The influence of workforce diversity on employee performance at the South African Social Security Agency in KwaZulu-Natal.

Abstract

Workforce diversity is a multi-faceted concept that keeps growing as the world continues to be the international marketplace. It is because of this reason that most people are convinced that diversity is essential for employee performance. This study's primary aim was to examine the influence of workforce diversity on employee performance from the employees working at SASSA’s KwaZulu-Natal Regional Office in Pietermaritzburg. In this research, the word workforce diversity has been defined as the concept that possesses organisations as confronted with a portrayal of different employees from various gender, age, ethnicity and educational background. It is about employee relationships and mentalities with regards to diversity and group contacts. Numerous prescripts have been put in place by the government to guide the workforce in the working environment. Nevertheless, these prescripts particularly pay attention on compelling firms to embrace diversity and therefore failing to look into organisations’ needs and how it contributes to behavioural conducts, for example, employee performance. In addition, numerous studies have been conducted from outside South Africa and few in South Africa on workforce diversity and Organisational performance. Notwithstanding, not many of them payed attention on the influence of workforce diversity on employee performance. It is because of these reasons that, this research examined the influence of workforce diversity on employee performance at SASSA. Quantitative approach was used to provide responses which have much strong basis than lay person’s common sense, intuition or judgment. This approach was supported by administered face-to-face questionnaires in order to obtain higher response rate rather than using the web-based questionnaire. A sample of 103 respondents was used consisting all employees except those who were serving as interns because they were not working permanent. Data was processed and analysed in the form of tables, charts and graphs using SPSS version 26. The findings depicted that there is a significant relationship between workforce diversity and employee performance. Drawing from the findings of the study, it is recommended that SASSA should continue employing and developing employees from different backgrounds in terms of gender, age, ethnicity and education to improve the efficiency of workforce diversity towards employee performance.