How old is the workforce? How educated? How homogeneous or heterogeneous socially? Social homogeneity refers to uniformity with respect to social characteristics - sex, race, age, income group, education - and to norms of behavior derived from the society that workers come from. Another important form of workforce homogeneity is partly social, partly technical - namely, the occupational mix required in the organization.
The demographic distribution of the workforce can powerfully constrain employment strategy. For example, firms with a bulge of middle-level managers hired in anticipation of growth that fizzled out may be unable to sustain lifetime employment policies. Organizations with workers, who are, on average, less educated, will find total quality initiatives more difficult to implement successfully. The amount of workforce heterogeneity (e.g., in age, gender, education, occupation) also has implications for the degree of diversity an organization should display in its personnel practices (recruitment, performance evaluation, compensation, benefits, etc.). And heterogeneity can fundamentally affect basic motivational techniques. For instance, peer pressure as a motivational tool or control device works best in general when the workforce exhibits a fairly high degree of social homogeneity. Especially in Europe, firms are exhorted by political forces to diversify their workforces, there can be substantial potential benefits from doing so. But when we come to this discussion, we will be especially concerned with challenges that arise generally in dealing with demographic heterogeneity. leia todo o artigo
