specific challenges organizations will need to address. This is not an exhaustive list, but the implications for these groups can be applied to all diverse groups.
Generational diversity
The biggest demographic shift impacting the diverse workforce is generational diversity. Because people are living longer and healthier lives, they’re also working much longer, past the average retirement age of 65. In fact, the United Kingdom recently removed its mandatory retirement age of 65. In the United States, millennials make up 50 percent of the workforce, and that number is expected to reach 75 percent by 2030.
Although people are living and working longer, baby boomers are just now retiring from the traditional full-time workplace. In addition, Gen Xers are looking toward retiring the 40- to 60-hour workweek for more much more flexibility in how and when they work. That makes sense, because Gen Xers are now the in-between generation caring for aging parents and raising children.
With that said, considering how the generational shift will impact your workplace is important. For instance, do you have succession plans and promotion plans in place?
You can also utilize the following tips toward the shifting aging workforce:
Make the most of workers’ skillsets through efficient and productive work design.
Maintain skilled leaders and managers who can effectively lead across generations.
Deal with conflict by managing it fairly, communicatively, and equitably.
Foster an inclusive environment that demonstrates value for all ages and the dimensions of diversity.
The huge demographic shift of the aging workforce has the potential to disrupt the productive flow of the workplace. But it also provides an opportunity for lesson-learning and adapting so that the workplace can flourish by gleaning from the top talent aging toward retirement and cultivating the talent in the middle and beginning of the career path.
Gender diversity
Gender diversity is often the first aspect of change within the diversity, equity, and inclusion space. Companies tend to begin their DEI work by increasing the gender diversity within management and leadership roles. According to a 2020 McKinsey & Company study, companies whose leadership was gender and culturally diverse financially outperformed their peers. The study found that companies with more women in its executive ranks were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies with less females in its executive ranks.
The broken rung
McKinsey & Company’s Women in the Workplace 2020 Report found that although women are outpacing men in terms of earning degrees, the disparity in pay and leadership positions in organizations still remains. In fact, the progress toward pay equity is slow. To this point, the United States acknowledges an Equal Pay Day every year to bring light and action toward pay equity for women of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Women are still underrepresented in leading corporations, on boards, and in senior executive roles. For example, in 2021, only 41 Fortune 500 corporations were led by women, 2 of whom were Black women. This number is significant because only three Black women have ever led a Fortune 500 company.
This underrepresentation may stem from many causes, but one of the biggest challenges is what Leanin.org called the broken rung. A sweeping 2021 study looking at 329 companies employing 13 million people found that the biggest obstacle most women face with being promoted is that first step up from entry-level roles to manager. For example, the study showed that for every 100 men promoted to a management position, 86 women are promoted. At the beginning of 2020, women held only 32 percent of manager positions, while men held 88 percent. So women are significantly left out of entry-level management positions that would put them in the succession pipeline for significant promotion along a leadership track.
COVID-19 and working women
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic may erase the gains toward equity and parity for women in the workplace. The challenges of the pandemic have pushed women employees to either downshift their careers or leave the workforce altogether. The pandemic has had the worst impact on mothers, women senior executives, and Black women for a variety of reasons, including the following:
Lack of flexibility
Feeling they need to be constantly “on call”
Caregiving burdens due to COVID-19
Feelings of being negatively judged because of caregiving during the pandemic
Discomfort in sharing challenges with team members or managers
Feeling unable to bring their whole selves to work
The pandemic effect on women in the workplace has been so overwhelmingly negative because work performance goals didn’t adjust to accommodate the pandemic changes but rather increased to meet market needs (more on this in the later section “Increasingly Digital and Hyperconnected”). The work performance goals and needs were met, but there was little consideration for the added stress and trauma of the pandemic (and other social justice concerns that took place in 2020). Some companies provided supportive services like changes to the performance review process, homeschooling support resources, mental health counseling, and stipends to offset working from home costs, the majority of these measures came from less than 50 percent of employers. So room for growth definitely exists to tangibly support employees in a major crisis such as a pandemic.
What are some ways that your company worked to engage and retain women during the global pandemic? What could you have done differently?
Racial and ethnic diversity
Racial minorities are the primary demographic engine of future growth in the United States, countering an aging, and soon-to-be declining white population. The 2020 census data projected that the nation will become “minority white” in 2045. During that year, whites will comprise 49.7 percent of the population in contrast to 24.6 percent for Hispanics, 13.1 percent for blacks, 7.9 percent for Asians, and 3.8 percent for multiracial populations. Among the minority populations, the greatest growth is projected for multiracial populations, Asians and Hispanics with 2018–2060 growth
