Just what the doctor ordered : how healthcare workers’ views of diversity practices and ideologies relate to engagement and belonging.

Abstract

Effectively managing a diverse workforce is a vital skill for organisations, however, little is known about how congruence between employee’s preferences regarding diversity management, and their perceptions of how their organisation manages diversity, impacts attitudinal and motivational outcomes. The present study aims to address this by exploring whether and how the degree of congruence between observed and desired diversity climate and practices (i.e., diversity-focused mission and values, equal opportunity recruitment and selection, diversity training, diversity advocacy, and diversity climate), and between personal and perceived organisational endorsement of diversity ideologies (i.e., multiculturalism, interculturalism, and colourblindness) influences employee job engagement and sense of belonging. Findings suggest among the New Zealand European sample, congruence had a significant positive relationship with engagement for all diversity variables excluding diversity-focused mission and values. Congruence was also significantly positively associated with sense of belonging across all assessed variables excluding multiculturalism. Job engagement was significantly negatively associated with discrepancy between personal and perceived organisational endorsement of colourblindness, and sense of belonging was significantly negatively associated with discrepancy between ideal and observed diversity climate and all measured diversity ideologies. Among the Māori/Pasifika sample, congruence was significantly positively associated with job engagement and sense of belonging for diversity-focused mission and values. Congruence between ideal and observed diversity training also was significantly positively associated with engagement. Discrepancy between ideal and observed diversity climate and equal opportunity recruitment and selection was significantly negatively associated with both engagement and belonging. Discrepancy also had a significant negative relationship with sense of belonging regarding diversity-focused mission and values, and diversity advocacy.