The Effect of Workforce Diversity on Employee Performance (The Case of Ethio-Telecom South West Addis Ababa Zone)

Abstract

The value of diversity at the workplace is becoming a key business consideration for most organizations. Close and continuous attention to the issues of workforce diversity is important because it can be one of the major sources of competitive advantage. However, there were limited research works was conducted on the topic area especially in the Ethiopian context and in Ethio-telecom. Therefore, the 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 the case of Ethio-telecom south-west Addis Ababa zone. The study reviews the theoretical and empirical literature and develops a conceptual framework. When we come to the methodology the study takes descriptive research design and used cluster sampling technique with probability proportional to the cluster size. The researchers are used Primary data for the study was collected from 74 (seventy-four) respondents through a 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, the only ethnicity has significant to explain employee performance by 28.7% while others are insignificant to predict employee performance. Based on the findings of the study the researcher forwards the following points as a recommendation, Thus, Ethio-telecom should understand how to manage the diverse workforce in ethnicity where it can increase the advantage of such diversity and Ethio-telecom should give a chance to employees to learn more skills through course and training so as to improve their performance.