Diversity and the Workforce

Age

The age distribution of an organization's workforce is an important dimension of workplace diversity as the working population gets older. Some primary factors contributing to an older population include the aging of the large Baby Boomer generation (people born between 1946 and 1964), lower birth rates, and longer life expectancies due to advances in medical technology and access to health care. As a result, many individuals work past the traditional age of retirement (65 years old) and work more years than previous generations in order to maintain their cost of living.

Exhibit 5.5 compares the percentage of the population over the age of 65 to those under the age of 18 between 2010 and 2016. The number of older individuals has increased and is projected to reach 20.6% by the year 2030 while the number of younger individuals has steadily decreased within that time period. These numbers imply that organizations will increasingly have employees across a wide range of ages, and cross-generational interaction can be difficult manage. Although older workers are viewed as agreeable and comfortable to work with, they are also stereotyped by some employees as incompetent and less interested in learning new tasks at work compared to younger workers. Studies have found support for the proposition that age negatively relates to cognitive functioning. However, if managers offer less opportunity to older workers solely because of declining cognitive functioning, it can be detrimental to organizational performance because older workers outperform younger workers on a number of other job performance measures. Compared to younger workers, older workers are more likely to perform above their job expectations and follow safety protocols. They are also less likely to be tardy, absent, or abuse drugs or alcohol at work compared to their younger counterparts.