The Importance of Preventive Training to Minimize Harassment and Discrimination in the Workplace - Essay Sample

Introduction

Discrimination refers to subjecting an employee to unfavorable treatment in the workplace based on one's characteristics such as sex, race, age, nationality and even sexual orientation which is against the Equal Opportunity Act of 2010. On the other hand, sexual harassments refer to the tendency to seeking sex advances on an employee in the workplace against their will. Discrimination is a significant organization problem that decreases employee engagement to an organization and their overall production capacity due to physical or emotional trauma (Sharma, 2016). Discrimination can be directly or indirectly where direct discrimination occurs when an individual in the workplace is subjected to unfavorable treatment due to unfair assumptions based on their personal characteristic whereas the indirect discrimination occurs when one is subjected to unfair treatment through the initiation of workplace policies that seek to promote equality while indirectly exposing some of the employees to a disadvantage. Sexual harassment in the workplace is even worse and involves any unwelcome conduct written, physical or verbal, which is sexual on an individual, and it results in humiliation and intimidation. Both sexual harassment and discrimination negatively affect one's potential to contribute to organizational goals fully and can adversely affect the health of the employee (Keil, Amershi, Holmes, Jablonski, Luthi, Matoba... & von Unruh, 2007). This paper will assess the impact of preventive training in reducing discrimination and sexual harassment within the working environment.

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Overview of Preventive Training in the Workplace

Due to the negative impact of discrimination and sexual harassment in organizations, preventive training methods can reduce the overall adverse outcomes and helps both the employees and the managers to handle discrimination and sexual harassment events more professionally (McDonald, Charlesworth, & Graham, 2015). Through preventive training, business owners seek to create a safe and comfortable working environment for all the employees by tolerating minimum interpersonal conflicts between employees. Besides, preventive training helps businesses to manage the cases of discrimination and sexual harassment which is crucial in the overall employee wellbeing as well as improving the employee's contribution to the organization goals (Johnson, 2004). The function of preventive training involves giving the employees informed of what can be termed as discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace. The training is vital in exposing the employee towards establishing the consequences and the steps towards preventing impermissible behavior (Johnson, 2004). Preventive training to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination should be conducted regularly with refresher courses being set quarterly in addition to other alternatives such as team building activities which are instrumental in preventing discrimination and sexual harassment as well as promoting healing and reconciliation between the employees.

Discrimination in the workplace according to (Johnson, 2004) is the treatment of employees or people differently based on color, country of origin, religion, sex, disability age, and marital as well as parental status. Preventive training plays a significant role in reducing workplace harassment and discrimination. Through preventive training, the organizational managers and employees can specifically know the actions and behaviors which make up workplace harassment and discrimination and help in taking the necessary action to address the situation (Hajian & Domingo-Ferrer, 2013). Additionally, preventive training enables the organization to create awareness to their managers about legal implications to be faced by failing to comply with the documented workplace harassment and discrimination policies and procedures.

Workplace harassment is any expression or conduct that offends, causes abuse, or demeaning to an individual employee or group of employees. Employee's harassment in the workplace may be physical or psychological (McDonald et al., 2015). Workplace physical harassment involves physical attack or threats .employees or gives threats directly to hurt commits workplace harassment .manifestation of threatening behavior or destruction of properties in a workplace contributes to workplace harassment of employee or group of employees. Employees in the workplace may also experience psychological harassment (Johnson, 2004). Psychological harassment hurts an employee's psychological wellbeing. The people who are harassed psychologically have a feeling being put down and belittled professionally and also a personal level. Psychologically harassed employees are affected in terms of social life, work-life, and even physical health. Isolated employees or their presence id denied in an organization experience psychological harassment (McDonald et al., 2015).

Preparing for Preventive Training in an Organization

Identification of Previous Sexual Harassment and Discrimination Cases

Carrying out an inventory of discriminative and sexual harassment reports plays a significant role in conducting preventive training. In general, carrying out a list of all the cases helps the business owners to understand the magnitude of the problem and areas that need more focus.

Assessing and Understanding the Impact of Sexual Harassment and Discrimination

The impacts of discriminative and sexual harassment on employees can have adverse outcomes on the employee wellbeing as well as the productivity of the employees. This makes offering preventive training annually or quarterly in a year, mainly by educating the new employees can reduce the overall impact of their occurrence on a business.

Locating the Most Suitable Preventive Training Approach

Various training approaches can be used to deliver a sexual harassment and discrimination education to employees. The choice of the training approach should consider the cost, effectivity, and organizational nature. Preventive training can be conducted within the organization operating environment, can target specific departments, employee levels, and newly hired employees.

Creating Reporting Channels for Sexual Harassment and Discrimination

Reporting channels are necessary to discourage and also to ensure that the organization addresses all the discrimination and types of sexual harassment that could be detrimental to employee's engagement in organizational goals.

Hiring Organization Counselors to Handle Such Cases

I am hiring counselors and trainers who are more qualified to offer training and educate employees on how to overcome intentional and unintentional discriminations.

Creating an Anti-Discrimination and Sexual Harassment Policy

An organization policy stipulating the types of harassment, potential help to the victim and the measures taken against the perpetrator should be put in place to prevent any confusion and promote the overall preventive efforts within the organization.

Preventive Training Content and Methods

Diversity Sensitization

In any organization environment today multicultural workforce is the dominant feature due to globalization, which has increased the diversity of employees. Most discrimination activities and sexual harassments are due to gender, age, sexual orientation, race, and nationality personal attributes that make individual employees a target by the bullies (Hajian & Domingo-Ferrer, 2013). Diversity training within the organization can sensitize the employees on the existence of different racial groups, people with different sexual orientation and age, which improve diversity tolerance amongst the employees (Sharma, 2016). Diversity training has become a primary necessity in overcoming and managing discrimination and sexual harassment within the workplace. Teams and organizations, in general, present a significant diversity challenge that can be overcome by initiating diversity sensitization which increases the ability of employees to work together in harmony (Trenerry, Franklin, & Paradies, 2012). Diversity sensitization increases cross-cultural competency and the ability to work together. Diversity awareness based training is more effective in cases of reducing discrimination and sexual harassment. This is effective in helping employees to identify prejudices and cultural assumptions against other people from other cultures that are unnecessarily true which is crucial in preventing potential flare-ups within the organization and teams (Sharma, 2016). Diversity training has been known to increase the overall employee attitude towards other culture and promote cross-cultural acceptance, which improves the overall team cohesiveness within an organization.

Professionalism and Ethics Training

Professionalism in the workplace is another significant and essential training approach that can significantly help an organization to overcome discrimination and sexual harassment misconducts. Educating employees on the accepted professional conduct within the working environment, which will prevent episodes of sexual harassment and discrimination based on the employee personal characteristics which us unprofessional (Johnson, 2004). Professionalism involves creating accepted conduct and channels of addressing problems between the employees, which can help to protect vulnerable employees from potential discrimination. On the other hand, ethics training involves creating awareness of the different workplace ethics that are supposed to be observed by the employees. Discrimination and sexual harassment are both unprofessional and unethical, and ethics training should involve how to regulate employee behavior towards each other, their superiors and those of different gender, sexual orientation and even race within the workplace (Trenerry, Franklin, & Paradies, 2012). Professional principles in the workplace require employees to respect diversity and to observe labor and anti-discriminatory laws that are put in place to prevent discrimination and sexual harassment.

Benefits of Preventive Training

Harassment preventing training is significant to the organization and the employees and managers. The training offers information which is very crucial in perusing harassment charges. Harassment preventive training is an essential tool used by the managers to create awareness to the employees in the organization about any activities which are unprofessional and unacceptable. In many instances, employees may engage themselves in unprofessional activities while on the job. For example, using improper business communications, privacy, violations, or even gossiping. When employees report in the organization, many of them may not be aware of what is acceptable or what is not acceptable in the workplace, therefore, training them is very crucial in helping them prevent harassment. Additionally, failure to take action in harassment and lack of proactive approach in providing preventive training on harassment may result in lawsuits which are costly in case some harassment that attracts legal process occurs. Creation of policies that address harassment, provision, and documentation of harassment training to the employees leads to reduced litigation. In the case of any legal process, the courts can prove that employees were aware of the company's position on the issue of harassment.

Barriers to Preventive Training

According to McDonald et al. (2015), workplace harassment exists, but it is very dynamic. It takes a new form with changes in time, therefore, makes it challenging to prevent workplace harassment by preventive training only. Training has al...