common types of harassments that most employees experience
Harassment is unwanted conduct which you find offensive or which makes you feel threatened or embarrassed. Harassment is unlawful discrimination. Harassment at work is the demeaning or offensive conduct directed at an individual worker or group of employees. Workplace abuse has recently gained attention among practitioners and researchers as it becomes one of the most sensitive fields for successful management of the workplace. This paper addresses common types of harassments that most employees experience, the impacts on both the targeted individual and the whole workplace environment and finally, different ways of curbing these vices at the workplace.
Some of the familiar and recognizable forms of discriminatory harassment experienced at the workplace include; Racial harassments. An employee may experience racial discrimination due to his or her ethnicity, skin colour, heritage, country of origin or citizenship. The cause may also be, a perceived feature of a certain race such as curly hair, accents, customs, beliefs or clothes. Harassment may include racial stereotypes, insulting or derogative comments about the race or colour of an individual or the display of racially insensitive symbols (Rezvan, Shekarpour, Alshargi, Thirunarayan, Shalin & Sheth,2018). Racial harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision
Gender harassment. This kind of discrimination occurs when an employee or job applicant is treated differently or less favourably because of their sex or gender. This could also be because the individual is associated with sex or gender-related organization or community (SteelFisher, Findling, Bleich, Casey, Blendon, Benson & Miller,2019).
Religious harassments Involve treatment of an employee or job applicant based on their religious belief. Religious discrimination may also entail treating someone differently because he is married or affiliated with an individual of a particular religion.
Disability-Based harassment. This is a type of workplace harassments towards those individuals who either suffer from a particular disability condition, are associated with a disabled person or individual. An individual with a disability may encounter harassment in the form of negative bullying, commentary patronizing, failure to accommodate appropriately or isolation.
Sexual Orientation-Based Harassment. Harassment based on sexual identity is starting to gain momentum and awareness as a valid form of harassment in the workplace. Victims face abuse if they have a different sexual identity than those around them.
The effect and effects of harassment can vary from person to person and will be affected by the length and intensity of the offensive behaviour, but people will usually respond to harassment by displaying signs of the distress. According to Basile, D’Inverno & Wang (2020), being a victim of bullying can cause problems with physical and psychological health including; high blood pressure, panic attacks, trouble sleeping, ulcers and stress. Bullied employees are not able to do their jobs at their best. This is because they experience very low self-esteem, trouble in making decisions, lack of proper concentration. These will eventually lower the productivity of the affected employees.
To reduce cases of harassments a workplace, organizations should come up with a clear anti-harassment policy. This is critical as it helps head off troubles. The policy would then explain how workers would report harassment, to whom they should report it, and the implications of harassment. The policy needs to be well communicated to every employee. Most importantly, an organization should educate their workers through regular training so that each one knows how to identify, report and respond to such instances of harassments.
Harassment in the workplace is a widespread problem, although workers do not readily articulate it with fear of consequences given existing issues. It is, therefore, necessary to raise awareness of the healthy culture of the workplace and to raise awareness of the institution’s steps to avoid harassment in the workplace. This would prevent those experiencing harassment from getting a traumatic experience. Good workplace environment would also facilitate optimum job efficiency.