Abstract:

Diversity is present everywhere; in schools, industries and organizations, however, globalization has encouraged diversity in the countries. This means that organizations have to look at the differences between employees in the workplace and use it to their advantage in instances enhancing the employee performance. Currently, organizations, specifically in the Oil and Gas Industry, are focusing on enhancing the way they manage diversity in the workplace.

There are three categories of diversity; social background, professional background and value diversity as mentioned in the literature review. This research focuses on the social background and professional background categories. This research investigates whether there is a relationship between workforce diversity factors (age, gender, ethnicity and educational level) and the performance of the employees based on the respondents’ perceptions.

In order to achieve the objective of this research, an online questionnaire was sent to Two hundred and fifty (250) employees working in a Petroleum Company in Bahrain. One hundred and six (106) filled out questionnaires were received and all the questionnaire questions were fully completed because of the Google Survey restriction option. The received questionnaires were analyzed using Spearman Correlation Coefficient to determine the relationship between workforce diversity and perceived employee performance. It has been found that diversity in the workplace has a moderate relationship with the employee performance and is consistent with several researchers. This result is based on the respondents’ perception in the selected Petroleum Company.

Keywords: Workforce Diversity, Employee Performance, Oil and Gas Industry