Leadership's role in promoting cultural competence and diversity in healthcare

Managing Diversity
Introduction
Diversity may be broadly described as recognition, understanding and acceptance of differences among individuals regardless of age, sex, racial/ethnic background, socioeconomic background, religious views, sexual orientation and physical ability. This standpoint has been backed by Grobler and colleagues (2002), who further state that every person is unique, though having several biological or environmental characteristics in common with others. Diversity may be categorized under two dimensions, of which the primary one includes age, sex, sexual orientation, etc. and portrays the key differences between persons. Such primary differences are easily discernible, contribute significantly to first impressions, and act as filters using which individuals perceive the world around them. Secondary dimensions include religious views, geography, educational background, socioeconomic standing, etc., and are characteristics not readily apparent in a first meeting; in fact, they may even alter with increased number of encounters. Such traits become evident only after a certain amount of interaction between people (Ashton 2010).
Influence of Leaders
Healthcare professionals can be culturally competent because of the norms that are spread by most influential individuals, the leaders. These norms are usually inculcated in the healthcare professionals by their leaders. These norms can take form of both positive and negative among healthcare professionals (Friedkin, 2001). Social side payments exert normative influence. Organizational leadership and value for diversity come under positive norms of cultural competence. Leaders who have special expertise in cultural competence are most likely to incorporate such positive norms in daily practice at their workplace. This in turn gives rise to a positive, healthy and welcoming working environment. A negative or wrong perception about intercultural care or no appreciation for cultural competence come under negative norms. Normative leaders make sure that positive norms are practiced in an organization where all the staff members adopt cultural competence and prevent practice of harmful attitudes. There is an increased risk of non-appreciation of cultural competence when we are dealing with non-technical skills; skills that are difficult to handle (DiMaggio & Garip, 2012).
Plan
Accessing the situation. Inspite of the fact that the typical focus of “diversity is on gender, race or age, and other factors such as dynamic value which have an impact on the recruitment styles. Workforce diversity has now acquired a varying and definite importance. Technological advancements which measure the unique ways people use to make team contributions has given a new meaning to workforce diversity. This has led to positive engagement in job which consequently results in a better work performance. Technological advancements are the main focus but along with that other strategies can also be adopted which can be used to make sure that diversity is achieved through talent recruitment and hiring. It is important for a company to analyze its current situation and decide what benefits can be achieved by employment changes. This is necessary for the development of talent acquisition strategy that includes diversity (Nolen, 2019). So for the current plan, our healthcare organization will assess its situation and decide accordingly.
Attracting a vast candidate pool. A major advantage of recruiting a diverse workforce is that it gives an organization access to large pools of talent. This can be achieved by hiring employees of different classes, religions, races, ages etc. Our health care organization will achieve this by inviting a vast group of potential candidates. Recruiters can work in selection of employees who are most competent and possess greatest skills by inviting a vast group of potential candidates. This will be done regardless of the origin and internal belief system of the candidates. No personal judgements will be made. The candidate pipeline will be strengthened after the recruiters identify, engage and interactive with potential employees. These employees will be short-listed from the vast pool that had been invited before and who fit the sought-after profile. Social media, professional networking forums, emails, community programs, national conferences or company referral program can be used to promote open vacancies. These means will attract a larger pool of candidates.
Mobile technology can also be helpful in attracting a large diverse pool of candidates which comes under social media strategies. Recruitment through social media will ensure access to a much wider audience. Along with that the hiring staffs will be able to demonstrate their organization’s qualities and demands. The audience will get a better picture of what they are getting into.
Interviewing. Interviews will be conducted after the shortlisting is done. The interview process will comprise of interviewing those cultural connections to screen out those individuals who are well aware of cultural competence. The individuals must have an interest in working in a healthcare setting and to work to bring out the best in patient and quality care. The interviews will be conducted by the supervising heads of the health care organization and the leading staff will be responsible for the final decisions.
Training. When we talk about a workforce which includes cultural diversity, we are sure to encounter conflicts. Our organization will ensure that the employees are provided with an effective cross-cultural training program. The demand for such trainings has increased in recent years. Two major points that make a training effective are:
· The organization’s culture must incorporate commitment to improving internal and external cross-cultural communications. These rules must be applied to all the staff members starting from the CEO and down.
· Many training programs fail to deal with deeper issues related to communication. They merely focus on etiquette training (Chebium, 2015).
The employees will be trained by professionals to adapt themselves and change behaviour in light of their differences. This includes learning how to act out of your comfort zone. The training program will deal with issues of cultural differences. It will address such questions such as “How do people tend to trust each other in this culture?, “What is the best way to provide criticism to people in this culture?”. Moreover, during training, employees will also be asked about the cultural difference issues that they face. The issues will also be addressed during the training.
Benefits of a Diverse Culturally Competent Workforce
Practicing cultural competence in a hospital or health care system can be advantageous for the organization itself, the patients and the community. Major outcomes such as increased respect and mutual understanding from patients, improvement in health outcomes of the patients, and an excessive participation from the local community can be seen in health care organizations which practice cultural competence. Moreover, fewer care differences and lower costs can be seen in organizations who are culturally competent.
Our health care organization can acquire the following benefits by being culturally competent and having a diverse workforce:
Social benefits. Cultural competence increases trust in relation between the health care provider and the patients. It leads to increased respect and mutual understanding. It motivated the local community members to participate. There is an increase in community participation and involvement in issues related to health. It further inculcates responsibility in the patients and their family for patient care.
Health benefits. Cultural competence can lead to improved patient data collection. It leads to reduction in care differences in the patient population. Cost savings are increased because of the fact that medical errors are very rare. It also lessens the number of missed medical follow-ups.
Business benefits. It leads to reduction of barriers that hinder progress. Decision making process involves different strategies and perspectives. It makes sure that care services are efficient. It further increases the market share of the organization (Health Research & Educational Trust, 2013).
Importance of Academic and Research Skills for Health Care Leader
The individuals who opt for leadership positions in academic health care centers are helpful in providing benefit for the progress of the institutions. They are usually selected because of their expertise in central activities of education, research and patient care instead of leadership and management skills. Leaders who have expertise in these core activities know that they need to have an understanding of their units’ responsibilities. They have the skills which are required in areas of organization, team building, assessment and business management. These leaders are emotionally intelligent (Detsky, 2011). They put their research skills into use for the needs assessment for the progress of the health care institutions. They can use quantitative and qualitative research skills to carry out descriptive researchers to deal with issues related to health care services. The results and findings obtained from the researches can be beneficial in providing a guideline for improvement. Furthermore, these health care leaders can generate new knowledge through research. Clinical care can also be remodeled with the help of research. Clinical competence is importance to be maintained. Effective communication is also a key to success (Detsky, 2011).
Role of Health Care Leaders
Organizational success depends on the business competencies, clinical skills and interpersonal skills of health care leaders. A great leader is one who builds a strong workplace environment or culture. This culture results in producing positive trends in employee engagement and preservation. The most effective skill that is important for the success of any organization is to efficiently lead and engage people and team. A great leader has to have self-awareness. He must be skilled in building interpersonal communication and relationships. A good leader is the one who knows how to build teams of talented employees. The leader is responsible to bring about justice and fairness. He must be efficient in developing employee skills and confidence. Employees must be supervised and coached by the leader for their professional development and career opportunities (Balash, 2018). The health care leaders can put their expertise into use to bring about the best in their employees.
In spite of the perceived significance of collective working practices, just a little extent of time is spent in true joint effort. Conflict can be an unavoidable incident in health care associations and, in correspondence create disappointment in working practices. The most well-known sources of conflict are perceived as: individualistic conduct inside the association, poor correspondence, authoritative structures, and between individual or between gathering clashes. Conflict more often than not creates from basic dormant issues (which suggests the presence of forerunner conditions) and can advance to apparent clash (where the issue winds up obvious) and along these lines to show struggle (the social/activity stage), with the last stage being struggle consequence. The health care leader needs to embrace an appropriate methodology for taking care of conflicts at all phases with the point of making a positive result for all included. A leader can utilize conflict management strategies such as competition, avoidance, compromise, accommodation, collaboration, bargaining/negotiation, mediation, facilitating communication, seeking consensus, and engendering vision to aid resolution of conflict (Al-Sawai, 2013).
Patient outcomes, the working lives of healthcare staff, and an organization’s fate can be influenced by the use of effective leadership by healthcare leaders. The leader can influence the workforce to be obedient and follow the rules of the organization with devotion. The sorts of difficulties that clinicians face while working in health care settings include: different and evolving needs, expanding persistent desires, and high expense of new medicines and interventions. This expects clinicians to: think about the requirements of the more extensive patient populace; to take choices that influence the best of assets as well as to convey clinical quality; and actualize clinically-drove administration enhancements that are probably going to succeed. The results-oriented leadership style centers around the procedure of an association inferring administration as having the particular job and aptitudes important to convey the ideal aftereffects of the gathering dependent on and addressing the requirements of three regions, in particular; people, tasks and teams. It accentuates in building up the influential position that encourages powerful and productive social insurance arrangement. As in fact, results take a urgent focal point of the audience at this sort show (Al-Sawai, 2013).

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