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Greater understanding leads to greater trust, which leads to greater appreciation of others.
To effectively manage in today's workplace, leaders must understand that diversity has many facets and is not limited to gender or race. To ensure safety in the workplace and to improve the quality of life in all of its aspects, SH&E professionals must understand and embrace diversity, and respect differences.
ASSE is committed to supporting diversity within the Society. To that end, ASSE formed the Diversity Committee. The committee's goal is to provide inclusion without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, personal beliefs, age, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, or physical challenges by providing advice and guidance to the Society to:
* encourage an inclusive and diverse membership, leadership and staff;
* promote a culture of inclusion and cooperation;
* address diversity-related issues for the SH&E professional, workforce and community.
Today's ers must stand cultural norms and tra- ditions, disabil- ities, religious traditions and practices, and the influence history has had in shaping gen- erations. In this interview, which is based on a presenta- tion at and pro- ceedings paper from ASSE's Safety 2008 conference, members of the Diversity Committee and ASSE member Ashok Garlapati share insights and personal experiences relating to diversity.
PS: How do you define diversity?
Jamal AbuSneineh (JA): Diversity is the presence of a wide range of variation in the qualities or attributes of cultures, societies, communities, companies and workgroups. It is the state of being different or diverse. Diversity is used to describe people and populations. It encompasses such things as age, gender, race, ethnicity, ability, and religion, as well as education, professional background and marital and/ or parental status. It carries with it an array of subject matter and connotations. It has also been defined as the full use of human resource potential. Diversity is understanding, respecting and valuing differences while translating commonalities toward effectively achieving a common objective or goal.
Ashok Garlapati (AG): If you look into the dictionary, it provides a definition of mixture, varieties, range, assortment, etc. Workplace diversity refers to the variety of differences between people in an organization. That sounds simple, but diversity encompasses race, gender, ethnic group, age, personality, cognitive style, tenure, organizational function, education, background and more.
Diversity involves not...