Case Study On Discrimination In The Workplace

Workplace Diagnosis

In the workplace there can be many issues that employees face. In the case of one of my friends, these issues seem to pile up higher than Mount Everest, and yet she is inclined to stay despite advice from everyone around her. She has worked part time as a server at a small restaurant in downtown Akron for the past two years or so, and throughout that period has complained to me multiple times about her unfair workload and the owner’s unfair treatment of other employees. There are too many issues to possibly discuss all at once, so I will be focusing on the unfair treatment and overworking of employees- sometimes in areas beyond the realm of their position. When she first started her job as a server, she was given the …show more content…
The restaurant has had a high turnover rate due to firing and quitting of employees who have felt mistreated by the owner. In many cases the amount of work they put in does not seem to match up with what they get out of the work, especially when family members of the owner are given special treatment despite ability, and this leads to a perception of unfairness and some hostility among workers. In the case of my friend, she seems to be highly unsatisfied in the work for several reasons but she still continues to work there, which illustrates the complex factors and reasoning that go into the decision to remain. Although she is often overworked, unfairly compensated, and has a strained relationship with the owner and some coworkers, she still chooses to continue working there. One of her reasons for staying is that she is graduating this semester and preparing for grad school, so she needs all the money she can get. Although money is not always a huge driving force in work related decisions, in her case it is a means to achieve other life goals. Her personality also influences her decision to remain at this workplace. She has always been a people pleaser and sometimes too nice to others for her own good and hates to tell people no, so she is often burdened with other people’s work. She also has an extremely strong work ethic and is probably bordering on being a workaholic as she …show more content…
As for the owner, there are several possible paths she could take in order to improve fairness in her workplace and reduce the turnover of current and future employees. The first step I would recommend is doing some sort of job analysis in order to properly outline what she expects from the job positions and employees. Since there were some issues with disparate treatment of applicants she would need to reform the methods she uses for personnel decisions and put aside her own prejudices in order to acquire and retain qualified workers. As for the issue of assigning employees tasks that do not relate to their job position, there are two possible paths she could take. The first would be to simply stop requiring employees to do tasks that are outside of the responsibilities that come with their position. An alternative would be to create a new position that does include those tasks, make sure they are all outlined formally, and properly compensate the new position for the effort skills responsibilities and conditions that that job entails. This could be something such as an assistant manager or even a personal assistant, as the tasks seem to fall more in line with positions such as those. In order to effectively solve some of the problems in the