Women in the Workforce: Still Unequal after all these Years

Article Summary 

This article addresses women discrimination in the workplace. It is about underpayment among women even when they do the same work as men in the workplace. There are a number of issues that women face globally and unequal pay is one of them. Women sometimes perform equal work as men but are paid less. This includes their basic salary, bonuses, allowances, and other benefits. According to the statistics provided in the article, women receive 80.5 cents for every one dollar that men receive and their yearly earnings differ by $10, 000 (Reilly and Masselot, 2017). The article also gives the impact of unequal pay on women with some recommendations for addressing the issue. The impact hat unequal pay has on women is that it lowers their productivity. When the women become aware that they receive less than their male counterparts in terms of salary to perform similar jobs, their morale and motivation decrease. This in turn reduces their productivity. 

HR Issue (Unequal Pay as a challenge of a Diverse Workforce) 

Diversity is a practice that is being embraced by a number of workplaces currently. Diversity in the workplace is a topic that is controversial with the politically polarized environment of today. A number of movements are rising to support sexual identity, gender identity, immigration, and feminism. The business world is also putting efforts to diversify the workplace. A diverse workforce is characterized by individuals with differences in personality, race, gender, opinions, culture, sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, and others. As much as a diverse workforce has got advantages like the attraction of top talent, increased productivity and provision of a broader employee pool, there are also challenges ( Reilly and Masselot, 2017) . Workplace discrimination is considered a challenge that results from diversity. One way in which minorities in the workplace are discriminated against is unequal pay. 

There are a number of issues women face globally and unequal pay is one of them. Women sometimes perform equal work as men but are paid less. This includes their basic salary, bonuses, allowances, and other benefits. Some countries have put policies and strategies to address unequal pay but some have not solved the challenge yet. Countries such as the United States prohibit paying women that work in the same place of work as men with similar jobs a lesser pay than the men. Since discrimination is one of the challenges associated with diversity, unequal pay can be termed as a challenge of diversity due to the reason that it discriminates women against men. (Hanafizadeh and Zare Ravasan, 2017) minorities are various setting are being discrimination. Women are among the minorities who are discriminated in the workplace by being paid less than men. 

According to research, some of the factors which contribute to unequal pay include the fact that women have to be away from work for some time. Women take time away from working to have and take care of children. Having children increases the pay gap between men and women. This is a factor that contributes to close to 20% of the cases of unequal pay. The language used in jobs also contributes to unequal pay. Most companies advertise their jobs using language that makes women not consider some of the top positions. The language used does not allow women to apply for those jobs. There is no flexibility when it comes to the qualifications and responsibilities in the job adverts ( Reilly and Masselot, 2017) . If jobs adverts could include something like further options will be discussed during the interview or working from home can be arranged, women could perhaps consider some of the high-paying jobs. There are few women in the high-paying positions, therefore. Also, companies prefer choosing executives from those on the board. These companies could possess a diverse pool to select from if there were several women on the board. 

Recommendations to Overcome Unequal Pay in the Workplace 

Having increased options for women is one strategy that can be used to address workforce unequal pay. Companies should not shove women to the positions that men have been holding for so long and create new roles for women. Women have to be celebrated and integrated because they come with unique views to the workplace (Blau and Kahn, 2017). The women should, therefore, be created their roles to show companies unique ways of developing success. Doing this will allow companies to have more reasons to give women incentives and bonuses. Having people in companies that advocate for equality can also address this challenge. These individuals can sustain the long-term and short-term activities towards equality in pay Hanafizadeh and Zare Ravasan, 2017). The organization will, therefore, be on toes and be able to avoid activities which can result in unequal pay. 

The other recommendation to reduce unequal pay is the initiation of an equal division of the parental leave between both parents. From my research, if this initiative is put in place, the issue of unequal pay will be decreased by 20%. Fathers should also be given some number of weeks as maternity leave. This will reduce the amount of time the women will be at the maternity leave and hence increase their working hours. In turn, unequal pay will be lowered. The parental leave should be equally divided by law so that both the father and the mother share equally the days they spend at home. 

The other solution of reducing unequal pay is introducing political initiatives like full kinder garden coverage. This is going to raise the average number of hours worked by women and reduce the issue of unequal pay through women’s higher income both from more accruing work experience and the increase in work hours (Blau and Kahn, 2017). 

The job advertisement language can also be changed. Most women fail to take the high paying jobs because they give priority to child responsibilities when it comes to the flexibility of the advertisements. Advertisements of jobs cannot allow women to put their children first while still considering top positions. Companies should create practices of recruitment which can allow women to discuss other options for flexible working hours and place ( Reilly and Masselot, 2017) . This will make the number of women o the roles that men dominate to increase. 

The article “The Multi ‐ generational and Aging Workforce: Challenges and Opportunities” 

Article Summary 

This article is about a research study that was carried on to investigate the relationship between an aging workforce and performance. The age of retirement rises as life expectancy increases. What determines the success of an organization is how it mainstreams its internal processes to accommodate an environment that is composed of a bigger percentage of older people. Although several changes can take place, HR managers should start to consider how to improve employee engagement. The factors investigated include employee commitment, the rate of work completion by young workers and older workers. The conditions that inhibit the accomplishment of successful performance evaluation are also investigated. Among the factors that will affect performance according to this article is the objective of the organization. The article is concluded by stating that the outcome of employee performance evaluation has got a relationship with the objective of the organization, and the age of employees ( Zacher et al., 2017) . 

HR Function (Performance Evaluation Management) 

Performance evaluation is a method used by organizations use to document and evaluate all its employees. Performance evaluations are a component of career development and are made of regular employee performance reviews within an organization. Performance evaluation can also be defined as a periodic, general and systematic process which assesses the job performance of an employee and his or her productivity in relation to their ages ( Lussier & Hendon, 2017) . Performance evaluations help employees to get answers to how important questions which concern expectations. What does the company expect from me? What does my age say about my ability to perform certain duties? However, there are a number of challenges that are encountered when conducting performance evaluation regarding an aging workforce. 

Complications arise from performance evaluations if they are not done well. The first complication is subjective evaluations. This arises from the subjective opinions and impressions of a supervisor. They are expressed using subjective measures of performance this when the evaluation is influenced by factors that are not related to the performance of an employee like previous successes and mistakes, ease of management personal prejudice and likeability ( Magnavita, 2017) . This, therefore, results in subjective evaluation rather than objective evaluation. The other complication is negative perceptions. Many individuals possess perceptions that are negative about performance evaluations . 

They find receiving the results of a performance evaluation stressful and uncomfortable which might end up causing tension between the employees and the supervisor. If employees do not trust their supervisor and also have a belief that they will gain from the exercise, performance evaluation might be a useless exercise. Legal issues also are the next complications of the exercise. If the exercise is not done in an appropriate manner, it could lead to legal issues that can put a company at risk. Inappropriate application of performance evaluations can impact an employee negatively which can make him or her take legal actions against the company ( Collings et al., 2018) . Errors also occur. This is because supervisors may want to rate the aging workforce more favorably to avoid conflicts and please them. 

Recommendations on Proper Performance Evaluation on Aging Workforce 

Setting feedback guidelines is one of the recommendations. Aging workforce and performance evaluations are all about feedback. Therefore, before conducting an evaluation of an a ging workforce and performance, a system should be implemented that helps them to know the type of feedback provided and how to receive it and give it to employees. The feedback should be balanced in a way that the feedback does not only focus on the age of the employee or their weaknesses. Employees of any age should understand both their strengths and weakness in order for them to take ownership of their roles and perform in their job ( Zacher et al., 2017) . The expectations for improvement should also be outlined. As a supervisor, when giving the areas for improvement for an aging workforce , it is important that you give the improvement expectations and how you will help the employee will attain them. For instance, if a young employee speaks rudely to customers and does not tolerate some of the customers, provide the employees with some suggestions on how to handle the issues and improve his or her behavior. Employee feedback should be encouraged. This comes after discussing the evaluation outcomes with an aging workforce. 

Although performance evaluations can easily be biased, there are a number of ways that can be used to ensure biases and errors are minimized during employee evaluation. The first strategy is to train both the young and aging workforce who is involved in conducting performance evaluations. This can be achieved by creating acceptance and awareness to those who do the exercise. They should be made to know that they are bound to get a different range of abilities and skills with different employees. A company should involve both the young and aging workforce who is trained to give feedback to evaluators (Kim et al., 2018). Participation of subordinates is another way of reducing biases and errors during performance appraisals for the aging workforce . All workers of different ages should be allowed to participate in the process as it will allow supervisor-employee reciprocity within the discussion concerning the aging workforce . This, therefore, will increase motivation and job satisfaction of employees. 

Identification of the measures of performance is also another strategy of determining the effects of an aging workforce at workplaces . Performance measures which are of standard and enable you to evaluate the job performance of an aging workforce are important because they can cut the stress and time amount which are required in filling the form of evaluation. This is the most powerful process of performance evaluation even though it can be a time-consuming process ( Magnavita, 2017) . To develop standard measures of performance depending on age, it is important to review the job descriptions of every employee position and determine the components which can be measured accurately. When employees do not measure up to the set standards, it might be difficult to know whether there is a problem with their performance or it is just that the position expectations that have become unrealistic. 

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Zacher, H. (2017). Ronald J. Burke, Cary L. Cooper, and Alexander ‐ Stamatios G. Antoniou. The multi ‐ generational and aging workforce: Challenges and opportunities. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2015, 448 pages, $160, hardcover. Personnel Psychology , 70 (3), 717-719.