ABC, the 1903 established company by Thomas Hooley, is undoubtedly one of the biggest sustainable building materials and construction solutions business, which strongly believes in delivering the best solutions to the customers through innovation. Being the customers’ preferred choice for sustainable construction solutions the company vision, the company always thrives to be true to its core values; Safety, Committed service towards customers, Passion about success, Speed and flexibility, Trustworthiness and respect and working in and treating every as one team. With the sound reputation it has earned the company now employs over seven thousand (7000) employees coming from diversified social backgrounds (Tarmac, 2017).

In ABC, we believe that people is the key to the success and survival in the long term and the company always endeavours to foster a culture where its diversified work force is equally felt that they are safe guarded, respected and supported. The way we manage our diversified work force has made us the proud contributor to some of the biggest and prestigious constructions in the country and Wembley stadium, London 2012 Olympics, Heathrow terminal number five, Sainsbury Laboratory and Pembroke power station are only a few to be named (Tarmac, 2017).

According to (Bleijenbergh et al., 2010), diversity management is a more inclusive approach towards attracting new personnel, proposing a broader understanding of individual differences that also includes factors such as sexual orientation, skills and experience while (Ozbilgin & Tatli, 2008) state that global diversity management has become a key strategic asset amongst firms. As a company which has clearly understood the importance of diversity management and has made almost every possible effort to ensure that diversity is well treated within the organization, with regard to ABC Company, there can be recognized following points, strong and weak, in the approach of the company towards the diversity management.

One credible point that can be recognized is the company’s practice of looking for employees in the Equality Britain web site where the possibilities are higher to reach the ‘widest possible pool’ of employees irrespective of religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or political beliefs and then recruiting the employees and ensuring that they are subject to no discrimination post recruitment; an approach that has increased the probability of both attracting and retaining the cream of the work force.

Also, being a company in a business that often requires the involvement of the male, ABC has still become capable of maintaining the female recruitment at a gross per centum of 15%. Through this as well the company has become successful in maintaining the diversity. This is mainly because, as (Glover & Guerrier, 2010) suggest, in environments that require a high-touch client experience, women are often unquestionably perceived as best able to demonstrate the soft skills that organizations claim to need. Being a company which needs to maintain good customer relationships with up to date knowledge, the ABC’s practice of allowing the gender diversity in a generally male dominating industry, this is really a plus point in the diversity management strategy of the company.

But at the same time as the company looking is for ‘something special’ in every employee they recruit and thereby allowing all type of differences in the work force, the company is rather going too far in a direction where there can arise some issues with minor groups forming their own groups to go against the other groups. It is said that company is trying to deploy the employees who better seem to mingle with the locality in terms of their socio cultural differences; as per the words of the company itself, a diverse work force is best able to represent the company in gaining contracts and local approval for investment decisions. But at the same time, there can arise some under hand contacts between those locality and the workers of company who bear a relationship to that locality, unknown to the company. Or in other words, in the name of diversity, it seems that company is about to risk its operations as even the too much of good can come in turn as a bad.

But looking at what the company has achieved so far, it looks like that the benefits of diversity are overweighing the costs of it. For instance, as the diverse work force comes from different backgrounds and tend to have different social relationships, for a company like ABC who is in to the business of construction where the good word of the mouth tend to draw a lot in favour of the company, these relationships can be highly advantageous. This is rather clearly visible by the incidents in Cement klin in Tunstead incident. Also, when dealing with different customers, the diversity in the work force can serve as an advantage as they can come up with creative ideas simply by the virtue of their upbringing, being exposed to different socio cultural backgrounds. When a group of individuals with high diversity work together, each can open up new dimension of thinking which can be highly profitable in the perspective of the company. In addition, as the company has different kind of plants in different areas of the country, when encountering different localities, it becomes convenient to communicate with each other when the people of same language and values are put in to such projects. Also as the construction industry tends to incur lots of disputes with the people in terms of land borders, noisy and disturbing work schedules etc., unless the company has allowed the diversity and put front the individuals with same localities to communicate with them, this type of work would not be possible. Since the company has being successful in dealing with different people for more than hundred years, it can be concluded that diversity brings favourbale results and essentially its benefits are higher than the costs.

Also when it comes to organizational behaviour concepts, the practice of ABC Company of diversity has an effect on social justice and ethics as well. As the company ensures that, despite with high diversity inside the organization, no employee is subject to discrimination, they are essentially adopting a rigorous human resource disciplinary policy and encouraging the equality among different varieties. This ensures the equal opportunities for everyone irrespective of their differences from one another and makes them feel that their differences are used only for the promotion of creativity and harmony at work. The main factor that is considered when they are being selected to the company is their ability to deliver something of value, not the colour of their skin or the religion they believe. This can also be interpreted as equal employee inclusion at work. This shows that the company is not only promoting the diversity but the inclusion as well. By providing the opportunities that are equal and just, the company is helping to lessen the social injustice against the certain groups of people who are otherwise subject to discrimination by the society itself.

All in all, it can be concluded that diversity management, the practice of respecting the people who they really are, is of higher importance to eradicate the differences in the world for the betterment of all and by being able to do so, ABC has become highly successful in their context even to be entrusted with high volume projects that seem just dreamy for the others in the industry.

Bibliography

Bleijenbergh, I., Peters, P. & Poutsma, E., 2010. Diversity management beyond the business case. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, 29(5), pp.437-56.

Glover, J. & Guerrier, Y., 2010. Women in hybrid roles in IT employment: a return to Nimble Fingers. Journal of Technology Management and Innovation, 5(1), pp.86-94.

Ozbilgin, M.F. & Tatli, A., 2008. Global Diversity Management. An Evidence Based Approach. Hampshire: Palgrave McMillan.

ABC, 2017. About Us. [Online] Available at: http://www.ABC.com/about-us/ [Accessed 20 February 2017].