Question
How do stereotypes and prejudices impact the workplace?
Answer
Do you think that stereotypes and prejudices impact the workplace? How, or why not? Let's look at an example of this. A young executive assistant who dresses in short skirts might get compliments and she may even get hit on at the office. People may assume that because she has a bubbly personality that she isn't very smart. Is this an example of stereotyping and prejudice? The answer to that is yes.
Stereotypes and prejudices are frequently based on past experiences and backgrounds:
- Family’s beliefs
- Environment growing up
- Diversity in the neighborhood
- School
- Relationships
- What else?
How do stereotypes and prejudices impact the workplace? They are frequently based on past experiences and backgrounds. That could come from family beliefs, the environment you grew up in, the diversity of the neighborhood you grew up in, school relationships, and maybe there are some other things you can think of. For example, I grew up in a very small town in the country. My neighbors were not immediately accessible. The interaction that I had was often at school. During my elementary school years, the diversity makeup of the students was not very diverse at all. But then when I went to high school, I went to a school that was 98% African American and 2% other, so maybe 1% White and 1% of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. That really shaped and opened me up to a new world that I didn't know before and shaped and turned the way I looked at the world. I took some of those early experiences and it helped me see things differently.
Prejudices are negative beliefs about others that we have learned. The definition of prejudice is an unfavorable opinion or feeling without knowledge, thought, or reason. It could be any preconceived opinion or feeling either favorable or unfavorable, unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, especially of a hostile nature regarding an ethnic, racial, social, or religious group. Prejudices are negative beliefs about others that we have learned. When we let our prejudices control us, we do great injustice to ourselves and others. Today we're talking about getting past those prejudices or negative beliefs so that we can have a diverse understanding of one another. There could be behavior that stems from the prejudice that does a lot of harm to the places we work, to others, to ourselves. You may not realize this, but we can be held personably liable for our actions that stem from prejudice, so we have to make sure that our actions do not harass, or demean others. We can mitigate diversity issues with effective communication by listening, clarifying, and taking the time to think before speaking.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Fundamentals of Human Resources: Non-Managerial Early Childhood Staff, by Katie Ryan Fotiadis, MS.
