The density of the older workers is increasing in the workplaces, pushing the average age of the workforce to higher levels. The implications of older employees’ presence are wide ranging. The current debates on the benefits of having older people in the organization unearth advantages and disadvantages. There are plenty of arguments for the presence of elder employees in the organization, equally there are criticisms too. First is, experienced and older employees may diminish the opportunities for younger workers. The presence of older workers in the workplace increases the generational span, which challenges the employers with difficulty to manage different kinds of employees. Age diversity in the workforce also instills generational conflicts which is sometimes good for the business, but not for the people involved. Having aged workforce has many benefits; it is found that older employees’ motivation, flexibility and retention is higher than the younger workforce (Smyer M. and Pitt-Catsouphes M. 2007). The productivity and quality of contribution to the business is much superior to the younger employees’. Also, increase in the ratio of employees aged more than fifty years, means that the contribution and employment experiences of this segment is crucial for overall workforce performance. From the employer’s point of view, managing the career aspirations of older employees is a challenge to the respective organizations and older mature employees cost more to the organization.
Discrimination in organizations is a fact; it may be through age, gender, race, color, language, ethnicity, etc. It can have damaging effect on the perpetrator as well as the victim. There are many laws that force the companies to prevent discrimination, but organization and the employees also must cooperate to avoid discriminations. The worst part of discrimination is that, the subtle and covert discrimination later manifest as harassment and organizational bullying. Subtle and covert forms include limiting an employee’s access to resources, forcing an employee to retire prematurely, allocate jobs that are unreasonably daunting, slowing the disbursement of benefit package, etc. Presence of discrimination in work place have many negative effects such as the motivation of the employees diminishes, the team morale drops, distrust among the employees and management increases, ultimately affecting the organizational performance and profits of the business (CIPD, 2011).
The solutions for reducing the age related employee discrimination are many, first the organization must develop a policy that would reward the performance and not the age or tenure. Promotions and salaries of the employees must be based on the value of work by the employee to the company and should not be based on their age (Parry E, 2008). Uniform training and coaching opportunities must be given to all employees irrespective of their age, and help them to improve their performance in the organization. Performance appraisal should not have age based components and has to be developed with uniform scales of evaluation.
Workplace diversity refers to presence of people with varied characteristics. The variety dimensions may include race, gender, age, personality, ethnic group, education, cognitive style, tenure, experience, achievements, etc. The challenges of diversity in organization are plenty, for example communication. Differences in meaning, perception, cultural backgrounds and language barriers need to be managed successfully. Ineffective communication of key employees leads to chaos, confusion, and lack of team work. In a diverse organization change initiatives will be difficult to implement. Always there will be few employees who will refuse to change their behavior and style of working, irrespective of training and other incentives. Finally a strategy must be crafted to create a culture of diversity that runs in every section or function. .
The competitive advantage of an organization may be built on its ability to accommodate diversity and realize its benefits. There are multiple benefits associated with diverse workforce such as variety of inputs, availability of different kinds of problem solving methods, increased adaptability to changing situations, availability of diverse ideas and execution methodology, etc. As we have seen that, diversity among employees has advantages and disadvantages, each company must achieve an balance of content and intensity of the diversity, the company need to manage diversity for its situation.
There are many effective methods available to maintain a diverse organisation. First is, to involve every employee in crafting diversity policies and initiatives. Second encourage the employees to be open and accommodating. Allow the employees to express their idea and opinions freely and without fear. Develop leadership in every representative employee of the diverse group. Train the employees to manage diversity within the organisation. Make them focus on the tasks and projects than to look for differences in characteristics of the employees. Survey the employees at least once a year and find out their perception about the company, their work and diversity of work groups. For maintaining a blend of skills and experiences engage every employee to train his or her peer, and share each other’s work experiences.
REFERENCES
Smyer M. and Pitt-Catsouphes M. (2007) ‘The meanings of work for older workers’ Generations, 31 (1), 23-30.
Eyster L., Johnson R. and Toder E. (2008) Current strategies to employ and retain older workers. Washington, USA: Urban Institute.
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) (2011) Managing
age, London: CIPD
Parry E. (2008) Managing an ageing workforce: The role of total reward. London: CIPD
