Assessment Task 2 Critical Analysis of a Diversity Policy (A Report) Worth: XXXXXXXXXX% Due date: XXXXXXXXXXWeek 9, May 2, Thursday, 4:00 pm Length and/or format: XXXXXXXXXXwords (10% --/+) Assessment...

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF A DIVERSITY POLICY
ASSESSMENT TASK 2
Table of Contents
Introduction    3
Diversity Policies in an Organization    3
Analysis and Evaluation of Leaders’ Roles Reflecting the ‘Diversity Policy’    3
Analysis and Evaluation of Policy, Procedure as well as their Implementation Strategy    5
Recommendations for Diversity Policy Improvements    6
Conclusion    7
References    8
Introduction
Diversity can be best explained as the differences among the employees in an organization based on age, religion, gender, culture, physical abilities, mental abilities, language or status. It encloses all those differences, which make the individual entity in the organization unique, limited, and exceptional from others. Among all other challenges, as stated by Guillaume et al. (2017), one of the major challenges in today’s work environment is diversity. However, in this field of diversity, determining the right choices of practice and decisions to produce the desired result is a challenge. Therefore, the current report focuses on the role of the leaders in managing diversity through diversity policy in context of Apple.
Diversity Policies in an Organization
According to U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), nine best policies for diversity are –
1. Top leadership commitment: The objective of the diversity has to be properly communicated by the top-level management throughout the organization.
2. Diversity as part of Strategic plan: the strategy of implementing diversity must be aligned to the organization’s strategic plan (Noe et al., 2017).
3. Diversity linked to performance: Every individual in the organization must understand that diverse work environment provides greater opportunity and productivity to improve both, individual and organizational performance.
4. Measurement: The quantitative and qualitative measures of the impact of the diversity plan (Gotsis and Grimani, 2016).
5. Accountability: The leaders must take the responsibility for diversity and link their performance assessment and compensation with the progress.
6. Succession planning: A strategic process of developing a pool of diverse talent for future leaders of the organization (Noe et al., 2017).
7. Recruitment: Qualified and diverse applicants are attracted in the process for employment.
8. Diversity Training: As mentioned by Gotsis and Grimani (2016), the effort of the organization to inform the organization’s management and the employees about the benefits of diversity.
Analysis and Evaluation of Leaders’ Roles Reflecting the ‘Diversity Policy’
Presently, the contemporary work place can be described as the meeting point of cultural diversity and efficient incorporation of it results in effective operation of the business. It initially consisted of legal aspects and increased employment of women and minorities, which made it a must for corporations. Gradually, as informed by McClelland and Holland (2015), managers have understood that diversity has much larger scope other than just complying with existing legal obligations. However, the leaders are responsible for understanding the workplace requirements and implement diversity policies leading to a productive and sensitive workforce. The main reason behind failure of organization’s diversity policies is lack of far-sighted planning. As stated by Ashikali and Groeneveld (2015), short-term achievement of objectives would prevent the workforce from truly accepting the diversity policies and adapting with it. Diversity is best learned from watching the behavior and actions of the leaders other than from only trainings and explanations. Therefore, leaders of the organization play a crucial role in implementation of any diversity policy successfully. The following are the roles of leaders for bringing diversity in the organization –
Communication: The leaders must develop a communication strategy to explain the objectives of the organization and the beneficial reasons behind implementing diversity policies. They are the employees, who look forward to in the organization and prepares themselves according to their initiatives and enthusiasm. One of the most difficult things to implement is change and tougher than that is to sustain that change (Gotsis and Grimani, 2016). Hence, the leaders need to begin diversity program from months before recruitment of employees from diverse cultures and backgrounds. The employees need to be provided with time along with communication for adapting with the change, to ease their working and operations. Short-term planning would only disrupt the functioning of the workforce.
Strategy: Building a proper strategy is the responsibility of the leaders of the organization. It must explain the goals and objectives of the organization by implementing...