Identifying And Evaluating The Behavioral Contexts Of Inequality And Discrimination In The Workplace

Part 1

• Identify and evaluate the behavioural contexts of inequality and discrimination?
• Devise organisational policies to promote equality of opportunity amongst different groups of workers?

RSV Company Pvt. Ltd tries to run strictly an anti-harassment and anti-bully workplace. In order to maintain a well mannered and good environment at work, they have taken up certain measures. Hence, it is quite obvious that it will not accept any sort of harassment or bullying activities towards the staffs. To frame an Anti-Harassment and Bullying statement, in the initial stage there is need to know the proper definition for Harassment and Bullying. According to the legal dictionary, the term “Harassment” can be explained as the systematic or continued action of undesired and annoying exertion of an individual or a batch of people, which may include illogical demands or threats (Tinkler, 2011). The purpose for these harassments can be different at different times. It can be for the accomplishment of personal or professional grudges at different levels. Sometimes it might be for the fulfillment of sexual desires (Sullivan, 2011).

Bullying on the other hand can be defined as the following, application of force or coercion or intimidation on others. It has to be remembered that such a behaviour is continuing in nature. Bullying can vary from being simple to complex where we can find “wingman” present therein to help the primary person is his bullying activities. Recent report shows that a lot of bullying and harassment takes place in educational institutions and workplaces (Soutter and Mckenzie, 2000).

According to the Equality Act 2000, an undesired action related to the pertinent fortified characteristics which in general aims at violating an individual’s personal dignity and frightening or making a situation hostile or degrading so humiliating for that individual. Harassment and bullying consist of various activities which may include either direct bullying or indirect bullying (Tseng and Kang, 2015).

Direct Bullying includes activities like pinching appreciation of an individual, exhibiting unofficial or offensive pictures, unroll rumors about an individual or cracking jokes or prank on a person etc. Indirect Bullying or harassment may include the action like making a person work overtime even if not necessary, creating abstract situations for work, marginalizing or biasing or isolating a person etc.

According to the law in force, an employer is responsible for any such act of harassment or bullying that takes place in his workplace or with his employees unless it is seen that reasonable measures were taken by the employer. Such a connection has been developed in accordance to the Law of Tort which states that the employer has a vicarious liability towards his employees.

Part 2

For example, In RSV construction, once one of the employees was being teased due to racial reason. It was a sort of harassment that was being done towards him. Employees  harassing this employee was chargeable under Equality Act, 2000. RSV took immediate measures in that respect and suspended the employees those who were harassing for one month.

Introduction:

RSV Construction Company wants an anti-harassment and anti-bullying environment free workplace. In order to maintain such environment, the company has strategized certain policies which have been implemented to make it a better place to work.

Harassment have become a common issue in workplaces today. Almost on every second day reputed newspaper reports of harassment and bullying cases. Being the HR of a company, and as well as an employee in the company, it is by far one of my duties to look into maintenance of healthy environment in the office for other employees (Renzetti, n.d.). Harassment and bullying is done by a specific category of people who generally does it to demeen another person’s self-esteem and self-trust. It is sometimes done with the intention to fulfil sexual desires of a personel or to accomplish one’s personal grudge on the other (McDonald, 2011).

It can be defined as a system of shared values, assumptions and beliefs which regulates how people should behave in an organization. These shared concepts and values have a strong effect on the people, thereby deciding how to dress, act and perform their jobs.

As it has been stated above, Bullying may be defined as the repeated action of bad behavior towards another person with the intention of hurting that person either emotionally or mentally or physically (Judd, 2013). The nature of bullying can be various in types like people who are more bullied are often are the ones who bully others, again people do it out jealousy at times etc. It has been noticed at various times, that it is basically the ability of the bully to create an illusion in front of the one being bullied that it is being done in support of the other bystanders (Kors, 1991).

Harassment on the other hand can be of different types that are generally faced in workplaces (Fusilier and Penrod, 2014). These types of harassment can vary from mental abuses to physical abuses. Often it is heard that women have to face sexual harassment at their workplaces to get better position in their company. There are other types of harassment as well like racial discrimination, religious discriminations etc. Generally it is seen that sexual harassment takes place in workplace which is generally done by wanting unwanted sexual relationships, failing to which the victim faces negative or disadvantages in their professional careers. At the same time there are religious as well as racial discrimination in workplaces which is generally done to hurt a person personal beliefs and sentiments. The example herein states in provide that a woman was subjected to sexual harassment by her manager because of which she lodged a case at the tribunal and for which she was compensated with a huge amount.

Definition Of Organisational Structure

An employer is the one under whose responsibility he employees are employed. Thus it is the responsibility of the employer to provide a safe and a secured environment for work to his employees. Basic legal obligations that every Employer should take up so as to provide a good working environment are summed up below:

In order to maintain safety and security in the organizations employers should organize regular training facilities under law on sexual harassment prevention. Training Programmes should be organized at regular intervals for the managers and officers so that they can aware the other staffs about the steps granted in controlling harassment within the office campus. At the same time, training should be provided to be more responsive towards the staffs so that if any person complains of sexual harassment or harassment of any other nature, immediate steps can be taken in that regards.

Law at the same time requires a employer of the company to develop a complain committee or an anti-harassment committee whereby victims of such harassment may come and lodge complain against offenders (Fincke, 2015). This committees are also developed so as to take personal suggestions on matters related to harassment and to lodge personal complain. These committees should always consist of a third person recruited from some other organization so that the inner officials doesn’t exert any sort of pressure on the committee members when a complaint of harassment or bullying is lodged. Such committees should be a formation of expertise in counseling, public relationships etc (Euben, 2003). There should be officials who would be maintaining records of harassment complaint and at the same time the entire years record and then forward it to the head officials of the company.

One of the leading cases of Harrasment in a Construction Company is The Case of Boh Bros. Construction Co. This Particular company had to pay $125,000 for harassment of same sex. It was charged against the superintendent Chuck Wolfe, that he harassed Kerry Woods by passing sexual comments and exposing himself openly.

Immediate measures under the law should be taken by the employer of an organization on receiving a complaint against the any employee who has bullied or harassed another employee. At the very first investigations should be conducted against the concerned offender and on knowing facts legal prosecution should be initiated against the offender with claim for damages for the victim and also by suspending or throwing out or throwing out the employee of the company (Freedman, n.d.). A company or an organizations responsibility towards their employees doesn’t restrict only to the legal obligations in matters of harassment or bullying. In order to ensure no harassment in the organization, there should be a promotion of culture of respect and dignity in the workplace. These fostering of maintaining respect and dignity is only possible by nurturing culture. Any organization is a mixture of various types of culture and religions. Hence steps should be adopted to maintain all the cultures. Only when diversity is maintained there will be peace and respect of all cultures and dignity within the company. The organization should organize different events on different occasions whereby there should be a development of employer and employees healthy relationship in order to maintain respect and dignity among everyone. For it is only when respect and dignity fails, offences crops in.

Assignment Discussion

An organizations culture has a great impact on the working environment. If we critically analyse this point, we would see that a company is known by the work culture it maintains. While employing a person into the company, good knowledge of that persons background should be taken into knowledge (Behavioural genetics: Genetics of sexual harassment, 2012). The accurate knowledge of an employee is required because by employing a wrong person into the company, the entire reputation of the company can be at stake. Again at the same time, if we separately analyse, an individualsbehaviour within the company is also very much important to maintain a healthy environment. If a single individual’s behaviour is hurting other employees, then automatically it will effect the environment at large and will not be restricted within two or three person. For example: If an individual in a company sexually tries to abuse a female employee of that company, if such an issue is brought before the company, then it would spread like fire and if media comes to know about the fact, the reputation of the company would be at stake for one person default. In the same way if the working structure of the company is not strategically framed like if more than required power is giving in one person’s hand, then there would be chances to misuse his power and centralization of power would amount to exploitation among other employees (Christie, 2011).

These centralization of power creates griviences in other employees mind and as such in that manner harassment and bullying policies are adopted by the employees to break the centralization policies of the company.

To run any organization basic few things are required to be taken into consideration for creating anti-harassment policies. Today developed countries have taken up different policies to stop harassment at workplaces and new laws are being framed by the legislation in that regards (Cook and Hodo, n.d.). Yet third world countries have still not recognized this as a major issue and hence are not working on it. Before framing in a anti-harassment policy conditions like work process, human resource development, inter relationship between employers and employees are different points needed to be given a look. A anti-harassment policy should consist of management training Programmes, awareness Programmes for staffs, regular mental health checkup for employees, formation of a committee with selective people significant in handling sensitive issues like harassment and bullying etc.

Basic Legal Obligations

Conclusion:

Today the world is moving to fast and with the world, people of the world is also moving too fast. Developments are taking place in all parts of the world. In order to ensure this developments to be effective for people,  proper secured and safe environment should also be ensured. Only a healthy atmosphere can provide a person more self confidence to work. New policies and New grants in the anti-harrasment and bullying matters are giving people more confidence to work and make their career and the world a better place to live in.

Managerial policies that are granted by HR in order to maintain a safe and secured place for the staffs of the company.In order to frame anti-harassment and bullying statement for the construction corporation, few conditions are required to be taken into consideration:

Available resources

Gender imbalances in the  organisation

Number of employees including junior and senior both

Cultural and regional diversity at the workplace

History of bullying and harassment

Structure and magnitude of workplace

Approaching higher authorities for drafting a strategy for curbing out harassment and bullying at the workplace.

To consult appropriate authority like the staffs, head of organisation, union, government while taking an initiative to draft anti-harassment policies.

Translation of the anti-harassment policies into the preferred language so as to bring the policy granted into the knowledge of the employees from different cultural background

Conduct awareness programmes within the organisation so as to make the employees and all other level of members of the company aware about the situation persisting in the company regarding harassment and bullying (Robertson, Dyer and Campbell,

References:

Behavioural genetics: Genetics of sexual harassment. (2012). Nature, 488(7411), pp.256-256.

Christie, D. (2011). The encyclopedia of peace psychology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Cook, P. and Hodo, T. (n.d.). When women sexually abuse men.

Euben, D. (2003). Legal Watch: Sexual Harassment Policies on Campus. Academe, 89(6), p.94.

Fincke, O. (2015). Trade-offs in female signal apparency to males offer alternative anti-harassment strategies for colour polymorphic females. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 28(4), pp.931-943.

Freedman, E. (n.d.). Redefining rape.

Fusilier, M. and Penrod, C. (2014). University Employee Sexual Harassment Policies. Employ Respons Rights J, 27(1), pp.47-60.

Judd, S. (2013). Domestic violence sourcebook. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics.

Kors, A. (1991). Harassment policies in the university. Society, 28(4), pp.22-30.

McDonald, P. (2011). Workplace Sexual Harassment 30 Years on: A Review of the Literature.International Journal of Management Reviews, 14(1), pp.1-17.

Renzetti, C. (n.d.). Clergy sexual abuse.

Robertson, C., Dyer, C. and Campbell, D. (1988). Campus Harassment: Sexual Harassment Policies and Procedures at Institutions of Higher Learning. Signs, 13(4), p.792.

Soutter, A. and Mckenzie, A. (2000). The Use and Effects of Anti-Bullying and Anti-Harassment Policies in Australian Schools. School Psychology International, 21(1), pp.96-105.

Sullivan, K. (2011). The anti-bullying handbook. Los Angeles, Calif.: SAGE.

Tinkler, J. (2011). Resisting the Enforcement of Sexual Harassment Law. Law & Social Inquiry, 37(1), pp.1-24.

Tseng, L. and Kang, Y. (2015). Anti-harassment policy, manager integrity and intention to report customer sexual harassment. Leadership & Org Development J, 36(5), pp.570-591.