adminIn a presentation entitled “Managing diversity and equality in the workplace: culture and generational discrimination”, at the just-ended Institute of People Management of Zimbabwe conference in Victoria Falls, Mr Ekandjo said companies should embrace diversity and leverage on diversity to attain core objectives to deal with stereotypes.
Mr Ekandjo, who is also the chief human capital and corporate affairs officer of Mobile Telecommunications Company (MTC), said it was possible to do away with stereotyping at the workplace.
“It starts at a personal level, that is, learning about yourself, understand your own attitude, behaviour and assumptions and beliefs.
“Then you move to the interpersonal level where you build diverse and inclusive relationships, seeking to listen and building inclusive and productive teams. After which you move to the organisational level.
“Here there is development of a diversity plan, building processes and systems, goals, measures and accountability and implementation,” said Mr Ekandjo.
He said best companies have talent- and diversity-based reward and recognition programmes aimed at doing away with stereotyping at the workplace.
“Best companies have diversity and inclusiveness plans. They hold executives accountable for diversity goals through performance-based pay programmes and they include diversity as an aspect of people and talent management criteria.
“The next time you are tempted to stereotype a group of people, think about the group to which you belong. List the stereotypes linked to that group. Ask yourself does each of those stereotypes apply to you as an individual? More than likely you will disagree. That is why it is important to judge specific individuals rather than the groups to which they belong,” said Mr Ekandjo.
Online Reporter