Discrimination: forms, impacts, and societal implications

Discrimination

Today, discrimination within the work place takes place in different forms. One example of discrimination that I have witnessed within the place of work is age discrimination. Age discrimination has a detrimental effect on the businesses within the working environment. Not only can it damage the working relationship but it also causes the business to incur legal liability. Age discrimination can be as a result of Companies refusing to hire older employee, or when the older employees are treated differently than the younger employees. According to Esposito 2011, age discrimination within the workplace is very wrong and the Congress has enacted the age discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) which was recently amended in 1991. The law was to protect other employees from other various forms of discrimination which include sex, race and religion discrimination. Many states have also enacted other laws which prohibit this form of discrimination; as a result, the employees today have the right to sue any company that illegally discriminates them and so result in large monetary judgments against the company. The law suits create a negative public image of the company as well as exposing the company to a financial peril.

Age discrimination creates an intimidated environment; it interferes with the work performance, the morale and the employment for workers who are older in the organization. Because of this, the managers have started to take measures of avoiding or eliminating age discrimination by understanding and identifying the potential problems within the organization for the success. Effective strategies that involve training, appraisal of each organization's culture and retirement policies are renewed to provide a supportive work environment for the adult employees. Effective training of employees within an organization can help in raising the employee awareness of their discriminatory practices, managers should therefore make sure that, all employees participate in effective training in every organizations (Mayfair & Media, 2012).Conversely; the focus of training to those employees should go beyond the mere information so as to embrace the real changes on each individuals' behavior.

An organization that practice peer reinforcement tends to be successful since this helps in encouraging the employees in speaking up their minds whenever they witness any kind of harassment within the organization. Most Organizations have lost their works because of age discrimination among the workers in the working place, however, other employees tend not to be the target of the discrimination, but they might be the next targeted group who do not want to work for a discriminatory organization. When employees leave the company for another company, it is evidently true that the productivity level will go down therefore making the company to lose the potentials of the employees against competitors.