Department Culture and Diversity review
The advantages of having a strong culture and diversity focus on organisations is widely agreed. Accrdoing to Yuvay Meyers Ferguson, assistant dean School of Business at Howard University in Washington, D.C. “If your culture is not one that respects and includes workers based on their differences, even with the greatest of recruiting efforts, diverse candidates will not thrive and will not stay”.
The Department ran several projects to support culture, divert and inclusion but the three were not linked as one objective. Since 2022 EDI (equality, diversity, and inclusion) are connected under one initiative. The three goals are:
This report will analyse goal three ‘Support the development of a skilled and diverse workforce’. The Department has been successful in using a data driven approach to understand diversity, including embedding EDI related material into ongoing training programmes and inductions for all employees at all stages within their career. One key measure by percentage increase by diverse applications to the Department, this overachieved by 2% against a target of 5%. The impact of this result means that slowly teams are beginning to form members from different backgrounds.
Evaluation of the impact of organisational culture, diversity, and performance
An important aspect of diversity and performance is conflict and considered a key variable (Jehn et al. 2008).
The review aims to understand and identify the impact of organisational culture, diversity effects on Department performance, this report will analyse the working environment regarding diversity and culture. According to McKinsey, diversity can be summarised as, gender, age, ethnic background, and physical ability. Like many organisations their workforces are complex environments and often incorporates individuals from many diverse backgrounds. In a recent census in Ireland, ethnic groups accounted for were, Irish (82.2%), Irish travellers (.07%), other White groups (9.5%), Asian (2.1%), Black (1.4%), other (1.5%), unspecified (2.6%). According to the Department of Enterprise and Trade, in 2022 39,995 permits to work in Ireland were granted from over 151 countries. Delivering through diversity (2018) a report by McKinsey, highlights the direct correlation between business performance and diversity, it also creates the connection between cultural diversity in maximising team performances. Based on this report it supports the challenges as part of this review, the Department has seen relatively small numbers on non-nationals join the Department, the impact some of the main KPIs were not fully met.
It is not surprising that organisations that have a strong culture have performed well. A study by Rajesh Chandy, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota’s concludes that “Corporate culture is, above all, the most important factor in driving innovation”.
It is important to realize the age distribution between age groups 35- 59 is 26% Figure 6. A culture does exist in pockets that resist change, modernization, and improved ways of working. It is difficult to derive a direct correlation between tenure and performance, but it is a contributing factor to overall performance.
