THE EFFECT OF WORKFORCE DIVERSITY ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE

Abstract

The value of diversity at the workplace is becoming a key business consideration of most organizations. Close and continuous attention to the issues of workforce diversity is important because it can be a major source of competitive advantage. However there were limited research works was conducted on the topic area especially in Ethiopian context and in Ethio telecom. Therefore, the purpose and objective of this study was to investigate the effect of workforce diversity i.e. age, gender, ethnicity, education background, work experience and marital status on employee performance in case of Ethio telecom south west Addis Ababa zone. The study reviews theoretical and empirical literatures and develop conceptual framework. The study used cluster sampling technique with probability proportional to the cluster size including purposive sampling. Primary data for the study was collected from 74 (seventy four) respondents through structured questionnaire and analyzed it through descriptive and explanatory research design using software package for social science (SPSS). Statistical techniques such as mean, standard deviation, correlation, regression and analysis of variance were employed in data analysis and the finding shows that there is a positive relationship between all independent variables and dependent variable. Whereas, only ethnicity has significant to explain employee performance by 28.7% while others are insignificant to predict employee performance. Thus, Ethion telecom should understand how to manage the diverse workforce in ethnicity where it can increase the advantage of such diversity and eliminate or reduce the disadvantage. Ethic telecom could give a chance to employees to learn more skills through course and training so as to improve their performance.