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Workplace Discrimination & Harassment

As an employee of a company, what can you do to personally to minimize discrimination and harassment?

There are several things that can be done by an individual if an employee is witnessing discrimination, whether it be because of religion, race, national origin, gender, gender identity, or because of the age of a worker.

If the discrimination is being conducted by another worker, clearly this should be reported to management. It would not be my place to go to the perpetrator and try to stop him. Hence, I should inform the union representative, or the appropriate manager at work.

Of course there is the risk that if I report that rude person for bullying another worker, or for making detrimental comments to that person, when the perpetrator finds out it was me I would be taking the risk of retaliation from that person. Still, it is important to take a stand and put a stop to an employee harassing another employee.

Now if a manager is being discriminatory against an employee, and I'm aware of it, there are a couple things that I can do. I can pull the person being harassed aside (in a discrete place and time) and offer suggestions on how to get the manager to stop what he is doing. In this case I would show the person being discriminated against the workplace laws (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and other pertinent federal laws against workplace discrimination) and discuss how to follow through. I could even help the person fill out the forms and make sure the correctly completed complaint gets to the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity office (Gates, 2013, p. 28).