Leveraging Workforce Diversity to improve Employee Performance in Kenya

Abstract

Globalization of business and unprecedented movement of labour across borders have created organizations that comprise a mixture of people from many different cultures, age, gender, ethnic origins and education backgrounds. Managing an organization with a diverse workforce creates challenges in terms of management practices and leadership styles, due to the differing viewpoints it elicits. Overall benefits and challenges of a diverse workforce organization can be closely related to how effective it is managed. This is one of the reasons why diverse workforce is a pressing managerial issue and therefore the basis in which this study was conceived. The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between workforce diversity and employee performance in public universities in Kenya. The study was guided by positivism research philosophy and descriptive survey research design and correlational research design were adopted. The target population included the chairpersons of departments of the public universities in Kenya. Correlation and regression analysis established a statistically significant positive relationship between workforce diversity variables and employee performance. The conclusion drawn from the study findings is that age diversity, gender diversity, ethnic diversity and education background diversity influence employee performance positively and majority of the employees are positive about workforce diversity practices in public universities. The study recommended that the management should continue to uphold its workforce diversity policies and practices in order to increase the benefits of workforce diversity.