Diversity World Tour

The buzzword at my place of work at the moment is ‘diversity’.

At least most of the time, this is referring to cultural diversity, as opposed to the dance troupe of the same name.

By “ways of making our workplace a better place to work”, ‘diversity’ is being embraced – there’s a diversity group I believe that meets every week, to no doubt discuss diverse things – and perhaps the most obvious development in this area has been the opening of a ‘contemplation room’.

I think it is fair to say that the predominant use of this room will be by our employees who are of the Muslim faith [and technically any Jewish employees also, as I understand they have to pray 3 times a day], as opposed to any Christian believers – largely because Christians aren’t obliged to pay multiple times in the day, and also because I think it is a fair generalisation that UK-based Christians are less religiously active more so than ever these days; certainly in an ‘actively practising your religion’ kind of way.

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It’s probably worth at this point reminding anyone reading this of my Personal Disclaimer – what follows is a free-flowing chain of thought, with no specific target or undertone:

I wonder if the aim of ‘diversity’ in our workplace has been thought through.

Cultural diversity I think I can understand – finding out more about the countries/regions colleagues originate from; their food; their music; their literature; their traditions (at a stretch).

But inescapably packaged into this will be religion – as the contemplation room example indicates; whilst some of this initiative is all about ‘we are one world’, ‘embrace each other’ (casual observers can understand why this sort of thing is applauded); part of it is also about tolerating the diversity in the sphere of religion – which is not always immediately applauded.

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Part of me wonders what would happen if I were to take 10 minutes out of my day each day to sit in quiet in the contemplation room.

Not very much I would expect – the people I work with are more than pleasant enough, and were I to sit idly in the corner at the same time as a Muslim call to prayers, I would be accepted; and I would in turn respect their observations.

But would I feel entirely comfortable making use of the contemplation room, for nothing more than quiet private thought? I wouldn’t be praying by any means – but I would be exercising my lack of beliefs in nothing more than myself; which is surely part of our diverse culture?

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You might have heard David Cameron recently declaring that multiculturalism in Britain has failed; whilst I have no desire to analyse the intricacies and reactions to this speech by the PM, I am spurred by this to take the buzzword of diversity in my workplace, through to a logical conclusion:

Let’s start from a simple fact – every workplace/society/group/organisation/etc. are as diverse as it’s constituent parts (no intentional double meaning on ‘constituent’ by the way) – the place where I work is already pretty diverse to my mind – we have an ‘emerging markets’ team that focuses on the Eastern European markets – it’s a bewildering department to walk through in a morning, with a multitude of languages flying across the phones! – a strong presence out in Asia, with offices right through Europe and in North America, and a bit of South America.

We’re pretty well spread in-fact – with a comparatively impressive placement of women in all areas of the business, many leading key teams of people. I don’t have facts and figures to hand, but feedback from incoming colleagues indicate these points in a positive light.

I think what concerns me about the ‘diversity’ word being banded around (off-set to Cameron’s claim that multiculturalism has failed), is that if you take it through further, we need to start having an open discussion about differences in social, cultural and religious traditions – and then start to find common ground/answers.

And I’m not sure if that is where the diversity team realise they will have to ultimately go – it is all very well, making allowances for every social, cultural and religious viewpoint – it’s a nice thing to show off about your company; “look, we’re letting a multitude of opinions and faith be brought into our workplace, which means no-one will be offended!”

BUT, and it’s a big one this; the only way in which you can acceptably have all this in the workplace, is if these practices/ideas are offered up for debate as well. Things like different foods etc., the merits of cultural traditions are usually easy to debate – but people back down a little when different religions are discussed – and whilst there should be support for this platform of discussion in the workplace (if we’re being completely diverse here), I am not convinced that there is.

Certainly the way in which the contemplation room was introduced was rather full of “yes, well, essentially we’re giving Muslim employees somewhere to pray, but we couldn’t call it a prayer room because that would be excluding other viewpoints, but essentially that’s how it got to this.”

My feeling would be to leave everything of this nature outside of the workplace – focus purely on the challenges in hand [and there are always plenty to go around] – i’m not talking about a pure and relentless focus on the bottom line and nothing else – but what I am talking about is that you should either have a blanket removal of all diverse non-work-related elements from the workplace, or you have a complete embracement of these elements –including the more radical views that may well challenge existing beliefs/precedents/social and moral levels.

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In similar news, I have started my own religion – which is designed to spark these very discussions that I am almost afraid to conduct in my diverse workplace.

The way I see it – religion is ultimately an excuse for ways in which people behave and (more often than not) the ways in which they treat other people. And it is a poor excuse, and reeks of laziness of thought on the individual’s part – so my new religion attempts to address that, albeit in a hopefully lighthearted way.

Whether the practicing of my new religion would be accepted within the ‘diverse’ culture of my workplace however, remains to be seen.