Managing A Diverse Workforce

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

In present day, human diversity becomes a more and more important part in human resource management. Organizations should pay more attention to the study of diversity so that executives will be able to manage and determine new effective strategies to adapt to change in the workplace; also be prepared for leading organizations to achieve its desired goals for the future. Managing diversity suitably can create a healthy work environment in the workplace and also encourage employees to be loyal toward organizations. This article focuses on the most apparent differences between people in organizations, which are age differences and cultural differences. Knowing how to manage the differences in each generation and culture, which influence behavior and attitude of each individual will be able to make employees feel satisfied; this also increases employees’ morale which can make employees work more effectively. In summary, the age and cultural differences are a main factor for determining people’s behavior and perception. Therefore, examining human diversity and knowing the impact of each difference are necessary since it can give an opportunity for organizations to improve its strategies and workplace productivity.

Introduction

Nowadays, a perception regarding human resource management has become one of the central roles in part of organizational development. This perception indicates that human behavior management is getting more and more important because human is compared as the main engine making an organization achieve its desired goals. Since most private businesses and public businesses today have a new policy ‘global organization’ in order to expand the market, many organizations offer an opportunity for foreigners to play the role of potential development in different divisions, such as education, technology, and new philosophy.

For instance, diversity is the main key of Google’s success. According to the CBO (Chief Business Officer) of Google [1] , he stated that since Google’s users are multicultural, the company views diversity as the basis of Google’s operation and also used as a tool driving the company to get success. Additionally, Google’s 2010 annual report mentioned that the company does not only accept the differences, but also support and celebrate diversity for the advantages against all Googlers [2] .

In addition, every organization consists of multi-generational workforce which is varying and is seen more likely to create conflict. However, with good management, organizations can use this assortment of employees as a basis of competitive advantage. Hence, there is no doubt that why the organizations in present day are built upon workforce diversity which is a main point of causing many significant issues within the organizations, such as communication, language, culture of living, and way of working. Executives always neglect these basic issues, so they never provided any solutions to make compatible among employees. For example, according to a problem statement in diversity research, it mentioned about the conflict caused by improper management on workforce diversity which can create difficulties and destructive interpersonal conflicts. This will have an impact on an overall aspect of organizations. Moreover, if managers do not attend diversity management, employees will keep breaking the rules by their behavior. This can violate the organizational sustainability in long-term [3] .

A definition of diversity is simply referred to as variety distinctness between people or things. As diversity can be both visible and invisible, the diversity in this case is not only age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, color, culture, status, belief, ideologies and religion, but also individual differences, such as learning skills, information awareness, obedience, personal preferences, life style etc [4] . When it comes to collaboration, this represents that diversity meaningfully involves the way people interact to one another, and affect the work environment. Thus, producing alliance between similarities and differences require mutual appreciating, respecting, and understanding interdependency to each other so that the environment in the workplace will be healthy which is able to make people work together productively in a positive way.

Working in diverse work groups sounds more complex than working with people who have the identical attitude, value, and culture. Diverse collaboration, however, can bring many advantages by proper management. The most common benefit, which is an important factor for the businesses, is it creates competitive advantage over rivals because the diverse employees and work groups can enlarge capability of idea creation, foster cooperative diversity, and respond directly to local preferences which are very essential for all global businesses which demand to spread out the total market. Therefore, it is critical that the executives are supposed to have a farsighted perspective about how to manage diversity in the workplace efficiently in order to eliminate the possible issues and reinforce diverse cooperation. Consequently, personnel management within the organizations, which is able to create an integrated collaboration environment more effectively, is becoming the key role increasingly.

This paper is designed to inform how to manage workforce diversity effectively to increase a strong relationship and operating environment among the employees so that they can extend their potential and optimize their competency, which brings about a productive improvement, to achieve the organizations’ desired goals and that will affect directly toward overall profitability of the organizations.

Literature Review

What is the diversity? According to Kelli A. Green, Mayra Lopez, Allen Wysocki, and Karl Kepner, they said Diversity is ordinarily explained as understanding and accepting both obvious and unobvious individual differences, such as age, ethnicity, gender, psycho-socio-spiritual, religious belief, and status. It also means recognizing and respecting the value of people [5] . Currently, diversity becomes an important matter in business world. It makes big changes around the world especially in the Unites States as the rate of diverse immigrants is increasing more and more [6] . Since having diverse employees creates a competitive advantage and increase organizations’ productivity, organizations should place more attention on ways to manage diversity effectively in order to adapt and improve business structure so that the organizations will have competency to deal with highly competitive market in the present day [7] .

As mentioned before diversity can be both visible and invisible; according to a model of total quality diversity by Rosado, diversity will be clearly classified into two dimensions: the primary and the secondary. The primary or Horizontal places emphasis on biology and all apparent differences, such as age, gender, race, ethnic, physical capability, etc. The secondary or Vertical focuses on psychology which is usually invisible, such as worldviews, religious beliefs, ethic, attitude, culture, language, way of learning and valuing, etc. The secondary dimension, in the other words, stresses on every different characteristic that originates from external factors of each individual; this gives rise to human behavior [8] .

Therefore, to manage and improve individual potential, which is built upon those basic differences, in order to create collaboration work and reach the organizations’ strategic goals, every good administrator should be aware of those two different dimensions which can cause a violent conflict and also can be a determinating factor of each individual behavior. On the other hand, if the administrators manage this obstruction well, the result will yield good return. The most obvious dissimilarities of the primary and the secondary can be categorized into two aspects: Age Differences and Cultural Differences.

Managing Age Differences

It is a common perception that every organization will be consisted of employees from diverse generations. According to Kogan, in the Journal of Hospitality Management, he stated that in this modern workforce context, employees from different ages are working together; some people have to work with someone who is much younger or older than them [9] . Working among different generations can contribute to age gap issues which are able to give an impact toward organizations; in the other words, age is considered the main factor that can specify apparent distinctions. Age also affects employees’ expectations, culture, working styles, and characteristics; managers are realizing these effects, and they have to pay more attention on how to manage distinct generation more efficiently as it can lead to the increase in employees’ morale, effective interpersonal communication, and overall productivities within organizations [10] . In the same Journal, Gordon, Steele, and Raines claimed that changing the concept of generational blending management brings about both advantages and disadvantages. The most crucial gain is creativity and problem resolution, since generational blending is like combining different ideas together. Meanwhile, with different ways of thinking, this causes issues among employees [11] . Therefore, it is necessary for administrators to know how to cope with the differences in each generation; this will assist to set a right person for a right job, promote employees’ morale, and decrease turnover issue. This paper will group the generations into 3 main periods which are:

Generation B (Baby Boomers)

In the thesis of Holly Louise Watson, he referred that people who were born between 1946 -1964 (born after World War II) are considered the baby boomer generation which are the majority of citizen in the United States [12] . According to Anick Tolbize, he found that people in this generation are characterized as competitive; in other words, they are workaholics: their life plan tends to be based on working; they dedicate themselves to their work, and believe that working hard can propel them to be successful in life [13] . Boomers always value work regulations, emphasize the concept of hierarchy (vertical) structure which is defined as chain of command, have high faithfulness toward their organization, have no rush for being promoted; they expect getting a promotion step by step. They prefer working in collaboration to working alone [14] . Boomers are rather idealistic and optimistic. They have a good attitude toward diversity and often avoid conflicts; however, they are ready to fight for a cause which they believe in. Being healthy is viewed as personal satisfaction of this generation [15] . Holly Louise Watson also said that although many boomers have been characterized as optimistic people, their confidence toward their task sometimes can seem judgmental attitude of others’ ideas which are different from them. Many boomers are afraid that modern technology will replace the traditional transaction: they are still attentive to face to face interaction, thus sometimes they resist changing [16] .

Generation X

According to Kaylene C. Williams, generation X is referred to people who were born between 1965 -1979. Generation X can be concisely called Gen X, and Xers is used for the members of Gen X. People in this generation grew up during difficult time: it was economic stagnation at that time and the increase in divorce rates was a big issue [17] . Therefore, many Xers had to take responsibility for taking care of themselves in an era of financial, familial, and economic anxiety. Unlike the Baby Boomers generation, Xers value family and friends more than other things and also they are not excessively loyal toward their employer as Baby Boomers were since Xers have a strong perspective about making the balance between work, life, and family [18] . Moreover, Anick Tolbize who wrote an article of Generational Differences in the Workplace referred that they focus more on being independent and self-governing. Thus, Xers like to take a risk and chance with their own development, and they are likely to be entrepreneurial rather than being employed in big organizations [19] . According to Jennifer L. Hendryx, generation X has experienced the rising of personal computers and the internet; it is the reason why Xers value learning new things and have good technical skill. Experience with hard time in childhood, they are rather pessimistic and suspicious. Conversely, they have an ability to adapt themselves to everything, are multitaskers, and like a flexible job [20] . Xers are creative and tend to be individualistic and they do not prefer the concept of hierarchy structure [21] .

Generation Y

According to Dr. Carina Paine Schofield and Sue Horone, there are many names which are used to call this generation: the millennial generation, the echo boomers, the internet generation, the net generation, why generation, etc [22] . Generation Y refers to people who were born approximately between 1980 -2000. This is the generation that initiates a perspective of boys and girls have to be equal. Boys have to respect girls’ right and girls have to believe that they have an authority as boys have [23] . In the United States, this generation has experienced many changes, compared to other generations, on various things such as: strong consciousness of the environment, active campaign for recycling and reducing pollutants, global businesses, more attentive to future [24] . Gen Yers have been taught to be open-minded, respectful of others who are different from them, such as culture, gender, race, and ethnicity. Moreover, compared to Baby Boomers and Xers, generation Y has much more substantial ethical ideals against premarital sex, alcohol, and all kinds of drugs [25] . According to Kevin Wallace, gen Yers grew up in technology era in which that notebook computers, pagers, mobile phones, and fax machines were first released to the public. The arrival of electronic mail (e-mail) has made generation Y see value in diversity because of ease of worldwide business communication and an increase of global organizations. With technology facilitated learning processes, generation Y members are considered having high tech skills and multitasking skills [26] . Due to an upbringing style from Boomers and Xers, generation Y is viewed to be optimistic and self-assured, have loyalty toward institutes, sociable, and have effort for accomplishment [27] .

According to Jeffrey Kearns, Earl Larson, and Jagadeesh Venugopal, the main factor to create effective workforce diversity is to understand the features of the three generations so that executives can effectively manage multigenerational collaboration. As executives realize how different between each generation is, executives should also be attentive to employee knowledge improvement and necessary skills development in order to substitute next generations for previous generations as organizations are continuously moving on to the next era. Knowing how to manage multigenerational workforce efficiently will be able to create competitive advantage since it is a source of employee productivity development [28] .

Five Principles for effective Multigenerational Workforce Management

Communication and Respect

According to Anick Tolbize, as each generation has different perspectives and values things differently, employers should encourage employees to ask reasonable questions rather than being judgmental based upon suppositions when they are uncertain of others’ behavior. Moreover, employers should make employees to see respect as the norm because most people always view respect as what they have been taught and they expect others to do the same as them which is impossible [29] . David Stanley mentioned an example in Journal of Nursing Management, he said Boomers expect to get respected, whereas Generation X generally wants to be treated equally regardless of position level [30] . Building up multigenerational conversation can also avoid being judgmental of one another and promote employee engagement at the same time. The age gap issue will be lessened when employees keep communication open since they understand and get familiar with each other more. According to Susan A. Murphy and Claire Raines, knowing what diverse people’s preferences or requirements by asking is sometimes easier and more fun than just keep it with your assumption, also asking is the only way to ensure their needs [31] .

Embrace Flexibility

Organizations should establish performance principles and provide flexible work arrangements to each employee: the right job to the right person. With this flexibility, it can allow employee to utilize his or her experience on his or her interests. Tracey L. Cekada provided an example about flexibility that Boomers might prefer to talk to customers face-to-face or giving them a call, while Yers might prefer to use e-mail or other tools to communicate with customers; additionally, Xers and Yers like to work independently more than working as a team as Boomers prefer [32] . Employees should look for productive ways and be keen to learn others’ needs and interests within organizations in order to meet everyone’s expectation [33] . Furthermore, according to Jennifer S. F., Danielle H., and Kristin M, they pointed that organizations should find some solutions which can meet every generation’s preferences. Adopting telework and telecommuting system, for example, can be appreciated as a great benefit to Boomers, Xers, and Yers since Boomers commonly focus on aging parents at home; meanwhile, want to sustain productivity at the workplace, while Xers can balance their work and family life, and Yers who are likely to be pleased with independent work, they view time is more important than money [34] .

Organization and Team Mission

According to Holly Louise Watson, creating mission statements of teams or departments, which associate with organizations’ missions, can involve multigenerational work groups to conduct on the same track. This will make teams or departments gather together in a way of identical common goals instead of having differing perspectives because of generational differences [35] . Besides, employees will realize and understand precisely what they are working on which is essential for leading organizations to achieve organizations’ goals [36] . In addition, this is the way to promote a supportive and sympathetic work environment within organizations. In the Journal of Nursing Management by David Stanley, he supported that Policy development is another method to rally different generations’ perspectives regardless of what status they are. It may also be a good opportunity for a manager to consider any possible conflict which is better than finding the solution to resolve it afterward [37] .

Mentoring

According to Jennifer S. F., Danielle H., and Kristin M., they mentioned that new employees or less-experienced employees should be paired with senior employees so that they will get a better understanding of one another. Moreover, the key goals of mentoring programs are to transfer, instruct, and standardize the knowledge from previous generations to the next generations. It can also be used to improve new leaders in organizations [38] . Mentoring programs, however, can be referred to young generations mentor older generations since the bottom line of this strategy is knowledge transfer. For example, Time Warner developed a new mentoring program which needed college students who have technology skills to counsel executives about the arrival of new digital trends such as Facebook, and other web 2.0 tools [39] . Typically, a method of mentoring programs is to inspect employees’ knowledge and capability, and then pair them with an employee who is within areas of relative expertise; that employee should know how to teach and develop the anticipated skills [40] . The program can create a cohesive work environment and cross-generational communication among employees. According to Holly Louise Watson, he mentioned about surveys of adopting mentoring programs, surveys indicated that more than 50% of Gen Yers expected to get advice from the Baby Boomers generation; this shows a good path to keep knowledge and unique talent of each generation. Furthermore, mentoring programs can build up effective multigenerational relationships and quality in collaboration across generations [41] .

Awareness

According to Holly Louise Watson, people can basically work well together when they know, understand, and accept one another enough. Therefore, employers should provide multigenerational employees with educations and opportunities to learn each other such as each generation’s backgrounds, characteristics, interests, and culture [42] . Assigning representatives from each generation is a good idea for creating learning program to instruct employees about generations’ history so that they will have a better understanding and accepting of intergenerational interaction. If employees have no time for programs, create some topics to discuss during the break, make some interesting flyer, or use e-mail to present knowledge [43] . However, a fundamental training is still required for employees: ‘soft skill’. According to Anick Tolbize, he found that leaders or trainers should concern about each generation’s interests when educating soft skill, whereas ‘hard skill’ does not need to be considered separately for each generation since all generations have similar needs for ‘hard skill’. For example, Boomers prefer to learn skills training in their own area of expertise, while Xers and Yers’ preference is leadership training. Since different generations have different training and learning preferences, employers should manage effectively how to match employees to their desired programs so that they will be able to gain full benefits on their interests [44] .

Managing Cultural Differences

An invisible diversity that derives from external factors and has an apparent impact on human thinking process and human conduct comes from culture and religion. Cultural and religious differences create social norms, for example, as we always see that it has great influence in shaping Middle Eastern people’s mindset. Some people bring up cultural and religion differences to determine the set of regulations of people’s living and working. Changing people’s behavior that is inconsistent with their beliefs is hard, and it also can affect organizations’ creditability. Therefore, it is crucial for executives to pay attention on cultural and religious management in order to avoid any possible cross-cultural conflicts. Also, organizations will be able to promote employee engagement to have more effective collaboration.

Four Strategies for managing cultural differences

Adaptation

According to Jeanne Brett, Kristin Behfar, and Mary C. Kern, this strategy does not need many changes in terms of work structure, but team members or employees in organizations will find ways to adapt and work effectively with the challenges they have to deal with. Adaptation is often considered as one of the most popular and productive strategies to resolve problems which are caused by multicultural conflicts because if comparing adaptation to other strategies, adaptation spends the least amount of time. In this strategy, moreover, all employees are required to participate. Adaptation strategy is appropriate with a group of employees who is willing to maintain their cultural differences and comprehend how to manage those various ways of thinking [45] . This strategy relies so much on employee competencies and skills to understand and accept multicultural work groups. According to Training Program Resource Manual from Australian Multicultural Foundation, understanding cultural adaptation strategy, employers should ensure that employees are prepared and be keen to learn other cultures and intercultural communication principles. They need to be conscious of their own cultural principles, values and anticipation: they do not need to lose their original culture because that means they are losing themselves [46] . Employees should also be able to speak out about what they feel are important cross-cultural differences and then explain it clearly to others when it is necessary. Furthermore, employees need to assist newcomers to involve them in the community and communication process so that they will get familiar with diverse colleagues and culture; this can make multicultural employees in organization work well together without cultural conflicts [47] .

Structural Intervention

According to Jodi Carenys, organizational structure is an important component of organizational management; it has an influence on proficiency and productivity level of organizations. An inappropriate structure may not cause problems in the early stages, but it can cause problems in long-term such as an obstacle in work processes, a decrease in quality and quantity of work, a change of organizational culture and value, negative relationships and attitudes among employees, etc. In terms of multicultural management, employers should be more concerned about organizational structure since cross-cultural conflicts arise easier with unsuitable organization structure [48] .

According to Jeanne Brett, Kristin Behfar, and Mary C. Kern, a structural intervention is a thoughtful organization restructuring which is willing to decrease or eliminate interpersonal conflicts that arise from cultural diversity. This strategy will be more operative when teamwork is separated into subgroups with clear demarcation, or if some team members have negative stereotype thinking of each other or feel defensive [49] . For example, a manager of an investment research team had to manage his team which consists of members from Europe, the U.S., and the UK. The manager let all team members discuss face-to-face about work process at the first meeting; he noticed that no one spoke, just waited for him to start talking and they just listened. Therefore, he tried to change the concept of hierarchy. He hired a consultant to be his representative; the result turned out great as the consultant did not act in a hierarchical way and was able to gain the team members’ participation [50] . Structural intervention is also utilized to create small workgroups which consists of different cultures; this allows employees or team members to know and respect one another. Many organizations do not only use this strategy to reduce cultural differences between employees, but also buffer employees who cannot collaborate well together or participate in a large group of people [51] .

Managerial Intervention

Managerial Intervention is another strategy that organizations are adopting to ensure that they efficiently manage cultural diversity. Many organizations have used the managerial intervention strategy in diverse cases. This strategy has an important role in resolving cultural diversity conflicts within organizations. Manager will become involve in conflicts in order to create the ground rules and make a final decision to judge existing conflicts and what way they should be solved without employees involvement. However, this strategy is commonly used in situations that cannot be solved [52] . Employees or team members should set norms in the early stage through managerial intervention as it can assist them to solve problems effectively. With managerial intervention, managers can help employees to inspire one another to make sure that everyone is motivated and valued to collaborate with each other regardless of different cultures. Nevertheless, manager should be concerned in intervening because managerial interventions can be applied for both good and bad cause. According to Cambridge Journal of Economics, managerial intervention will dominate existing ways of working that employees have always conducted. Furthermore, some employees may be delegated to have decision-making authority within their division or team; employees may not be satisfied if the option of managerial intervention blocks or overrides their decision rights [53] .

Exit

According to Jeanne Brett, Kristin Behfar, and Mary C. Kern, exit is a rare strategy for reducing the issues of cultural differences. It is common that when people from different backgrounds work together, conflict arises easier than within a group of people who have identical backgrounds. If the conflicts cannot be worked out and approach a stalemate, teamwork will no longer be effective. Therefore, when employees or team members are not willing and happy to work with their department or team, it is necessary that the team should consider moving those people to other groups. This strategy is normally used with long-term team projects. In temporary team projects, team members can just be patient and wait until projects finish [54] . Asking one or several people to leave the team is regarded as a last resort of cultural resolutions. Exit can be formally conducted by organizations, or they can intentionally exit by themselves [55] .

Application

The components of success and achievement of organizations rely on work teams which are compared as a main machine driving organizations to reach a determined goal. Every work team will consist of diverse workforces who have various backgrounds. This diversity of people can be classified into two dimensions: the primary and the secondary. The primary is all about differences among people that are clearly visible. The secondary is differences among people that are invisible. However, the main differences on which these two dimensions place emphasis are Age Differences (the primary) and Cultural Differences (the secondary). Age differences and cultural differences are considered a challenge for organizations in terms of human resource management so that diverse workforce will be managed more effectively and employees will be able to work together in organization with a healthy work environment. Therefore, good administrators should pay attention to diversity education in organizations in order to learn, understand, and acknowledge individual behavior; it is also a good opportunity for employees to get a better understanding of each other. Knowing how to manage diverse workforce can assist administrators to realize weak points and strong points of each employee. Then administrators will be able to utilize that realization for developing human resource management approach and managing collaboration between diverse workforces based on rules of organizations.

Speaking about organization today, based on what I have researched on my topic, there are several points that I feel are relevant and important for organizations today. However, if I have to choose only one point for the most relevant, I will choose ‘Managing Age Differences’ as it is a fact that there is a mixture of different ages in every organization. A changing workforce in organizations is a part of a change in population structure of a society and the world. The number of elderly people is increasing steadily in many countries which means there are many people who are about to retire, while the birth rate is decreasing. Thus, the crucial situation will arise when many organizations are put at risk from losing needed knowledge and work skills because both of it will go along with those retiring people. Moreover, every organization nowadays consists of multigenerational employees: Boomers, Xers, and Yers. Therefore, it is important for employers to figure out how to manage generational differences. In addition, employers should be aware of how to motivate employees in each generation to work as a collaborative team; in terms of human resource management, this can also assist in boosting employees’ morale. Based on my paper, I view that mentoring, communication, and respect are very necessary factors for managing age differences. For example, as a family-owned business, my father always willingly transfers his managerial knowledge, skills, and experiences to my elder brother so that my elder brother will comprehend the business process structure and business system. Then when my father retires, my elder brother will be able to maintain the business and keep it moving forward for the future. They used to oppose each other regarding implementing new technology in the business: my father disagreed while my brother strongly agreed. However, after a long conversation with acceptable reasons, my father accepted what my brother had suggested with the reservation that my father would be the one who chose what kind of new technologies should be adopted in the business. With higher up position and more working experience, my brother respectfully acted according to my father’s agreement.

Nevertheless, I personally think that ‘managing cultural differences’ will be the most relevant for organizations in the future. Since our world becomes more and more globalized, organizations have to change management process in order to adapt to change in the business world. Multicultural business is considered one of the most obvious effects of raising diversity in the workplace because the increase in the number of international organizations which is one of the reasons that makes multicultural management necessary. In my opinion, every organization that wants to expand the total market, it is really necessary for them to pay attention to figure out which strategy should be adopted to manage employees, whose backgrounds are distinct from their own, to be good collaborative teams. Implementing cross-cultural management can provide many advantages for organizations such as gaining a competitive advantage, cultural conflict solving, organizational image, advertising, and marketing. For example, my father’s company has been trading with Chinese and Bruneian’s company for ten years, there was a difficulty at the beginning since most managers could not understand Chinese at all and have a low English proficiency; thus my father had to provide managers and some employees a language program so that they would be able to communicate with international customers without the language obstacle. This indicates that adaptation strategy is effective and also can level up employees’ skill. In terms of relationship between employees, multicultural management is seen to be a promoter of employee engagement in organization. Furthermore, as employees spend their work time around 40 hours per week which means their personal lives and work lives will be also affected by their colleagues’ culture and organizations’ culture. I perceive these cultures are one of the key factors leading organization to a path of success. Therefore, it is undeniable that why organizations should place emphasis on managing cultural differences, and be ready to change to the new reality of a diverse workplace.

In my own country, Thailand, organizations value ‘Mentoring’ strategy: the concept of pairing senior employees, who are within the area of relative expertise, with newcomers, and then those seniors will be responsible for teaching and transferring their knowledge, skills, and experiences to those newcomers. The mentoring program is regarded as a common practice in most organizations. In my perspective, this program works very well especially for new employees. Mentoring program assists organization to sustain existing employees’ competencies because the program is like passing on what senior employees have learned to new employees, or less-experienced employees so that they will be able to understand work processes, gain more knowledge and skills in their expertise, and also can hand down their proficiency to the new employees in the future. Another idea that I feel it would work in my own country is ‘Awareness’. Based on my paper, ‘Awareness’ means employers should pay attention to creating a learning program which provides employees in each generation’s information in order to encourage employees to learn, understand, and accept other employees who have a different generation from their own generation, and employers also should be aware of employees’ preferences in each generation. I view this principle would work in my own country; it can be applied to other learning programs: it does not need to be only about generation. For example, my previous organization offered a language course and an accounting course for all employees. Since my previous organization is an international organization which specializes in accounting services; thus, I think the accounting course is very important for all employees as accounting principles are continually changed, and also a language course can assist employees’ works to be more effective with proper language and clear communication. Every employee was satisfied with taking the courses; I also noticed that there was an improvement in relationship among employees after the courses finished.

Based on my paper, if I have my own organization, the strategies that I want to take to help my organization to become successful will be both ‘Five principles’ of multigenerational and ‘Four Strategies’ of multicultural management. For well-managed organizations, I think both of them should absolutely not be neglected. I view managing multigenerational workforce is a basis of management in good organizations since employees in each generation have unique preferences, experiences, values, and expectations that affect their behaviors and attitudes. Accordingly, I need to know and understand the needs of each generation so that I will be able to manage my employees effectively by adjusting productive strategies to administrate them and respond to their expectations positively. Therefore, ‘Five principles’ of multigenerational management will be required for my organization’s success. In the sense of managing multicultural workforce, I see it as a necessary component for my organization’s growth, particularly for global business in the future. With effective management of intercultural workforce, I believe this can make employees extremely utilize their potentials which will support directly toward the increase in productivity and overall benefits of my organization.