CD13114 pr(s).qxp - Chartered Institute of Personnel and ...

Introduction
The workforce has never been as diverse as it is today. There are
more women, more ethnic minorities, more disabled people and
more older people working than ever before.
Diverse workforces bring many benefits but only if we create the
right type of environments. Many people will openly say that one of
the values that is important to them is that of fairness, ie ensuring
people are treated on merit. While we may believe that we act
fairly, the facts indicate that bias and discrimination affect our
decisions and actions. Indeed, we may have biases that we are not
aware of and these can affect our judgements without us ever
realising.
This toolkit is designed to assist organisations at all levels in creating
an inclusive environment. It goes from creating statements and
strategies through to developing plans and on to setting up a
training development programme.
What do we mean by diversity? The definition we use is taken from
Kandola and Fullerton (1998) in their book Diversity in Action:
Managing the Mosaic published by the CIPD. This states that ‘the
basic concept of managing diversity accepts that the workforce
consists of a diverse population of people. The diversity consists of
visible and non-visible differences which will include factors such as
sex, age, background, race, disability, personality and work style. It
is founded on the premise that harnessing these differences will
create a productive environment in which everyone feels valued,
where their talents are fully utilised and in which organisational
goals are met’.
xi
A free sample chapter from Managing Diversity by Pearn Kandola. Published by the CIPD.
Copyright © Pearn Kandola 1998, 2006
All rights reserved; no part of this excerpt may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the Publishers or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued
by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
If you would like to purchase this book please visit www.cipd.co.uk/bookstore.
INTRODUCTION