Report Title: Managing Individual Differences in a Business Setting

A lot of employees aim for a good salary but most of them stay because of a healthy
workplace environment. Many employees struggle with their individual differences that
sometimes causes division among individuals and makes the workplace toxic, but we may avoid
or lessen these instances by adapting different management techniques that can help unify the
employees (top-level and low-level) and make the workplace more bearable. These techniques
might help you and your company retain employees for everyone’s sake.

The fact that every individual reacts differently when faced with similar situation, some ways
to overcome individual differences in the workplace are briefly explained with specified
individual differences that has to be managed well in order to improve the relationship and
enhance the overall performance and effectiveness of the group. These are as follows:

1. Generation or Age Gap. A generation gap is the differences in actions, beliefs, and tastes
of members of younger generations versus older ones.

Generation gap can be managed by:

o Developing a mentorship program within the organization. A mentoring program is a way

for organizations to give employees the opportunity to be a mentor or receive mentorship
from a senior leader. The goal is to match experienced professionals with people who
could use their guidance. This program creates a fair and balanced platform so each
party can benefit, and it can also help build stronger interpersonal relationships between
colleagues.

o Establish partnership with external organizations in terms of trainings and seminars.

Allowing employees to have collaborative trainings and workshops together with other
institutions will develop their literacy and skills through the exchange of experiences and
methods, information on new regulations, and how to use many application platforms
and technologies, making all ages up to date.

o Delegation of tasks according to skills. In simple words, tailor the projects in accordance
with the people that is right fit with it, meaning with the ability to fulfill and knowledgeable
of the task to be accomplished. For example, you will more likely to choose a computer-
literate to finish an IT-related project over the others.

2. Cultural Differences. In a multicultural society, it is typical to have a team made up of

individuals from many nations, races, and cultures, which might cause barriers or gaps
between workers from various backgrounds. Language and cultural barriers, for instance,
might cause misunderstandings, which can occasionally result in arguments and hurt
feelings. So, to address this gap:

o Maintain open communication which means keeping an open mind, practicing active
listening and watching your non-verbal communication as well as the tone of your voice.
Choose the language that the majority feels comfortable with. This should be the
language used in all meetings and formal events.
o Delegate work assignments according to the cultural customs of your team members.
o Organize informal gatherings for your team members, and discuss or share each others
culture. This could enable understanding deeper of each and everyone's cultures as well
as create a strong tie among them.
 o Be sensitive to each and everyone's beliefs through having knowledge and awareness
regarding perspectives, habits, and way of life as well as respecting what is forbidden for
them to eat or to do.
o Being open to all cultures and their differences by avoiding promoting or embracing only
one culture in the workplace. For instance, during the holiday season, it is important to
vary the decorations so all cultures are included.
o Team building. Forming a cohesive team that respects and understands one another.
Team building gives the team the chance not to be alone in facing its natural difficulties
and to manage cultural differences, by offering external and objective support. A very
well-done team-building project can make a group of people work together effectively as
a team, forgetting about all the difficulties, gaps or differences.

3. Language Difference. One of the individual differences that can arise in a business setting
is the differences in language or mother tongue. Here, having multilingual employee base
can affect the overall performance of an organization. Although the presence of the national
language ("Filipino") and international language (English) help to reduce the effects of this
difference, some employees are still not fluent or illiterate with the said languages, thus,
resulting to conflicts. With that being said, to help organizations manage their multilingual
employee base, they can

O Implement an open communication policy. There can be a lot of miscommunication when

the people working in or for an organization don’t have the same language ground. So, to
ease up the situation, it is recommended that the employers put a suggestion box or
conduct a question and answer sessions with their employees. The sole purpose behind
the implementation of the open-door policy is to create a clear and open flow of
communication among each other.

O Pay attention to terminologies and slang, never ignore. The workplace is a combination of
individuals of own local languages and slang words of the generation. It’s a need to be
acquainted in order to fully connect and understand the topic you are sharing with the
other towards a well- designed output.

4. Mental Capacity Differences. Mental capacity is the ability to think rationally in a tough
situation. So, to minimize this difference, some of the ways to maintain are:

o Giving seminars regarding different coping mechanism that anyone can do might help
them cope with their struggles in the workplace or personal.
o Setting goals according to each employee’s ability and giving proper rewards to be fair.
Such as giving a base salary + output-based salary for them to have a choice in their
workplace pressure.

5. Mindset. Difference is inevitable so how do we manage this kind of differences to allow our
relationships to thrive.

o Positive intention in interacting and having conversation with another person. In that way
we are more likely to enter a conversation with potential for a positive outcome which
strengthens the relationship rather than a negative one that will break your line of
communication.
o Understand your own behavior or your way of thinking towards things and its impact to
others. We often see what other people are doing wrong or why they don't understand
 something but we do not turn that observation on ourselves. We need to ask ourselves
what our behavior is. Our beliefs on how we make sense of the world. We have to open
our minds and not limit to what we were used to or on what we believe.

o Embrace differences and consider different points of view. Have greater choices and have
a growth mindset.

6. Individual difference based on gender (gender difference). Gender misunderstandings

frequently lead to conflict in the workplace. Men and women process information differently,
which might result in discriminatory emotions or claims of sexism or harassment.

o Through training and development programs that emphasize greater knowledge of

gender-related issues, managers can tackle this issue. In order to improve the working
relationship between men and women, managers should also urge changes in employee
behavior and set an example.

o As stated by Ayoub, S. (2021), there are five things managers can do to increase gender
equity at work.

1. Recognize the importance of language and words.

2. Understand performance bias.

3. Encourage the women on your team to develop.

4. Pay all employees equally. And 5. Recognize that an employee's "employment gap" on
their CV isn't necessarily a negative.

7. Personality. Personality can be defined as the relative stable behavioral patterns, feelings
and thoughts of an individual where person's personality can influence one's job
performance. The workforce has different personality which may affect their performances.

Managing these individual personalities includes:

o Focus on the ultimate shared goals which can be the unifier.

o Get to know your workforce in order to understand their personality and know on how to
cope up with them.
o Know the strengths of each individual so that this can be their role in the company.
o Respect each other and correct the things that the person does which are unacceptable.

Despite the challenge of numerous individual differences, businesses are still surviving.
Strategizing on the ways to manage them made it possible to thrive, better the relationships
of each and have a bearable working environment. Though individual differences often
bring disputes and conflicts, keep a closer focus to the attainment of the ultimate goal which
binds and drives every individual to work forward thereby embracing the differences each
and everyone has.

8. Behavior Differences in Business Setting. Employees naturally behave differently at

work than they do in social settings, largely due to the structured organizational
environment of business. Behavior differences may result to lack of respect, talking to each
other’s back (backstabbing), discrimination and more, these can hinder productivity and
destroy company’s reputation as well. So, leaders are responsible to ensure and protect
good work environment from negative impacts of behavior differences.
 It’s very important for organizations to make sure that their employees’ behavior matches
what is needed in the organization. So here are some ways to manage behavior
differences:

o Be alert to different types of problem behaviors

Disruptive behaviors can take many forms and if not actively addressed, it may lead
to harassment and other misconduct that violates workplace policies and laws.

o Keep conversation professional, not personal

Ignoring disruptive workplace behaviors won’t help so having one-on-one
conversations with the employee is a good start. It is also better to have
conversation that focuses on the behaviors and not the personality. Avoid making
assumptions and listening to the employee’s side can also help in solving the issue.

o Administer fair and consistent discipline

Managers need to discipline employees in a fair and consistent manner. Being
unfair and inconsistent can have a risk of complaints of discrimination and
retaliation. The organization should implement policies and procedures to ensure
that discipline is consistent and fair.

o Follow-up
Managers need to follow up regularly to provide honest feedback and monitor
progress on whether the unwanted behaviors have stopped.

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