Stereotypes And Discrimination In The Workplace

When a person walks into a workplace, there are often presumptions about the company, people, and maybe even how the company is run. Often, age differences can be a key part in those diverse thoughts. There is a wide variety of thoughts and opinions about younger and older workers’ work habits, and how those habits may be different among ages (Chamberlin, 2009). This article examined younger and older people, and the different stereotypes associated with them in the workplace. The main focus was on the fact that young workers were seen as lazy, job hoppers, and only worried about money. Older workers were seen as not as engaged in their work, stuck on old habits, and not wanting a lot of change (Chamberlin, 2009). The interesting thing …show more content…
Stereotypes are sought to be an association or label we put on people based on their differences and the types of people they may associate with (Licht, et al., 2016). Younger workers think of older workers as not as engaged in their work and not interested in wanting to advance their skills in technology. Because of technology today, these stereotypes are put on older workers in the workplace, in the fact that they want to stick to the old ways of doing things, and not change. In that case, they may be ridged or inflexible (Chamberlin, 2009). Younger workers may be discriminated in the workplace if their boss is older and wants to do things in a way that favors the older generation and older workers. Younger employees were hired to technology firms and then trained in old computer techniques to help with the Y2K switch (Chamberlin, 2009). The ‘in group’ would be considered a group that belonged, or shared values with company’ own belief, whereas, the ‘out group’ would be the group that didn’t follow the same path (Licht, et al., 2016). In this situation, young employees were considered the ‘in group’, while older employees were seen as the “out group”, and that’s discrimination. The company and its members that hire employees had a social identity that favored young employees. Then there are the cases where older workers may show discrimination to younger workers, in the fact they don’t follow the normal protocol, they make shortcuts, and then they are characterized as lazy, because of that stereotype or group they are associated with. Unfortunately, this negativity follows the younger millennia around because some younger workers like to job hop or do not work as hard. Some of that job hopping goes back to the fact that younger workers are looking for identity based