White Collar Employees - Definition, Importance & Types
What is White Collar Employees?
White collar employees are workers doing business strategy & management roles in a company. Employees working in professional, managerial, or administrative positions (non-manual) in an organisation are commonly referred to as white collar employees in contrast to the employees engaged in manual labour that are referred to as blue collar employees or workers.
White collar employees form the strategy building and decision making part of the organization. White collar employees are more educated, have better skills and have a higher social class as compared to rest of the employees. Because of their higher education qualifications and a more strategic role, white collar workers are paid more. These types of jobs are mostly desk jobs which involves skills like leadership, time management, people management etc.
Similar worker classifications are blue collar employees and pink collar employees, who are primarily involved in doing the manual and less-managerial work in the organization.
Importance of White Collar Employees
The origin of the word white collar comes from the fact that these workers traditionally wore white collared dress shirts and were associated with high average salaries and posh office rooms. A Manager in an organisation would be a white collar employee, whereas a janitor would be a be a blue collar employee. But, in the current times, this term is losing its relevance as the white collar employment constitutes the major chunk of the working class with most “shirt and tie” jobs being low-paying and involving a high amount of stress specifically in the modern service and technology sector.
Top White Collar Job Types
Some of the most popular and top white collar jobs are:
1. Lawyers
2. Surgeons
3. Marketing Managers
4. Chartered Accountants
5. Finance Managers & Advisors
6. CEOs
7. Software Developers
8. Bankers
9. Business & Strategy Consultants
10. Professors & Teachers
The above set of white collar jobs are just the most popular and higher paying job types. More professional jobs involving managerial and administrative work are also done by white collar workers.
Hence, this concludes the definition of White Collar Employees along with its overview.
This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.
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