Blue-collared employees are legitimate workers despite the unfair conditions in their workplace. Most importantly, they are humans like you and me. Relocation brings about linguistic diversity which might pose a challenge to organisations employing them. I believe it to be an established fact that migration and mobility of workers, directly influence the capacity and productivity of organisations.
In my experience with working around blue-collared workers, I have observed how spoken language(s) impact their professional identity. This is also is reflected in the way they are included or excluded at their workplace. This inclusion or exclusion is a result of natural in-group out-group formation, which sometimes escalates into racism and xenophobia. A real life example I often refer to, to illustrate the same is my global experience of the standard of a workplace being correlated directly to the workers’ ability to speak English. I maintain that this insistence for being fluent to a certain level of English extends even to the unskilled workers, showing how language has the power to be used as a discriminator.
At Serv Hub, we try to foster a culture that respects linguistic diversity. Recently, we had conducted a music competition much like American Idol. The participants sang songs in their native languages. The winners were from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, each one proud of their linguistic heritage.
This is why I believe that there is a crucial need for structural changes to be made to the diversity and inclusion policies, as well as the mindset of the employers, for effective maximization of the work potential of their employees. Otherwise, with low morale and feeling of being excluded from mainstream can seriously impact the productivity of the firms.
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