Cultural Diversity in the Workplace, Reaction Paper Example

Cultural Diversity at Pepsi

One of the reasons Pepsi attracts top talent is its deep commitment to cultural diversity. While many organizations play lip service to diversity in order to protect their corporate image, Pepsi sees diversity as an opportunity rather than an obligation. Employees are smart and they know when an organization is paying lip service to diversity and when it actually means it which explains why employees from culturally diverse backgrounds often provide referrals and help the company attract top talent.

At Pepsi, everyone goes through diversity training and they are provided continuous support throughout their stay with the company. There are many Employee Resource Groups within the company that meet at regular intervals to discuss the current state of affairs and the improvements they would like to see. These suggestions are then passed on to the upper management which has been known to act upon a significant proportion of these suggestions.

Pepsi is a global multinational company whose customers come from all over the world. As a result, one of Pepsi’s greatest assets is its culturally diverse workforce which doesn’t only help the company better understand its culturally diverse customer groups but has also been instrumental in generating product ideas to suit the tastes of customers in particular international markets.

At Pepsi, cultural diversity is not limited to employees only but also includes other stakeholders such as suppliers and communities. The company does business in more than 200 countries and its global supply chain network has thousands of participants. Pepsi believes in being a responsible member of the society and continues to invest in local communities around the world. Pepsi’s upper management believes that these are different times and Pepsi is no more an American but a global company. The company’s Indian-born CEO Indra Nooyi is the perfect example of the company’s commitment to diversity as well as its conviction that Pepsi is not an American but a global company.

Pepsi’s commitment to diversity is not only limited to within the company but the company also encourages partners to promote diversity. One example is company’s funding of scholarships to promote student diversity as the company’s PepsiCo Diversity Fellowship Fund at Stanford University.  This strategy brings goodwill to the company ad give credibility to company’s public relations’ claims that it is truly committed to diversity in all forms including cultural diversity.

Pepsi’s management understands that incentives can be valuable tool to promote a particular behavior among employees. Thus, the company goes to great lengths to formally and informally acknowledge the employees’ contributions towards diversity. Pepsi’s topmost leader Indra Nooyi herself presents annual awards to those who have been instrumental in promoting diversity within the company. Diversity is so central to the company’s culture that the HR Department is given a strict order to meet certain cultural and gender diversity goals in hiring practices and these targets are far above those required by any applicable state and national laws.

An organization’s culture tells outsiders about the values that drive an organization’s day-to-day operations and anyone who may study Pepsi’s culture will definitely discover that diversity is one of the defining traits of Pepsi’s culture. It is not a surprise that the company continues to get high ratings regarding diversity from monitoring agencies and non-profit organizations year after year.