EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY

Leading Organizational Equality and Diversity

[Name of Student]

Leading Organizational Equality and Diversity

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of Equality and Diversity in an organization. The author has chosen a famous U.K based organization to discuss the comprehensive issues and strategies of diversity and equality. The chosen organization is British Petroleum. BP Plc (BP or the company) is one of the major vertically incorporated oil and gas companies globally. There are several operations of this company that include exploration and production of gas and crude oil, as well as the selling and advertising of natural gas, power, and natural gas liquids. BP is headquartered in London, the UK and employs about eighty-three thousand four hundred people. With the 83,400 employees in the organization it becomes important to address the important aspect of any organization that is equality and diversity (www.bp. com).

BP is one of the world's largest oil and gas companies. It has presence in more than 80 countries. The company has well established operations in Europe, the US, Canada, Russia, South America, Australasia, Asia, and parts of Africa. If the company is operating its business in several countries the diversity and equality issues are about to intrude in the organization. BP operates through three reportable business segments: exploration and production; refining and marketing; and other businesses and corporate (www.bp. com).

The Upstream segment of the business can also be defined as the primary sector as it deals with activities such as exploration for new oil and gas resources, developing access to such resources and producing, transporting, storing and processing oil and natural gas. It is also responsible for the operation of wells, pipelines and other processing facilities (www.bp com).

The Downstream segment of the business includes marketing, trading, manufacturing, transportation, refining, and supply of crude oil, petrochemicals products and petroleum. It is responsible for fuels, lubricants and petrochemical business (www.bp com). The last business segment, Alternative energy business was initiated in 2005, with its investment in wind power and bio fuels and as employed about 7 billion dollars of capital up till now (www.bp. com).

Equality and Diversity

The first and the foremost important aspect of any company are to maintain equality and diversity within the organisation. Equality is described as a state or quality of being equal or from a mathematical perspective it can be understand by the statement that the two quantities are equal. Similarly, all the employees should be treated fairly and not discriminated against. Diversity is explained as the state or a fact of being diverse; it is interchangeably used for change, variation and dissimilarity (Noon, Ogbonna, 2001, p.12).

However these two terms used that is diversity and equality do not contradict each other as one is used for allowing the employees to work in diversified fields where as for the other, it measures the workforce input and output of work carried out (BP Code of Conducts).

BP codes of conduct are based on four foundational believes. First foundation being “what we do”, it encompasses ...