Diversity and Demographic Characteristics

Essay by Kasey9College, UndergraduateB, October 2007

download word file, 4 pages 4.6 1 reviews

What is diversity and what constitutes a diverse workforce? If an organization were to ask that question to a small or large group, chances are that the organization would find the answers to these two questions as "diverse" as the people you questioned. The fact is that most organizations are becoming increasingly diverse as many people from different genders, races, cultures, ethnic origins, and lifestyles find themselves working together. Most organizations are starting to find value in diversity of people. Perhaps your organization is just now encountering the effects of a diverse workforce or maybe your company is trying to overcome the changes wrought by diversity. The bottom line is you can not deal with it if you don't understand diversity.

Successful organizations in today's workforce are made up of all different types of people from all types of backgrounds and they all can encompass different demographic characteristics that will have an affect on the individuals and the organizations that they work for.

This paper will take a look at a few of the characteristics and how they can affect individuals in the workplace.

The demographic composition of neighborhoods varies, as does the composition in the workplace. This is often reflected in the demographic composition of its residents or workers. Some communities are more homogeneous than others in terms of their racial and ethnic composition. While the more homogeneous communities may consist of a majority population of African-Americans, Caucasians, Asians, or Hispanics, heterogeneous communities may include African-Americans, Caucasians, Asians, and Hispanics. With such a wide variety of ethnicities, it is difficult to draw meaningful generalizations about the relationships between groups or workers, and race or ethnicity.

EthnicityEthnicity is the different cultural characteristics that connect a particular group or groups of people to each other. The word ethnicity is...