Equal Opportunity week 16

Equal Opportunities                                  week 16

What is the difference between equality and diversity? Equality means being equal, everyone is equal in the sense we are human despite different backgrounds, cultures, religion, race and sex. We all should be dealt with equally. Equality can be made or can discuss in many ways as equality means to be fair enough with everyone even if he is your friend or enemy.

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Diversity is almost as diverse as subject itself. Diversity means accepting different things like people working at a same place but with different background, different colour, different cultures etc etc. Diversity is an involvement with the wider community and a better understanding of society. There are many leaders who spent their whole lives in fighting for the acceptance of Diversity and in the list of those leaders Nelson Mandela is one of those who spent their life in telling people to accept diversity.

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So basically equality concentrates on the fact people should not be discarded by employers or anyone because they might be different to someone, while diversity concentrates on the fact that it is good to have people from different ethnic backgrounds, religions, communities, age groups as this will bring more skill and strength into a team.

The age legislation act means an employer cannot discriminate against employees or potential employees because of their age. In this current world where competition in markets is very high, the fact is that the majority of younger generation thinks the older generation is useless and vice versa. Stereotypes are younger people think older people are past it and don’t know what to or how to be successful in the current world and older people think that young people are just trying to show off fake intelligence (degree certificates and hold no significant sense on work or decision making.

Two ways on how employees can cope with these in my opinion is first of all be fair in the work place and not make redundancies because of age. Companies think that there work is done slowly and can be done more efficiently if they hire someone young and experienced. Many firms are handing redundancies to older workers as the government announced after a specific date this will not be allowed to be done. Secondly I think firms should get younger people to work with older people, this can break the barrier in my opinion because older people have loyalty, sincerity and dedicated experience which will benefit the younger generation a lot and possibly the generations to come as it will be passed on.

I think ASDA is a good example for equality when employing people. First of all they don’t ask for applicants age, the good thing is they may shortlist a suitable application without knowing the age and after the interview will come to know the person is the right for the job or not . Also ASDA scrapping age pay schemes, the company said we will pay all employees same because they are doing the same job it doesn’t matter if they are under 16 or over 40, they are doing the same type of work so will be paid equally which is a fair policy in my opinion. This is one of the visible aspects of ASDA which can be seen in their stores that young and old people both are working on the same level as others.

According to me I think age and equality are both good things that employers should take into notice. People should not be declined a job because they are of a different religion, race, sex, age or even they support a different football team, potential employees should be judged on their potential and their skills and knowledge. But still there are many people who do not offer jobs if someone is too young or old because the employers think that they will work slowly as compared to other employees.

Conclusion:

I think by bringing diversity it will make the work force stronger because everyone is different and will bring individual specialities into work which will shine as a united team. I took the benefit of learning the factors of diversity from this topic that how it increases productivity and competition amongst employees which is beneficial to the employer as it would increase in rate of generation of new idea’s as different minds have different perspectives so as UK is a country that has mixed population from all over the world but still there are few societies in UK that do not accept others as part of them so diversity is what breaks away all such barriers and makes a step close to success for an organization. I also learnt how much equality is important nowadays while getting job or working in a company. This topic tells that organizations should treat all the employees on equality basis.

References:
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_262/1209207805AwQBu7.jpg   Accessed on 10-05-2011
http://vator.tv/images/attachments/010310090941HEAD_citizenship_diversity.jpg   Accessed on 10-05-2011