Discrimination in any form and expression is undoubtedly bad and unacceptable at the workplace. However, countries with a high rate of incoming foreigners from less developed countries often establish very strict hiring standards in order to prevent ethnic and racial minorities to enter the working place equally with native residents. The situation negatively influences the overall working process and the company’s output because it may potentially benefit from hiring a foreign but talented person. More than that, introducing cultural diversity in the scheme of work of the company one should always remember that the wider the range of strategies, decision-making frames, and idea generation modes is, the more innovative the company will be and the higher competitive advantage it has will be able to gain.
Another issue of discrimination is the topic of gender implications still evident in the contemporary world despite the active fight for equality of rights for men and women. It has been long ago proving that women possess a more creative mind, have a completely different way of thinking and handling problems, so they can complement men in the business process very well, producing an interesting, innovative and original decision. Besides, women behave calmer in critical situations, so they may introduce a set of alternative decisions in some problematic issues for the company.
However, even despite all these considerations the gender pay gap and the rate of accessibility of certain jobs for men and women remains a real problem. Much has been certainly done in this context; however, much is still left to be done. The most popular forms of discrimination against women, if they still managed to get to the working place, are sexual; harassment and hostile harassment. Both forms involve the distraction of women and creating uncomfortable working conditions based on different characteristics and ways of action.
“While the government does investigate and prosecute allegations of sexual harassment, lawsuits in civil courts have had a huge effect on harassment in the workplace. Companies have paid millions of dollars in settlements and damages to victims of both forms of harassment. This has led other companies to invest in increased employee training in order to prevent future occurrences and limit corporate responsibility.”
Actually, the same situation may be seen in the case with affirmative action and reverse action – as Keith Goree has characterized it, affirmative action is a set of procedures a company should take to promote fighting with discrimination. However, this fight led to racial minorities starting to take advantage of the situation and claiming to be unfairly abused when in fact the situation did not look like that – this phenomenon was termed ‘reverse discrimination’. An affirmative action is still a powerful tool for providing equality of access to employment; however, there should always be a sufficient controlling body with objective judgment to decide whether justice was preserved or not.