Managing cultural diversity in the workplace (care homes and cleaning services

Abstract

This study examines how cultural diversity is managed in the work environment in care homes and cleaning services in Finland. The health care and cleaning services sectors were chosen primarily due to the high number of immigrants working in these sectors. The Finnish Labour Ministry pro-jects that the number of immigrant workers will increase by the year 2025 particularly in the health care and other services sectors due to the aging population of the Finnish labour force and the low birth rate among Finns. As Finland becomes multicultural, the need for management of workplace diversity needs to be looked into. The study used a descriptive research design and adopted qualitative methods to gain an in-depth knowledge from the experiences of people who have personal knowledge of the issue. Fifteen respondents were involved in the study: 7 managers, including 4 managers from care homes and 3 from cleaning services firms; and 8 employees, including 4 each from care homes and cleaning services. Both primary and secondary sources of information were used and a qualitative content analysis and inductive data analysis approaches were used. The main challenges associated with managing cultural diversity were: language barrier; cul-tural differences; discrimination; underemployment and lack of career growth; adaptability of migrant workers to Finnish work culture; and the need for government agencies’ intervention in integrating migrant workers. Cultural diversity is seen as an asset. Given equivalent qualifi-cations and experi-ence in would-be job applicants, employing workers with different cultural backgrounds will re-sult in: creating an international work environment, pooling together the requisite skills, talents, and experiences towards the growth of the company; and stimulating competition among workers to achieve high productivity. Findings are limited to the study area and cannot be generalised. Al-so, the researchers were time-constrained to explore in detail cultural differences of immigrants and how these cultural differences affect their work as well as Finnish immigration policy and company HR policies. The study recommends that a holistic integration programme is undertaken to ensure that immi-grants are accepted and their professional skills and educational achievements are uti-lized. In particular, the Ministry of Labour and Employment should liaise with relevant stake-holders to promote acceptance of immigrant workers. Keywords Workplace diversity, Management of diversity, cultural diversity, Shortage of labour, Aging population