principles that are applicable in the modern management of organisations. 8000-261 Diversity in the Workplace, therefore, is broken down into different levels of learning that target specific aspects of the concept of diversity. The two main learning areas in the unit are:

Principles of diversity

This area of learning focuses on the theoretical frameworks surrounding the issue of diversity. 8000-261 Diversity in the Workplace helps to build the knowledge of the learners on diversity as both an ethical and legal issue. This area helps them to understand the legislations covering diversity within the UK laws applicable at the organisation and team levels as well as introduce them to the ethical values that are related to the issue of diversity. Additionally, the learners are made to understand the different areas that could compromise the ability of the organisation to exhibit ethical standards and values that are appreciated within the organisation.

The learners, who are practising or potential team leaders, are made to understand the consequences that could arise from ignoring the principles of diversity within their teams, both on performance and compliance levels of their teams. As such, this area builds the ability of the team leaders to assess their team environment to ensure it is aligned with specific principles as well as build an understanding of the process that they can use to report conflicts or violations of ethical principles in organisational policies.

Managing organisational conflicts

Diversity is necessitated by the differences among team members that are created by different cultural and individual factors. These aspects are developed as values embraced by the individual. In some instances, there is a conflict between these individual values and the organisational policies and expectations.

8000-261 Diversity in the Workplace provides the learners with information that is important in understanding such instances and effectively handling the situation to avoid conflicting practices and behaviours with the legal and ethical principles surrounding the organisation. The learner is also trained on approaches of ensuring that individual team members are trained on embracing diversity and aligning it to the organisational expectations and policies.

Wrap Up 

8000-261 Diversity in the Workplace is a critical unit for practising or potential team leaders as it helps to build their leadership skills. The learners are required to complete the unit and complete an assessment that evaluates the efficiency of the learning process in meeting the learning outcomes and objectives. A written assessment is used together with supervised practice to give the assessors an understanding of the levels of mastery of contents that have been taught within the course.