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Demographic Characteristics In The Workplace

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What are biographical characteristics? Norentha
Personal characteristics such as age, gender, race and length of tenure, that are objective and easily obtained from personnel records.
In other ways, biographical characteristics are personalities or characters that influence a person. These characters normally affect a person in one way or the other within an organization (Nixon, 2014).
Types of these surface level characteristics may be the basis for discrimination for the different categories of classes of employees. It is then essential to distinguish the diverse biographical groups, employers may then differentiate the various kinds of discrimination that may occur in the work place and therefore can formulate ways to eradicate or prevent …show more content…

First, it is believed that job performance declines with increasing age. Even if this may not be true, people still believe it, and act on it. Secondly, employers recognize that older workers may represent a pool of high quality applicants. Older employees possess experience. Lastly, there is a worldwide shortage of highly skilled people, this may force companies to reemploy people due to their experience and competence in their tasks. This trend is also visible in South Africa in the engineering and nursing field, where employees are being reemployed due to their skill set.
Employers perceive older employees to have positive skills such as experience, judgement, a strong work ethic and commitment to quality, yet they also believe older workers may also lack flexibility and resist new technology.
What are the effects of discrimination against individuals based on age?
A lower level of commitment is evident when individuals are discriminated against based on their age. This lower level of commitment was then in turn related to lower levels of organizational performance. Eradicating age discrimination is essential to increase organistion performance. …show more content…

This is evident in South Africa. A result of the apartheid regime. Race is defined by the following; black, white, indian and coloured. Ethnicity is the traditional set of cultural characteristics that overlaps with race.
In employment settings, individuals may tend to favor those within the same racial group in terms of performance evaluations, promotion decisions and pay raises. This may not always happen especially if there is a high structured method of decision making are used.
What are the effects of discrimination against individuals based on race and ethnicity?
Individuals that are discriminated against due to their ethnicity and their race are inclined to be demotivated and have low self-morale in the workplace.
Disability
A person is disabled if he/she has a physical or mental impairment that may hinder their ability to perform major life activities. Examples may include, missing limbs, deafness and down syndrome.
In South Africa, people with disabilities are protected against discrimination through the Code of good practice on key aspects of disability in the workplace was issued in terms of section 54 (1) (a) of the Employment Equity Act, no.55 of 1998. The code is based on the principle that no one should be unfairly discriminated against an individual based on people being disabled, also provision for people with disabilities must be made by

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