Research paper on Workforce diversity and baby boomers

In fact, the workforce diversity has a considerable impact on baby boomers now, while in the future the impact of workforce diversity on baby boomers and society will grow even stronger. Baby boomers are accustomed to work in relatively homogeneous workplace environment because the large number of employees allowed employers to hire baby boomers, a larger part of which were white Americans. As a result, minorities were in a disadvantageous position, while the diversity in the workforce was relatively low. However, as the number of baby boomers as active employees has started to decline, the role of minority employees of the non-baby boomers generation has started to increase. Today, the workforce is considerably more diverse than twenty or thirty years ago, when baby boomers comprised the core of the US labor force. In the future, this trend is likely to grow stronger as the number of baby boomer employees keep declining, while along with minority employees, who contribute to the workforce diversity, immigrant employees appear. The emergence of immigrant employees increases the workforce diversity substantially. The workforce diversity raises the problem of changes in the management style to make all employees work effectively, regardless of their ethnic or cultural background. In addition, employees have to learn to work in the diverse workplace environment. Relationships between employees become more complicated because baby boomers, the white majority, and minority and immigrant employees have different values and cultural norms that naturally affect their relationships and make them more and more complicated. In the future, the growth of the workforce diversity will affect the relationships between employees, organizational culture and management style even more. Baby boomers will eventually comprise the minority and disappear, while the labor force will be more diverse than it is now. Hence, employers and employees will have to develop effective relationships and create positive organizational culture and workplace environment to make all employees to feel comfortable in the workplace.

Equal employment opportunity and baby boomers

In this regard, the emergence of equal employment opportunity policy becomes particularly important to eliminate differences between in the workforce environment to make employees capable to cooperate and work together effectively. Remarkably, the policy of equal employment opportunity has started along with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement and coincided with baby boomers entering the labor market (Kelvin, 150). The problem was that baby boomer white majority pushed minorities beyond margins of the labor market. As a result, minorities faced the threat of unemployment and they had launched the active struggle for equal employment opportunities. Today, equal employment opportunities become more important as the share of minorities in the labor market increases and they look for employment to replace baby boomers. Hence, baby boomers face the growing pressure from younger minority employees. On the other hand, the discrimination of minority employees, in terms of payment, for instance, or employment, is unfair and contradicts to existing legal norms.

Affirmative action and baby boomers

In this regard, affirmative action is one of the ways to overcome employment inequality. The affirmative action policy includes the provision of minority employees with larger employment opportunities they have been deprived of in the past. In the past, baby boomers pushed out minority employees off the labor market (Hamby, 35). Hence, today, the affirmative action should grant privileges to minority employees to grant them with larger employment opportunities compared to baby boomers and majority employees. In the past, the affirmative action started to provide minorities with better employment opportunities and today this policy has to be continued.

Conclusion

Thus, baby boomers have had a considerable impact on the labor market. At first, they provoked the rise of homogeneous workforce discriminating minorities. In response the equal employment opportunity and affirmative action emerged. Today, the further promotion of the equal employment opportunity policy and affirmative action is needed to avoid conflicts between employees and social tension in the society which may grow stronger, if the problem of persisting employment inequality persists.



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