Introduction
Today, the changing workforce has transformed the way, which people work or do business. Organization change is part of the workforce changes and is the only way to ensure sustainability in the business environment. People have pursued to do things differently, which has resulted to a great upheaval and unsettledness in the workforce since higher expectations have emerged (Greenhaus et al. 2010). This paper is a debate that shall critically examine the changes in the workforce that are brought about by differences in the age of workers, the consequences of casual employment, and most importantly, the gender differences in relations to difficulties faced by the employers in the workforce.
Discussion
I am in agreement with the statement that older workers are less productive and more resistant to change, which is reflected in their declined performance when compared to younger workers. Older workers have more knowledge and good skills than younger workers do, which could be really useful and helpful for their work as a team. However, this is often overshadowed by the perceptions shaped towards them in the workforce. They have been described as being unwilling to change, less flexible, tough to train, and gives a poor result on training because they do not develop or learn new skills as well as younger workers do (Posthuma & Campion 2009).
These incidences of age stereotyping are common in the business world today. With respect to this, many individuals have fallen victims and a firm can reject productive individuals on this basis. Older people have however, been related with poor performance and a declined productivity since they are generally against change, they are more difficult to train and adapt less to the changing working environments (Boone & Kurtz 2010). Generally, older workers already have experienced too many things, which make it so it is hard to motivate them unlike their younger counterparts, who can be enticed to ensure maximum productivity and their persistence in the company. As result, managers’ effort to train them may become futile and such a costly investment might end up being fruitless. The old have a lower learning potential, which may pull them down on their pursuit to development of skills. The older generation workforce hesitates to embrace technology as it comes and they are not only inflexible, but also make it increasingly hard to be trained and supervised (Bluestone & Montgomery 1990).
It has been noted that older individuals have a higher likelihood of being absent from work with regard to their deteriorating health status. In addition, the older people have a reduced physical strength, which could be the reason as to why they are less enthusiastic in their daily undertakings. Moreover, older individuals are related with a reduced tenure as compared to the young people and the cost associated with them is much higher, since they are near the retirement age and therefore incur increased benefits and wages, but are less productive (Posthuma & Campion 2009).
Generally, casual employment is informal, uncertain and irregular in terms of working hours or payments where workers are not firmly committed to the working periods, which makes it hard to adjust with the work. In accordance to employer’s requests, they have flexibility in that they could decide to work or not depending on their situations. The employers seemingly have little on no say concerning their state. They continuously fear of being dismissed and when they are, they barely notice it since they stay for long periods before being called to work again. The casual employees have no workplace citizenship, which includes their right to air their views, being well trained, enjoying a good and steady payment, being promoted or even included (Pocock 2004). They only pursue hard to achieve these benefits them to no avail. Casual workers don not enjoy fixed payments, reward schemes, unpaid sick-offs and other staff benefits.
This is on the other hand, is beneficial to employers since they have inexpensive source of labour and they don not have to draft a reward scheme or other staff benefits in place for casual workers. However, they keep on incurring cost of training due to the high staff turnover. This creates hardships in management as well as in communicating with casual employees (Pocock 2004). The negative and positive consequences of casual employment to both the employer and employee are summarized in the table below:
This statement is correct since in the recent years, the percentage of female work force participation rate has increased and keeps continuously increasing. On the other hand, for employers, female employees have created more difficulties than their male counterparts have. According to above statement, physical characteristics and maternal responsibilities of female employee could make difficulties to undertaking particular tasks. Obviously, females have less power and physical strength than male, which would not be good for employers since they have to selectively award them the tasks that are within their limit. Females have to strike a balance between work and family life, which proves very hard (Tannen 1990). Normally, because of maternal reasons, when the female employee is pregnant, they ask for a maternity leave hence creating more difficulties with employer. Moreover, a majority of female workers cannot not work overtime, which means that they are not flexible with working hours (Tannen 1990). Therefore, female employees have a less focus on their work than male workers hence it could create difficulties with the employer.
In order to realize effective organization change and maximize the firm’s productivity, it is essential to have an understanding of gender differences in the workforce. This is an aspect that the human resource managers continuously confront with in any organization. Organizations mostly lose female workers than male ones, since many organizations are traditionally oriented towards the male figure. This then means that women have to confront with the differences and in the course, they might feel desalinated and they might opt to change jobs. Therefore, gender differences awareness in the work place from the managers is essential to put things in place for the overall well being of the organization (Hahn & Litwin 1995). This is however, taken to be a difficult by some employers since they find themselves often confronted with women considerations. For instance, women’s physical traits are often disadvantaged to those of men and to crown it all, they continuously need to attend to maternal responsibilities repeatedly. This is therefore, seen as creating a difficulty in an organization since it has to incur adverse effects during the lost time taken up by women.
Conclusion
The changing workforce has led to both positive and negative consequences for employers as well as employees. The negative impacts have created turmoil in the business environment and therefore, this has called for a change. However, these adjustments might be difficult for both the employers and the employees while there is a great price to be paid for those who are against change. To begin with, the corporate culture has to be modified. This means that the working environments have to be conducive and empowering, while employers and employees have to pursue accountability, teamwork, become result and mission oriented and be willing to invest everything within their reach to see to the success of the company (Nankervis et al. 2011). Besides, the leadership has to be kept up to date in line with the requirements of the contemporary workforce, in order to cultivate a strong relationship that will tune towards workforce longevity.
Moreover, the workforce has to adapt and respond positively to change while flexibility is the working conditionings is enhanced by the managers. This is attained through an open line of communication between the employers and employees. Of more importance, is ensuring that the workforce is not only well trained but also there are avenues to facilitate their professional development. This will inturn lead to workforce stability where only qualified individuals are hired through selecting them carefully. When there is a good relationship between the employers and the employees for workforce longevity. Therefore, good employees will continue working for the firm and will be able to keep up to the changing business world.
List of References
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Boone, L. E. and Kurtz, D. L. (2010) Contemporary Business. New York, John Wiley and Sons.
Greenhaus, J. H., Callanan, G. A. and Godshalk, V.M. (2010) Career Management. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, Inc.
Hahn, S. and Litwin, A. (1995) Women and Men. Managing in the Age of Change: Essential Skills to Manage Today’s Workforce. Web.
Nankervis A., Compton, R., Baird, M. and Coffery, J. (2011) Human Resource Management: Strategy and Practice. 7th edition. Australia, Cengage learning.
Pocock, B. (2004) How Casual Work Affects Casual Workers and their Communities. South Australian Policy Online, University of Adelaide. Web.
Posthuma, R.A. and Campion, M.A. (2009) Age Stereotypes in the Workplace: Common Stereotypes, Moderators, and Future Research Directions. Journal of Management, 35(1), 158-188.
Tannen, D. (1990) You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York, Ballantine Books.