Workplace Diversity Research

Planning can be defined as establishing the goals of an organisation, creating strategies to achieve these goals and implementing these plans into work activities in order to achieve these goals (Robbins & Coulter, 2016, p. 248). Planning is necessary for the implementation of Workplace Diversity because it establishes an efficient and exact process to establish diversity. Workplace Diversity, in the context of organizational management, is the systematic and planned commitment of an organizations to recruit and retain employees from diverse demographic backgrounds (Prasad, & Mills, 1997). Planning is used to design such diversity initiatives because scientific studies have shown that there is a strong interlinkage between social behaviour

The diversity issue of gender inequality has long since been observed in organisations in, with current statistics showing that women earn 77 cents to every dollar earned by a man in the workplace (McDermott, & Archibald, 2010). In South Africa specifically the issue is observed in the financial sector and specifically within the banking industry. Research has shown that only 1.6 percent of board directorship positions, 4 percent of executive bank positions and 6 percent of executive directors positions in Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed companies or banks are held by women in South Africa even through women occupy several roles including but not limited to Chartered Accounts, Actuaries, Senior Administrators and Managers within banks (Mathur-Helm, 2006).

3.2) Affirmative Action Plan and Women Empowerment Plans in Standard Bank

Planning is

It can become difficult to combat gender inequality due to the presence of a Glass Ceiling within South Africa’s banking industry (Mathur-Helm, 2006). A glass ceiling is the probability of finding women and other minorities in leading positions within private and public organisations (Mathur-Helm, 2006). This results in the glass-ceiling-effect, which is the culmination of all strains experienced by women and minorities in attempting to advance in corporate settings. (Mathur-Helm, 2006). The factors which poses the most difficulty for planning to create workplace diversity is the perception and bias of managers. It is stipulated that even though there is no difference in terms of mental ability between male and female workers, the idealised manager possess heavily masculine characteristics and observe masculine approaches towards the execution of management plans (Robbins & Coulter, 2016, p. 165). Similarly, there is often slow progress, low commitment at top management, a lack of sensitivity towards employment equity plans and male-dominated organisational cultures are present in the workplace today. (Booysen, 2007). These perceptions and biases, both perceivable facilitators of the glass ceiling in South Africa’s bank industry, hinders the effectiveness of the plan design and implementation and thus prevent the elimination of gender inequality within