Discrimination in the Workplace

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A case study was conducted by Fox & Stallworth (2005), which discussed types of racism in the workplace. Of the people that participated, it was found that 50 percent had experienced racism in the workplace. Of this 50 percent, 99 percent were of African American or Hispanic backgrounds. The most frequent type of racism was excluding certain staff in activities both inside and outside of the workplace due to the fact that they were not of American backgrounds. The second most common occurrence was the use of jokes or derogatory comments towards a certain workers racial background or ethnic group. From these experiences the case study also discussed the effects of racism towards those staff members. The most common is that when staff members suffer racism in the workplace they told anyone other than their supervisor about the racial incident that had occurred. The second most frequent is that staff members experience a decrease in commitment to their job and/or loyalty to their employer. The counterproductive work benefits after someone has come in contact with racism include stress, depression, wasting time during work hours, lack of aspiration to complete work and isolation in the workplace. This has serious impacts to both the employee and employer if not resolved (Saunders, Huynh, & Goodman-Delahunty, 2007).

Studies by Durrani and Rajagopal (2016) have shown that there is a higher percentage of ethnic workers in the restaurant industry at a management compared to other industries (Durrani & Rajagopal, 2016). This is very important due to the high variety of customers in the hospitality and tourism industry.

Overcoming Prejudice

To overcome prejudice in the workplace there are a number of strategies that can be completed. The most appropriate is through training and effective recruitment. Learning how to communicate and interact with others who are significantly diverse from oneself in terms of race, ethnicity, gender and background is a key to overcome prejudice in the workplace (Perry, 2014).

Training

A successful way to overcome this is through rebuilding of prior experience, entailing the reorganization of intellectual and emotional characters, and also social relations and institutions (Perry, 2014). With effective training, this will be implemented correctly and will significantly reduce prejudice in the workplace. The training involves the teaching of contact and communication within the workplace. In these training groups there should be a mixed representation from the workplace (Dixon, Tropp, Durrheim, & Tredoux, 2010). This includes equal status, common goals, cooperation, and additional support from the workplace (Bahns, Springer, & The, 2015). When training is completed through different groups rather than the traditional in-groups in the workplace, there is a reduction of intergroup prejudice (Dixon, Tropp, Durrheim, & Tredoux, 2010). The training involves teaching staff about prejudice, racism and discrimination, what it entails and the effects it has on people. Staff should bring to the table what they believe and work together to come to an agreement in terms of equality in the workplace. This will bring employees out of their comfort zones of what they believe is correct and influence them to broaden their minds on prejudice. Drawing out-group staff members together to become one in-group, there becomes mutual respect and cooperation (Perry, 2014). It is important that though there is training occurring, there should be a mixed input from both the trainer and the participants and this effectively reduces prejudice rather than just information from the trainer (Parsons et al., 2011). This type of contact can reduce ignorance and reconstruct a persons experience with prejudice (Perkins & Repper, 2013).

Recruitment Strategy

Along with training are the recruitment aspects to discrimination in the workplace. Discrimination is very common in the recruitment process throughout the world. This includes not recruiting certain races, gender and age. Whilst all discrimination in recruitment is unavoidable such as choosing one applicant over another due to experience, a large amount is avoidable. Recruitment should always filter through the human resource department and through the manager (Perkins and Repper, 2013). This avoids the possibility that the recruiter is biased, discriminative or racist towards certain applicants. An applicants experience should be the ultimate and most important factor in deciding who receives the job, irrespective of the individuals personal background (Iyer, Jetten, Branscombe, Jackson, & Youngberg, 2014). Aside from experience, the second should be qualification. After experience and qualification, if a decision cannot be made, testing should be completed. There should never be the use of accepting one applicant over another due to their gender or race, as this is discrimination (Perkins and Repper, 2013).

Evaluation Strategy

To ensure that the training and recruitments strategies are effective, there needs to be an evaluation strategy put in place. The most effective is to conduct a survey throughout the workplace after training has occurred (Wei et al., 2008). The survey must be anonymous, as this will produce the most authentic responses from participants (Parsons et al, 2011). The survey can be completed through paper form and should feature questions and opinions regarding both the training received and the participant’s current views on discrimination, racism and prejudice in the workplace (Wei et al., 2008). With the results from the survey, management can then if needed alter their training program to ensure that is it of the best quality possible (Carden and Boyd, 2014).

Conclusion

Discrimination, racism and prejudice have been prevalent in the workplace for a number of years. Prejudice is commonly keyed as a somewhat umbrella term for discriminating actions that happen in our society and frequently in the workplace, the most common forms being homophobia, racism and sexual discrimination. From prejudice comes discrimination. Guidon describes discrimination as being an unfavourable behaviour based on prejudice that regards race, age, sex, and therefore leads to barriers in a social environment that prevent a particular person from participating equally. To overcome this, effective training needs to be put in place. This training will aim to reset a person’s prior experiences with prejudice in the workplace and put them out of their comfort zones to create groups that wouldn’t normally happen to engage and communicate together. Along with training