PERSPECTIVES ON WORKFORCE AGE DIVERSITY IN NOWADAYS TEAMS

Abstract

The diversity of employees, in general, respectively age diversity is a reality at the level of the current organizational environment, knowing that currently there are five generations in the labor market. The added value brought by this research is the proposed case study, which has in its center six different teams, at age level (age diverse teams) but not only, which are part of the administrative part of a company, present in Romania. The aim of the research is to identify the dimensions of diversity at the team level, according to the perception of the team leaders and team members, the emphasis being on age diversity. The desired research objectives to be achieved are: (1) identifying the types of workforce diversity perceived by managers and their team members. (2) identifying how the age diversity of team members is managed by managers. The proposed case study is based on a documentary and a primary research. A series of internal documents of the company are analyzed. The qualitative research carried out at the team level of the leaders of the six administrative teams is complemented by a quantitative research. The survey conducted has as target population the employees of the teams that are led by the interviewed managers. A conclusion of this research is that at the level of the interviewed managers and members of their teams there is a medium to low level of awareness of the aspects involved in the diversity of the workforce. Another conclusion is that the age diversity of the members of the analyzed teams is associated by the managers with the different characteristics of the employees belonging to different age generations. The aspects mentioned to differentiate the members of the teams that are part of different age generations are in terms of skills and behaviors in the workplace. JEL Classification: O39, M14

Keywords

• workforce diversity, workforce age diversity, team diversity, team age diversity, case study.