Unlawful Discrimination In The Workplace

As communication and teamwork are large aspects of work, acts of violence and harassment can be expected to affect workplaces no matter how well structured a business is. Acts of violence and harassment in the workplace are at times inevitable because communication and the social interactions between work colleagues play a big role in a functioning workplace. Harassment can take different forms such as physical, verbal or with technology (cyber bullying). The nature of harassment and discrimination is not beneficial for any worker as it creates an antagonistic working environment. Sexual harassment involves unwanted sexual advances or vulgar remarks made from one to another. As casual employment is increasing the participation of adolescent/teenagers …show more content…
Harassment in the workplace overtime can develop into unlawful discrimination. Unlawful discrimination is often seen as employers not accepting people into their workplace due to race, gender or sex. Unlawful discrimination can also be seen as firing someone due to any of these reasons. This can reflect badly on a workplace as people see it as a racist/sexist act resulting in customers not using their services or buying a business’s goods. Unlawful discrimination sometimes goes unheard of as people are often too embarrassed or intimated to speak up and make a complaint. Workplace violence includes physical attacks or even written threats. A workplace usually has a large variance of people with different personalities and attributes. If a worker is stressed and takes their anger out on a person, everyone would react differently due to human nature of retaliation. Employees who are bullied often take time off work as they are traumatised or simply not comfortable returning to the workplace. Violence in the workplace portrays to customers an unhealthy workplace and environment. It can also be the case that employees are being harassed by customers for whatever reason. Customers often become agitated in the workplace depending on their maturity or patience. Although employees work to serve customers, it is not always the case that the customer is right. A customer may become impatient when waiting to be served, or upset when a task was not taken out correctly. If this results in customers making derogatory comments towards employees this is a form of harassment which must be bought to the management official’s attention. The customer will be dealt with as the safety and wellbeing of employees is the manager’s responsibility. Overall harassment and in a workplace can result in low staff