PAYSTUBMAKR.COM PRESENTS Read about the Different Dimensions of your company’s employees Diversity?
The last article was about the advantages of the diversity of your workforce; this new article will be about the essential dimensions of the diversity of the workforce.
Imaging how your working space will be looking when you get a high level of diversity, is it half women and half men or ethnically different ethnic workforce?
We have chosen to present to you ten of the many different dimensions of workplace diversities.
This article objective is to open a broad look at diversity in the workplace. By being aware of more different types of persons to diverse your staff, you can achieve your working place to become a truly fair and equal and enjoy the advantage of having a high level of diversity in your business.
We will look at the types of diversity one by one showing some examples and the way we can accommodate a different kind of people and how the business can benefit from it.
1. Age
The generations of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century are called “Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennial and more. The older generation is, the more experienced are its members, but it is a too different experience. Baby Boomers grew into growing prosperity, out of the wartime shortage into the sixties where music and the sexual revolution, Hippies and rock an roll changes the life, during the seventies with the crisis of petroleum into the beginning of the computer age. Their children that grew up in the 80s and 90s had to adapt to the Internet age. The grandchildren are already deep into the Data age, with Smartphone in everyone’s hands and social media altogether creates a new perspective.
We could read in the last article how the mixture of origins ages and other dimensions influenced positively on innovation and decision-making.
Harnessing the young with their energy and technology high level of acquaintance to the old with their life experience about falling and get up again after a failing project, is the way to achieve the goal.
Look at the balance of ages in your business and see if you have a good mixture of ages. If you do not have an ideal blend of ages among your team, you should look at your hiring practices. Looking for the older recruits may be more successful putting adds on the classified section of newspapers. For the younger recruits, you may use the social media or other online websites. Be careful about mixing to need to have a special look at the personality flexibility. Some old guys can have a very young spirit and adapt easily to the young staff, and some others can be too much of an old dog never learns a new trick. The same with young boys that have to adapt to the old guys’ critics and more conservative way of thinking.
2. Race and Ethnicity
We know that race is a social creation, not a valid scientific category. The science race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue.
In the case of diversity, we can call it a genetic factor with no importance about the scientific definition of race. Although we have an only human race with some differences in color of the skin, eyes or hair, for the purpose of having diverse staff working in our business we can take the position that the race is a social construct and work with it when we build our different team.
People that live under the myriad social and geographical condition will develop a multitude quantity of cultures.
Here are the factors that are influencing the differences:
-
life expectancy
-
ability to own a home
-
access to healthcare
-
treatment by the criminal justice system
Those are racial disparities that have nothing to do with genetics but a lot to do with social, economic and legal discrimination. Ethnicity can be a euphemism for a race though it is more question of genealogy and culture, American Indians are not a different race from the Mayflower immigrants, they are a diverse ethnic group.
The McKinsey research shows us that businesses that have the most racial and ethnic workforce are more likely to make 35% above-average income.
You can read here why.
The racial and ethnic diversity reflects on your customer base keep reading our series about diversity to find the best composition of a workforce for your business.
3. Gender
Gender category is easy to manage. Human society is divided by 50% of each gender.
You need to see how close to the stats about the workforce in the US 52.7% men and 47.2% women, you can make your employees list. There are some types of work that are made much better by women than by man and other jobs that are made better by men; We are equal by low not by all skills and traits.
If you sell products for women, you may have more women taking care of the women clients. Selling men’s products may need men salesperson. It is very important to let your clients feel good when they are treated by your employees; diversity can be helpful as it can be a problem, it depends on your clients base. A San Francisco business is not the same as some places in the south part of the US. Women and men can sell cars on an equal basis, but hunting gear may be better sold by men.
4. Sexual Orientation
A person’s Sexual orientation refers to:
“an individual’s enduring physical, romantic and/ or emotional attraction to members of the same and/or opposite sex, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual (straight) orientations”
Sexual orientation is an inherently personal matter, it as nothing to do with the traits of the person, it as a lot to do with your business
Closeted employees are more likely to feel bad in a working place because they can not feel free being inside the closet, while those that are already out of the closet will feel good if you will make a safe atmosphere where they can express their sexual orientations. Feeling good and safe in a working place is a basic need of an employee, and those who do not suffer from discrimination will be happy workers with good results in their job. Harvard Business Review article
5. Religion
Religious discrimination in the working place is a problematic issue. It was proven that application for a job that informed to the recruiters about religious experience compared with the applicants that did not mention religious got 20% less positive answers. The Muslim student’s resumes were the worst. To be able to have religious employees and have them feeling good at the working place, you need to create the conditions for any religious employee to feel comfortable.
It is not that easy to have different regions in a workplace. There are different needs for each religion. Jew and Muslims can have the problem with food that is Kosher or Halal. Muslims will need time and space for the five times a day prying. Dress code can be an issue too. Read this article “Religious discrimination in the workplace increases with diversity.”
PAYSTUBMAKR.COM team thanks you for reading this article and wait for your next visit.