Equal Opportunities and Diversity

For organisations it is very important that they provide equal opportunities and diversity for every worker. Providing equal opportunities and diversity ensures that there isn’t discrimination in the recruitment such as gender, marital status, sexual identity, religious belief, race, age, disability, background, etc.

Equal Opportunities

Equality simply means equal rights for people no matter of what dynamics they might have that could differentiate them from others such as gender, age, religious belief, social backgrounds, ethnic, disability, etc. All workers are meant to be treated in the same way and also get the same opportunities as everyone else. Treating them fairly and equally gives the employers motivation whereas this improves their performance and also would be a better atmosphere to work at.

Diversity

With diversity it is about acceptance and respect. Diversity means when you should be able to recognize that everyone is different and should be able to see the individual differences. The differences could be the race, ethnic, gender, religious beliefs, disabilities, etc. It is about understanding each individual and treating them fair according to them. One good example would be, when for an example Muslim staffs has to pray during the working time. The manager should permit him to pray, but whereas he should cut of the time he takes to pray on his break. If he gave him break to pray at the same time his usual breaks, it wouldn’t be fair on the other staff.

The difference between equal opportunity and diversity is that equal opportunities makes sure that there isn’t any discrimination within the organisation and the diversity recognises the difference in each individual and accept their needs and requirements.

Age Legislation

The age legislation became effective into force in October 2006, as employee they had to be aware of the applicant age, and not do favour for people at certain ages they couldn’t work. The employees were not allowed to employ people below the age of 16 and above the age of 65. Since this was introduced people with any age couldn’t be discriminated either that they are too young or too old, because they all entitled to be treated equally and fair. Organisations now have to allow people of certain age to work if they wished to continue to work, even though they can redundant someone due to their age. Employers may have stereotypes towards younger and older people. Young people are being stereotyped as less committed, less motivated, more likely to drop out from the job, less experienced and also  even that they are less organised. Elder staffs are trained and have enough experiences, tend to work for an organisation on a long term basis and are more motivated. This shouldn’t be a reason why a young person can’t work, as they should employ the young applicant. An idea to keep the young applicants on track, they should get payments, such as bonus or for achieving a set goal, which then motivates them to work hard for what they get paid. Another idea of making them motivated for the business well is, by offering them with specific working times, which could be the working pattern and flexible working hours. By offering their requirements, they would feel that they are working at the perfect place as well as being needed in the business.

Equal Opportunities at Asda

Asda is a very successfully leading company, which has created great opportunity within their company and has a good reputation as it has also become the second largest supermarket in the UK. Asda has provided many younger applicants with work experience placements, new jobs and many other roles. Equal opportunity within Asda is very important as they don’t do the under eighteen pay rate, because they think they should be paid for the certain job role they do whether eighteen or not. These two examples show that Asda doesn’t have age unfairness in the company.

Another example on diversity has also been shown in Asda that more than 97 Percent of women working for the Asda Company are proud, as they were informed about the options which were available for them. This could mean that maternity leave in which they get benefit of it cost the company extra having to pay the woman though her place is being covered by someone else who they have to pay as well. This again motivates the staff for working at the Asda.

In conclusion I have learnt from equal opportunity is that, it gives a workplace a pleasant environment. Being able to work with different races, genders, religious believers, etc is a very lovely experience to work at, because they feel accepted and therefore are very keen to work and complete their set work.

Reference:

Alex. (2011). It's official - Asda is a great place for women to work.Available: http://your.asda.com/2011/4/13/it-s-official-asda-is-a-great-place-to-work. Last accessed 19th Apr 2011.

Hornstein, Z. (2011). Age discrimination legislation: choices for the UK. Available: http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/age-discrimination-legislation-choices-uk. Last accessed 19th Apr 2011.

Mullins, L (2010). Management & Organisational Behaviour. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd. p342-344