Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
The hearth is for you
if you're a business leader
with a team.
Here we have conversationsabout how to keep growing.
When you feel you've reachedyour capacity, when what you're
doing is working but you'restarting to see the cracks, when
there's a gap between whereyou're at now and where you want
(00:26):
to be, here we find ways totransition through the struggle
of survival toward creating athriving business that supports
you and your team as wholehumans.
Your host is me, candiceElliott.
I'm a business strategist andmentor who specializes in
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working with business owners whoare going through periods of
growth.
Especially when you're addingmore people to your team, the
practices and systems thatworked when your team was
smaller just don't seem to fitanymore.
And when you're caught instress and reaction, it's tough
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to reimagine the way that youcreated your world of work, both
your own personal one and theone that you created for others.
I help people align theirvalues and business practices to
build practical, sustainable,thriving work ecosystems and no,
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this isn't just some workutopia talk.
To do this, I bring forward mydecade-long professional
background in human resourcesand organizational development,
working with growing businessesacross many sectors, and my
decades-long search for meaningand wholeness, which includes
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researching the history of workand how it came to be what it is
today, practicing atrauma-informed approach to
business and integrating work,life and spirituality into a
meaningful whole.
Let's take this journeytogether.
Hello, hello, brave ones,welcome back to the hearth, and
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this week I'm going to betalking about the changing
dynamics of the workforce, whichis all the people who work, and
the increasing diversity thatwe're seeing in workers, working
people in the United States.
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You know, when I talk withemployers about changing
dynamics in the workforce, thereare a few different things that
come up.
The main one that people talkabout is generations, like
generational differences betweenpeople, and there's a lot of
good information out there tolisten to, to read about what
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makes each generation sort ofdistinct and unique in the
workforce and what is helpfulfor different generations.
I do think that some of thatresearch and information it
conflates age of a person withthe generation that they come
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from.
I think that some of the thingsthat are attributed to, for
example, millennials, some ofthe things that are attributed
to millennials, are things thatare now being attributed to the
generation coming aftermillennials.
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So it's like, whatevergeneration is entering the
workforce, it gets this categoryof things, and it's because
they're entering the workforce.
They're figuring out how to gofrom being a student to being a
worker.
Basically, educational systemdoes not set people up for work,
right?
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So there's a huge shift thathappens in whatever group is
transitioning into the workforce, and I think that we
inaccurately assign thosecharacteristics to that group
and carry it with them longerthan it actually deserves to be
carried with them.
And then I think also that wedon't recognize changes that
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happen with people as they gothrough different life events as
they become older, right, so wemay attribute certain things to
, like baby boomers, for example, but as baby boomers are
transitioning into being eldersin the workforce, we need to
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recognize that that group ofpeople are going to be
experiencing certain things likeslower cognitive speed and less
physical ability and thingslike that.
On that end, we also don't wantto conflate that thing, right,
we don't want to miss that.
Really important changes arehappening to this generation of
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people that happen to allgenerations of people.
And so there's this life cycleof an employee throughout their
all of their working years which, like I, started working when I
was 15, and then probably won'tstop working until I'm in my
80s.
Right.
That's a lot of life, of wherework is going to be happening,
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and there are a lot of differentlife transitions that will
happen along the way.
You know, from you knowfiguring out the school to work
transition to you knowsupporting yourself as a single
person to supporting and havinga family if that's the choice
that you decide to make tocaring for elders as they are
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becoming older, to them becomingan elder yourself.
I wanted to start off with aconversation about generations
and how we think of them in thatway, because I think that is
something that we need to shiftour understanding around.
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Like I think that we put a lotof.
There's a lot of frustrationthat is especially directed
towards younger generations fornot understanding quote unquote
like what work is like right,but we had to be taught what
work was like as well.
And then there are certainthings that are ingrained in how
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we have decided to create workthat might not actually be so
good for everyone that we nowhave the opportunity to change.
So I encourage you, if you'refeeling a friction between the
way you're doing something andthen the way that someone else
is experiencing it in yourworkplace, that you dive into
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that and you inquire into it andyou figure out if it's
something that you're doing bydefault or because you think it
has to be done that way, or ifit is really being done in order
to get you to a certain endgoal that you have decided that
you, that your organization, isshooting for.
Some other dynamics that arehappening within the changing
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workforce are the increase ofracial and ethnic minority
workers or global majorityworkers, and then people who are
foreign born and who areworking here in the United
States, and often these peopleare concentrated into
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non-standard work arrangements,including day laborers, seasonal
workers, independentcontractors and leased workers.
So if you're in any of thesekinds of employment arrangements
like where you hire someone fora day, or you hire people for a
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season, or you lease workers oryou have independent
contractors, just be aware thatthese types of arrangements are
more standard for racial andethnic minorities and that
because of that, they experiencemore unstable and unpredictable
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work practices, so thatgenerally negatively affects
people's safety, health,well-being and that of the
families.
Another trend that's happeningin the workforce is the
percentage of adults who areopenly identifying as lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender andqueer, and this is especially
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prevalent among the youngerfolks who are entering into the
workforce and so ensuring thatyou have a workplace that is
supportive, inclusive and safefor all of these folks.
And then another trend that Ikind of touched on a little bit,
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but is that we have amulti-generational workforce
right now, and the proportion ofolder workers has risen and is
continuing to rise, and it'sgoing to keep growing through
2050 is what the research isshowing.
So, just considering the needsof people as they are, as they
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are getting older and as theyare continuing to work and to
need to work, some of theresearch that has gone on has
shown that folks who are LGBTQand women experience more
exclusion, discrimination andviolence in the workplace than
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other groups, and thatespecially women of color and
immigrant women face other kindsof forms of harassment and
discrimination.
Another piece of this is thatworking mothers are often not
provided with the support andresources that they need in
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order to balance work demandsand reproductive plans and
caregiving, so like birth andtaking care of an infant and
then caregiving as children getolder, and so they tend to fall
into a lower socioeconomicstatus bracket.
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And if you're a woman and aperson of color at the same time
, then you have this, thingsexponentially get worse.
Some other dynamics that arehappening for younger folks is
that they are more likely tovisit an emergency room for a
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work-related injury.
So those are folks between theages of 15 and 24.
So thinking about, you know,education around safety in the
workplace is important.
When I was I think it was like19 or 20, I had to go to the
emergency room because I burnedmy hand as I was working as a
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barista and the milk and thething boiled over onto my hand
and you know it wasn't like Iwas not paying attention to what
I was doing or anything likethat, but it, you know it, just
that happened at that time in mylife.
So just like a real lifeexample for you there.
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And then you know, if we kindof understand I'm listing all of
these different things becausethere are so many different
kinds of dynamics that arehappening, right From, you know,
younger folks to older folks,to gender identity, to, you know
, immigrant populations andpeople of color and all of these
changing dynamics there issomething that we can talk about
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organizationally, like as abusiness that you can do to
address, kind of all thesedifferent kinds of things that
are coming up, and that is tolook at your institutionalized
bias, and institutional bias isdefined as laws, customs and
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practices that systematicallyreflect and produce group based
inequities in any society.
So it's the ways that we havebeen working on, so it's the
ways that we have createdsystems that make it so that
things are unequal, and so, aswe move into this future where
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there is more diversity withinthe workforce, it's important to
identify what these biases areand to remove things like
structural exclusions so thatthey're not repeated as we move
forward.
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This can look at, you know,imbalanced power relationships
that occur based on race orethnicity, nativity, gender,
sexual orientation, age class,disability or neurodiversity as
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well.
It can look at the unequalexposure and susceptibility to
workplace hazards.
It can look at the inequitabledistribution of injury or
illness or inequitabledistribution of finances, and
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then it's also really importantto understand that workers who
fall into multiple categories ofsocially marginalized groups
experience overlappingstructural inequities.
So you know for I talked aboutwomen and women of color
previously women have a certainset of inequities that are a
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part of the systems that wecurrently have in place.
People of color have anotherset of inequities that are a
part of the systems that we havein place and women of color are
at the mercy of thoseoverlapping structural
inequities.
So that's how you know.
When you look at compensationfor, you know, mothers in
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general, I think it's 75% of orit, you know, varies a little
bit, but in the 70% zone relatedto all other workers.
But when you look at women ofcolor, their pay is 50% of other
workers.
So that's how multipleoverlapping structural
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inequities can show up insomething like compensation, for
example.
So what are some steps that youcan take?
We're going to get to that.
I guess I have.
Well, I've explained a bit ofthe problem that we're
experiencing.
They're not problem challengefor sure.
So one is to, like I was talkingabout, is looking at your
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institutional bias, like howhave you designed your company?
How have you designed your jobs?
How are your work agreementscreated?
What are the technologies thatyou're using?
What are you know if people arecommuting, what are the
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inherent disparities in that?
Just looking at where there isbias.
And when you do this work, youmight not want to see it.
So it's a good idea to ask yourstaff, your people, what is
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difficult and what is showing up, you know, institutionally and
structurally, in a difficult wayfor them and each workplace is
different.
So it's you know there's notlike a standard set of questions
that I can give you.
That's like here, give thissurvey to your staff to find out
how you have institutionalizedbias into your company.
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But we can.
We can, if this is somethingthat you want to work on, talk
about your specific organization, what's going on there, your
employee groups, and uncoversome of the biases that are
happening.
So, looking at your policiesand practices just to see if
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there are inequities that youare creating or perpetuating
through those Improving the waythat you're collecting data so
that you can understand whatkind of disparities might be
happening.
And then looking into inclusivetechnology, technology that
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will support all these variousdifferent kinds of workers you
know, from your folks who areelders in the workforce to young
folks, to your you know nonprimary English speaking folks
to you know, all the differenttypes of people.
And fostering workplaceinclusivity and and empowering
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people.
And if you want to dive moreinto that inclusivity
conversation, I would recommendyou listen to my episode.
It was a couple ones ago,episode 33, on building an
inclusive and respectfulworkplace.
Well, I feel like this one wasa little bit of an octopus,
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because there's so manydifferent places that you can go
and talking about diversity andin diversity in all of these
different groups.
If you have any questions oryou wanted to clarify something
that I said, or if you'd like totalk about embracing diversity
in your workforce, feel free toreach out.
(19:10):
I would love to talk with youand I'll be linking some of the
research that I included in thistalk in the show notes.
I'll see you next week.
Bye-bye Hit, subscribe to knowwhen the next episodes come out
and, if you're feeling generous,please leave a review.
(19:31):
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build a more sustainable andequitable work environment for
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It's a great place if you'relooking for somewhere to get
(20:35):
started.
Last, if you've got a burningquestion, a comment or a
situation you'd like my eyes on,you can email me.
All those links are in the shownotes.
Take care, brave soul, catchyou next time.