ABSTRACT
The increasing diversity in the workforce because of worker immigration is one of the most notable occurrences of the twenty-first century. Immigrants form a significant percentage of the workforce in Australia (32%), Canada (22.4%), New Zealand (21.9%), the US (13.3%) and the UK (8.7%) (Ng and Stephenson 2015). Researchers argue that workforce diversity, if managed well, can improve business performance through the use of talents. Diversity refers to differences among people, including attributes that distinguish one individual from another. These differences include, yet are not limited to, ‘age, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, social class, education/function, national origin, and language’ (Ng and Stephenson 2015, 236). This chapter examines the legal and political aspects of managing such differences in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia.
