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| Hiring, Terminations and Retention |
| Workforce Trends: Recruiting and Catering to Hispanic Employees |
The U.S. Census Bureau is projecting some interesting results of the 2000 census. One of them will be documentation of the fact that there has been a significant increase in the size of the U.S. Hispanic population. Overtaking African Americans as the country’s largest minority group, Hispanics are expected to make up one-quarter of the population of the U.S. (96.5 million people).
Demographers are quick to point out that the trend indicates that a high percentage of the workforce population in the United States will be persons of Hispanic origin. That has some Human Resource ramifications that employers need to begin to prepare for.
Sonia Pérez, deputy vice president for research at the Washington, D.C.-based National Council of La Raza, has stated, "This is not a matter of ‘being nice to Latinos.’ We are already a very significant part of the current workforce.” Employers need to take a look at how workplace policies might affect this minority population, and prepare now to eliminate some of the roadblocks that hinder progress for people of Hispanic origin.
For example, if you are an employer who tends to equate poor language skills with less education and lower intelligence, you might be doing your company the disservice of passing over a superb employee in favor of a less-talented candidate who lacked an accent.
Changes in company policy might be as subtle as learning to be more precise when discussing deadlines (since in many Latin cultures, phrases like, “right away” could mean any time within the next two weeks), to more direct approaches like providing Spanish translations of job applications and orientation materials.
Pérez points out that Hispanics are already a significant segment of the workforce and that their influence will become increasingly significant in the future with the decline in the Anglo birthrate. “It’s in America’s best interest to invest in the Latino workforce," she concludes.
(Source: Carla Joinson. “Strength In Numbers.” HR Magazine).
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