Working with People from Different Ethnic Backgrounds
In a short time, the current designation of “minority” will lose its meaning. By 2042 minorities are expected to become the majority of the population, and even sooner the majority of children will be minorities. This shift will bring increasing changes to the workforce, as even now some shift work fields have up to twice as many minority workers as white workers. Despite this, many of the managers of these companies are white. Understanding diversity and overcoming educational inequalities will remain extremely important for employee well-being and company productivity.
The nation’s population is getting more and more diverse and as a result, the workplace is becoming more diverse. According to projections by the U.S. Census Bureau, the population will be even more racially and ethnically diverse, as well as older, as it increases from about 302 million to 439 million by 2050.
Minorities, about one-third of the U.S. population right now, are expected to become a majority of the population by 2042 and be 54% of the population by 2050. This shift will happen sooner among children. Right now 44% of children are minorities. By 2023, more than half are expected to be minority, and by 2050, the minority children will represent 62% of all children. The largest share of children, 39%, is projected to be Hispanic, followed by non-Hispanic whites (38%), African Americans (11%) and Asians (6%).
The Hispanic population is expected to nearly triple by 2050. This means that by 2050 the Hispanic population will grow from about one in six residents to one in three. The black and Asian populations are each expected to increase about 60%, with the black share rising from 14% to 15% by 2050 and the Asian share increasing from 5% to 9%.
On the other hand, the non-Hispanic, single-race white population is expected to grow by less than 2%, reducing its share of the overall population from 66% to 46%. That group is projected to decline in the 2030s and 2040s, as more members die than are born in or move to the United States.
The percentage of the population that is of working age will drop from 63% to 57%. As is the case with children, the majority of the working-age population is projected to become minority before 2050. By mid-century, it is expected to be 30% Hispanic, 15% black and nearly 10% Asian.
By 2030, all baby boomers will be 65 or older; by 2050, that age group will have more than doubled. And, the 85-and-older population is expected to more than triple, accounting for about 4% of U.S. residents in 2050, compared with fewer than 2 % today.
The last full census, done in 2000, gathered information about occupation, race, ethnicity and sex. The data supports the fact that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be working in service, construction, maintenance, production or transportation occupations; these are typically more shift work occupations. For example, the percentage of Hispanic women working in production and transportation is twice the percentage of white women working in these occupations (14.3% vs. 6.9%). The percentage of black men working in these occupations is 1.5 times the percentage of white men (28.3% vs. 19.3%).
Within the service occupations, again, blacks and Hispanics work in these occupations in greater proportion than whites. The percentage of blacks and Hispanics working in the service industry are both just a little greater than 1.5 times the rate of whites working in this industry (22% of blacks and 21.8% of Hispanics vs. 13.4% of whites). The percentage of blacks and Hispanics working in construction or maintenance is about 13% vs. 9.8% of whites, or 1.3 times the amount.
Conversely, one third of white men and nearly one-half of Asian men are employed in managerial, professional, and related occupations, compared with 20% African American men and 15% of Hispanic men. Differences in education, experience, and skills may explain some, but not all, labor market disparities. Employer/employee informal decision-making processes (e.g. a lack of human resources management goals, objectives, and strategies) and systemic inequalities (e.g. looking at diversity in total, which may look reasonable vs. breaking staffing and hiring down by personnel levels, which may show a lack of diversity at some but not all levels) can make race and ethnicity significant factors in determining workplace opportunities.
The occupations that are traditionally part of shift work operations are becoming increasingly more diverse as noted in the numbers above. As the workplace grows more diverse, challenges become greater for both managers and employees. Managing diversity means maximizing the ability of all employees to contribute to organizational goals. To manage diversity well, companies have to acknowledge people’s differences and recognize those differences as valuable. For managers, the goal should be to manage people so that the advantages of diversity are maximized and the disadvantages are minimized.
The result of the changing population demographics means that customers are becoming more diverse. As organizations need to be able to adapt to meet new customer needs, a more diverse workforce can help. Managing diversity well can be a real asset at a time when the skilled labor pool is shrinking and it is necessary to reduce cost and time inefficiencies resulting from turnover. Managers should ask themselves, what are the changes we need to make in our organization to meet the needs of a more diverse workforce and to maximize the potential of all of our workers?
Here are some things managers can do:
• Role model the behavior you want to see from your staff.
• Ensure that assignments and opportunities for advancement are accessible to all well performing team members.
• Provide regular, constructive feedback to team members; be sure that diverse team members are acknowledged for the positive things they do and that you communicate negative feedback in a way that is fully understood.
• Listen to constructive feedback from your staff about ways you can improve the work environment and implement the ones that make sense.
• Take immediate action with people you supervise when conflicts arise (e.g. they show disrespect for others in the workplace with the use of ethnic jokes and offensive terms and language).
• When hiring new people, create a diverse screening committee and use extra outreach efforts to ensure that a diverse pool of candidates has applied.
• When you hire a new employee, explain the department culture and unwritten rules to the person hired (although every company has some unwritten rules, try to minimize them).
Managers report they are spending 42% of their time dealing with conflict. In high-conflict work environments, 50% of employees say they get less done while fuming, 46% thought about quitting and 37% became less committed to their work.
For employees, work can feel like a second home and that can be positive or negative. It is important to try to make the work experience feel positive. Positive work experiences usually happen when you feel respected, know you are doing a good job and being acknowledged for it and see opportunities for advancement. Sometimes difficulties arise between co-workers. This may occur even more in work environments where there are more diverse ethnic populations. Different cultures can bring different styles and different ways to approach work and interpersonal relationships.
When asked to list the types of things that cause problems between people in the office, workers usually point to these complaints about their co-workers:
• Poor attitude
• Unwilling to help
• Substandard work
• Absent or late too much
• Gossip
• Talk too much
• Unfriendly
• Disrespectful of supervisor or co-workers
• Complains to supervisor about things people do wrong all of the time
• Talk too much about religion or politics
Here are some things that employees can do to develop good workplace relationships, especially in ethnically diverse environments:
• Be a good listener.
• Don’t jump to conclusions too quickly when someone acts in a way that seems inconsistent with what you might do in the same situation.
• Be aware of your own internal biases and how you might stereotype someone who is different from you; try not to categorize co-workers.
• Try not to take things personally; usually when someone says or does something you take personally, it is often the other person’s shortcomings causing them to say what they said or act as they did.
• Don’t gossip; say what you need to say directly vs. through others.
• Stay out of office politics.
• Consider alternative ways to do things when suggested; usually there is more than one way to accomplish a task.
• Be tolerant of others’ beliefs and practices (as long as they don’t cause harm).
• Try to find the positive in everyone.
• Show genuine interest in others; discuss what interests them and try to make them feel important.
Sometimes workers clash and the environment can be toxic. If the employees cannot be separated by shift or new function, they may have to continue to work together. Here are some ideas about what managers can tell employees who are in this position, in order to minimize the potential damage:
• Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree.
• Make sure to pick your battles; not everything is worth arguing over.
• Don’t expect the other person to change; try to be patient and look for ways you can make things better.
• Only go to the boss as a last resort vs. bringing every issue to the boss; however, document harassment, discrimination or bullying issues and bring them to Human Resources.
Getting along with coworkers is not always easy; it does require effort and patience to maintain a peaceful, productive work environment. A positive, team oriented work environment will result in improved operations and more satisfied workers.
**********
©2008workingnights
This material is provided for personal, non-commercial, educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation or endorsement
Tags: diversity, Human Capital, Productivity, training
