Leadership Styles for Multi Generational Workforce

Question: Discuss about the Leadership Styles for Multi Generational Workforce. Answer: Introduction The ever increasing globalisation and digitization has made the entire world a smaller place. It has shown direct effects on the modern business environments around the globe. Primarily due to increasing globalization of businesses and surmounting competition, the organizations are facing several internal as well as external pressures. Among various pressures such as economic uncertainties of international markets, stiff rise in competition, etc. The two pressures discussed here includes management of diversity in workplace and maintenance of organisational ethics in the modern business scenarios. The workplace diversity denotes the range of variations among the employees working in an organization. Diversity includes a wide variety of parameters such as race, ethnic group, gender, age, cognitive style, personality, tenure, education, organizational function, background and so on. Thus to manage the pressures arising from diversity at workplace is one of the crucial challenges of modern business organisations and managers. Effective management of diversity is essential to leverage the benefits and reduce the pressures caused by it (Ingram, 2017). The aspects of diversity not alone affect the person's perception about themselves but also of others. This in turn affects their mutual interactions and hence their performances in the organization, Managers thus have a critical responsibility of effectively dealing with matters like adaptability, communication and change. Along with the problems relating to the workplace diversity, it has various benefits too. The modern organizations success depends upon its ability to adapt to the new changing business environment. The diverse workforce provides avenues for the increased adaptability for the organization. The varieties of solutions provided by the organizations are greatly benefitted by employees with varied backgrounds, experiences and talents. The managers are able to do better allocation of resources, sourcing and services with the help of team with diversity. Such companies are able to give broader range of services as compared to companies with non-diversified workforce. The variety of viewpoints could be obtained by diverse workforce, enabling the organizations to enjoy benefit of pool of talents from across the globe. The execution of companies which encourage diversity is effective as they inspire their employees to give their best performance on global platform. Thus the organizations produ ctivity, profitability as well as sustainability strengthen. However, the benefits of diverse workforce could be reaped by the organization and managers when they can overcome the issues attached to it. The prime issue in diversified organization is of effective communication. The culture, perception as well as language barriers must be overcome for smooth functioning of the operations in an organisation. the ineffective communication cold lead to poor team work, lack of understanding of objectives of the company, internal disputes or even loss of image of the company in market (Ropes, 2013). It also leads to other major issues such as resistance to change, glitches in implementation of organizational strategies and therefore adverse effects on the profitability of the company. Some of the solutions thatcould be applied by the managers to overcome the pressures posed by diversity of workforce include assessment of diversity in the organization.This could be done using the customizedemployee satisfaction surveys. The managers could use this information toidentify the obstaclesandchallenges of their workforce and thereby implement policies to increase their effectiveness. Another solution managers can adopt is development of comprehensive, attainable and measurable plan for diversity in the workplace. Implementation of this plan could help the managers to ward off pressures posed by diversity. The managers could also evade change resistance with the policies of inclusion by involvingevery employee in bestpossible way. This would help to foster the feeling of belongingness and openness. Organisations at large must promote diversity in leadership positions, so as to encourage employees at lower levels to give wider acceptance to their diversified colleagues. Ma nagers can also utilize diversity training tools to manage increasing diversity in the current business environment (Greenberg, 2013). Managing organisations ethics Organizational ethics could be understood as the underlying standards and principals which governs the operations of a business. The ethics in any organisations could be demonstrated by its acts of compassion, fairness, , integrity, responsibility and honour. The organisation and the managers have the responsibility of ensuring that their employees completely understand the ethics of their company. Therefore, the training of employees on company ethics is important for management to subsidize the pressures of unethical behaviour in an organisation (Al-Asfour Lettau, 2014). The issues which arise from the unethical behaviour in any organisation could lead to loss of reputation, business loss and even ultimate demise of the organisation. The current business environment and high market competition often tempts the companies to adopt methods of profitability that are not entirely ethical. Such method ultimately becomes the cause of pressure from market, regulatory authorities, and as well final consumers. Therefore, it is imperative for the organisation and managers to deal with the issues of organisational ethics (Podsiadlowski Groschke, 2013). One of the most important methods of incorporating organisation ethics in a company is to adopt the policy of uniform treatment of the employees. The companies which treat their employees with equality, tends to incorporate the values and ethics of business in them. Thereby not only protecting their business but also showcasing the image of responsible corporate in the market. Managers could treat their employees with fairness irrespective of their religion, race, cultures or lifestyles. Business ethics could be maintained by managers by giving sensitivity training and providing equal opportunities of growth for all the employees (Suttle, 2017). The important pressure on the companies these days is to protect the community as well as environment in which they operate. The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is one of the key aspects of the companies in the global markets. The organisational ethics considers various factors regarding the company's social responsibilities and thus the managers have an important role in ensure the same. Also the aspects of financial ethics must be taken care by the managers in any organisation in order to ensure that the company does not have to face legal or statutory proceedings against it. Mangers can maintain the financial ethics by ensuring no state legislators for tax credits are broken or no insider trading is done by the employees. Also such important laws biding the company to behave ethically in financial matters must be complied by the management (Griseri Seppala, 2010). Conclusion The two pressures of maintaining balance with diverse workforce and upholding ethics in highly competitive current business environments are of great importance for the organizations ad managers. In the coming years would surely see higher diversification and therefore the organisations which would address this issue well in time would only be able to survive in the dynamic business environment. Similarly, the stiffness of competition would only increase in the future. Even in such scenarios the companies adopting ethical means would be able to sustain and become beacon of success in the business world. References Al-Asfour, A., Lettau, L. (2014). Strategies for leadership styles for multi-generational workforce.Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics,11(2), 58. Greenberg, J. (2013). Diversity in the Workplace. University of Houston. Retrieved 20 April 2017, from https://www.uh.edu/ucs/employers/newsletter/2013/fall.pdf Griseri, P., Seppala, N. (2010). Business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Cengage Learning. Ingram, D. (2017). Advantages and Disadvantages of Diversity in Workplace. Smallbusiness.chron.com. Retrieved 20 April 2017, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-diversity-workplace-3041.html Podsiadlowski, A., Groschke, D., Kogler, M., Springer, C., Van Der Zee, K. (2013). Managing a culturally diverse workforce: Diversity perspectives in organizations.International Journal of Intercultural Relations,37(2), 159-175. Suttle, R. (2017). Example of Organizational Ethics. Smallbusiness.chron.com. Retrieved 20 April 2017, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/example-organizational-ethics-36755.html