Racial discrimination and oppression occur everywhere in the world. There is no excuse for it happening in the workplace. Federal and State labor laws are in place to ensure that it does not occur. Yet, it still does.
If you are managing a team or department, hearing about racial discrimination in your team could be a colossal disaster. You may have even seen signs of racial discrimination in your workplace or are worried that it could happen to you. Stop it before it starts.
Here are ways to manage this problem at work, with the objective that you can prevent racial discrimination and oppression at work.
Promote Values of Equality
When you are concerned about racial oppression and discrimination at work, get ahead of the game by promoting the values before hiring anybody. Then, you can accomplish the same goal as an employee. Promote the values and keep the conversations going.
When you see any whiff of racial discrimination in any environment, promote the message of equality. Put the message on your websites, social media, and in all employee communication. Acknowledge that this is a global injustice that will not be tolerated, and reward any member who promotes this value.
Report Any Incident of Racial Discrimination
Unfortunately, when this happens in the workplace or elsewhere, people do so because they think they can get away with it. They don’t do it because they believe they are in the right. So, when discrimination happens, it has to be acknowledged for what it is.
When an incident is reported, see that it gets tended to and dealt with immediately. Make sure that all team members are aware that this is wrong. The consequence may be nothing more than a conversation with the person responsible. Still, that individual needs to know there is a zero-tolerance value in place on any form of racial discrimination.
Inform on Awareness
Awareness is not about just knowing that racial discrimination exists. It is about ensuring that the entire team fosters an atmosphere that acknowledges this problem exists and is a problem. A key reason this problem exists in any work environment is that people get away with it. That shouldn’t be the case.
Informing all team members that this is not okay is a form of awareness. Not only do all team members need to be aware that this is not okay, but they also need to be completely aware of the consequences of racial discrimination or discrimination of any kind.
Racial discrimination can open the gateway for other kinds of discrimination, and nipping one problem in the bud can help you eliminate them all, at least in the work sector.
Report All Forms of Oppression
One of the key reasons that society is so divisive today is because we as a society enable it by not having the courage to say something about it when something wrong happens. Racial discrimination is unjust. You can be the voice in your organization by reporting racial discrimination through any of these methods.
Reporting it will be a consequence in itself that nobody guilty of this wants to deal with. Oppression is terrible for the employee, which is awful for the overall success of the company. Be a leader and affect the change you want your organization to embody.
