In the modern-day world, workplace diversity has become a phenomenon. With the advantage of technology, it has become very common to deal with diverse workforce in workplace. 
Diversity in workplace is all about creating an inclusive environment, accepting differences of individual, enabling all employees to achieve their full potential and as a result allowing your business to reach its fullest potential. If you value differences of each person, you are allowing each person to contribute their unique expertise and experiences which will have a very positive impact on work, motivation, productivity and customer experience. 

The key benefits of diversity in workplace are: 

1. Innovative ideas in problem solving and decision making 

As team members will have different 
backgrounds and characteristics, it also means that their skills, experiences and abilities are likely to be different as well which is beneficial for the organization. From the learning perspective also, this will give a better advantage to understand the process and procedure from the different geography of industry practices, cultural belief and other activities. 
Being in a diverse team will make all individuals to come together and different perspective of the team members can bring diverse solutions to the table for discussion. A Harvard research has found that diverse team members are able to solve problems quicker than cognitively similar individuals. In addition to this, when employees from different backgrounds come together, they tend to come up with a wider range of solutions as well.

2. Increased employee engagement 

Employee engagement increases through diversity and inclusion. All employee would like to share their own culture and value system with other team members and in turn would be interested to learn more about other colleagues as well. 

3. Increased employee retention 

When an organization operating a diverse workforce there is different perspective and characteristics in the team. And when employees feel accepted and valued, they are less likely to look for another opportunity. And the employees are motivated, resulting which the turnover rate is reduced.

4. Increased organizational value  

Diversity in workforce strengthens organizational value/reputation in the market which would result in better sales 
and increased value in recruitment wherein potential employees in the market see the organizations as a dream company to work for.

5. Customers’ needs and requirement understanding becomes better 

With a diverse workforce, your organization/business becomes a true representative of society. The products/services are sold to the society which represents the different kinds of people from different regions with each region having its own specific requirement which can be figured out and fulfilled if there is a diverse workforce. 

Case study on cultural diversity in workforce: 
Here am going to share my experience of working in a multinational company which operates from Bangalore. The company is CPF India Pvt Ltd which is a Thailand-based company, mainly dealing in poultry business. They were into business of feed, farm and food. They had started a new venture called Five Star Chicken which is a very successful brand in Thailand and other Asian countries. In 2012, they had first launched their first outlet which has now reached about 300 located in states such as Bangalore, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. 
I was hired in the very early stages and I still remember we had started our work in a small 3BHK apartment and we used to do our interviews in coffee shops in Bangalore. It was because we didn’t have a full-fledged office. 
As the company is a Thai multinational, all its key leaders were from Thailand who had technical skills which the local team was lacking. From account, marketing, production, R&D and engineering team, a 
complete package of business startup was sent from Thailand. They were given assignments and sent as expats to India to have the knowledge transfer.

The team which worked under them were all from different places including; I was from Chennai and we have had members joining from Hyderabad, Kashmir, Kerala, Bangalore, Nagpur, Delhi, Mangalore, Mysore, Udupi, various parts of Tamil Nadu etc., the list just goes on. 
The main challenge was the work culture of Thais and Indians was completely different. The Indian corporate work culture which would encourage people to call by name and address them with sir/madam was not there. It was because in the Thai workforce, calling a senior person by his/her name is seen as sign of disrespect. There was difference in food, language, working style, culture and all area it was like two different people working in two different styles and the end result was same. So, there was time loss on doing and redoing the same task which had eventually resulted in delay in product launch and other areas. 
Our Business Unit Head (BUH) was a Thai national but he was of Indian origin, he understood the Thai language, work culture and other aspects very well and he is also well versed with Indian culture and working style and language as well. So, it was easy to communicate to him rather than communicating to other Thai expats who were working on the project. 
We had several meetings to come up with a working solution which would resolve the differences between the team members and eventually came up with the company’s statement “1 Team 1 Goal”. We conducted various employee engagement activities to boost up morale and team unity.

Some of the employee engagement activities were:
• Team building workshops 
• As the communication between team members was very essential, English classes were arranged to Thai nationals and Thai language classes to Indian nationals to have better communication 
• There were induction programmes to Indian nationals while joining which would talk about Thai culture and its benefits and its work culture and they were specially trained how to coordinate with Thai expats 
• Similarly, whenever there was a new Thai expat coming to India, he/ she would be trained about Indian culture and its benefits, work culture, do’s and don’ts in India etc., 

Advantage of diverse workforce in an organization: 
Diverse workforce provided added advantage to the company. At the time of business expansion to other locations, we had the advantage of the other location’s localities working in our organization. So, we had the advantage of knowing the ‘In’ and ‘Out’ of the new areas and potential areas where we can target and open our outlets. So once the business was established, we had the flexibility to send the employees back to their hometown and support the business. It created a value-added proposition to the brand and employee satisfaction rate also increased which in turn reduced the attrition.

Conclusion: 
From the above example, the greater success of an organization rests on how well the workplace has embraced cultural diversity. For a culturally diverse workforce to work as an effective organization, the understanding of differences must be ingrained and valued in the company culture. A well-managed, diverse employee 
base is key to answering an equally increased diverse market.