Essay on Workforce Demographics
The diversity in communication derives primarily from diversity of people involved in communication. As any company consists of great number of different people, the issue of demographics plays significant role in shaping an atmosphere on the workplace. Therefore, it is of extreme importance to carefully analyze the workforce demographics in our company in order to make a forecast concerning communication and related problems.
The number of employees of the Global Big Stuff, Inc. is around 150 people in all departments. As in many other big organizations, the workforce is rather heterogeneous in our company, containing several diverse demographical segments. First important demographics criterion is gender. Men constitute 61 percent of our employees; hence every three employees out of five are male. Accordingly, 39% are women (two-fifth).
Age is as well necessary for our analysis. The majority of Global Big Stuff, Inc. is between 30 and 40 years old (41%). There are also many young employees from 20 to 30 years old (29%), and around one-quarter is between 40 and 50 years old (23%). The minority (7%) is over 50 years old. The youngest employee is 21 years old, while the oldest is 62 years old. The average employees' age is 34.5 years. Another age-related issue is seniority. The number of years spent in the company varies from 1.2 to 19; while average amount of years is 5.1.
Employees in the company also vary in ethnicity. The majority belongs to white race (68%), Hispanic race constitutes 11%, there are equal numbers of black and Asian employees (8%), and 5% of other races. English is native language for 87% of employees, while for others it is Spanish (5%), Chinese (4%), or other (4%).
Education level of workers varies as well. The majority of employees have a college or university education (66%), about 18% have high-school education, the amount of employees with masters degree is 13%, and 3% have pre-high school education.
Let us consider another demographics criterion - disabilities. The majority of employees (91%) do not have any disabilities; while 9% have some minor treatable disabilities, mostly mental (depressions) or sight and hearing problems.
There exists a majority in every demographic criterion we analyzed and it is possible to draw an average employee (white, male, 34.5 years old, working in the company for 5.1 years, college/university education, not disabled, native language - English). Nevertheless, even minor demographic diversity of the company's workforce may impact soundly the communication process among employees. While gender or age differences do not pose significant problem, ethnic diversity may affect communication soundly. About one-third of employees have non-white ethnicity, and for almost every eighth employee English is not native language. These facts may create cultural discord in communication thus need to be considered very carefully.
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