Category: Diversity & Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) is an important and ongoing strategy of any HR plan. Ensuring that your company supports hiring, engaging, and retaining diverse workers with varied backgrounds will set your company up for long-term success and an increased bottom line. This topic offers the latest strategies for talent management, key insights from diversity leaders, case studies on D&I in the workplace, and more.

Rude isn’t racist: Supervisor’s alleged poor treatment doesn’t amount to discrimination

by Carrie Pond A Kentucky federal court recently dismissed a claim of hostile work environment racial harassment because the employee failed to show the harassment was race-based. Despite allegations that, if believed, demonstrated the employee’s supervisor “treated [her] very badly,” she failed to establish that the treatment was racially motivated.   Facts Marilyn Harris, who is […]

Are microaggressions a new legal threat in the workplace?

by Tammy Binford An April gathering that brought together President Barack Obama, three former presidents, and civil rights leaders marked the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a game-changing law that still guards against discrimination in the workplace and other aspects of life. The impetus for the Act was the kind of […]

Training employees to eliminate unconscious bias

by Matthew A. Lafferman Everyone has unconscious or subconscious preferences. Generally, we all prefer to associate or socialize with people who share our background and interests. As a consequence, we often aren’t aware of our preferences, identifying our behavior only when it’s pointed out by someone else. Unfortunately, we carry our hidden biases into the […]

Bullying in the workplace

by Amy S. Ybarra Bullying. We’ve all read the headlines. A child shoots another child who bullied him. A child takes her own life because she was bullied. As a result, schools are teaching kids and parents about recognizing the signs of bullying, reporting troubling behavior, and stopping it before it escalates. But bullying is […]

Trends in religious discrimination and accommodation

by Alka Ramchandani The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has been coming down hard on organizations that are failing to accommodate employees for their religious beliefs. What follows are a few tools and concepts you may use to eliminate the potential of being a target for a lawsuit based on religious discrimination or failure to […]

Are we evolving on sexual orientation/gender identity issues?

Many states have statutes prohibiting discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Not all states have such prohibition, and since there is no broad federal prohibition on discrimination by private employers based on either category, that leaves local ordinances to address the issue. A look at what is happening in […]

Steps to take toward gender equality

by Dinita James In the mid-1970s, I wore an ERA bracelet in support of ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). I also had a button that displayed only two numbers and a symbol ― 62 ¢. The 62 cents signified the then-current national average of women’s earnings for every dollar earned by men. Some […]

Rise in religious bias claims forces analysis of a multitude of sins

by Rodney L. Bean Claims of religious discrimination are on the upswing, leaving many employers scrambling to avoid liability for failing to properly manage the complicated interplay between faith and work. Of all the classifications protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, religion perhaps presents the most diverse range of issues […]

Untouchable? Disciplining employees for disability-caused misconduct

by Nikki Hall and Eugene Park HR professionals regularly implement employee discipline and are adept at navigating the waters of reasonable accommodations for disabled employees. Mingling those two issues, however, can sometimes pull an employer in opposite directions when it’s responding to, for example, a chronically tardy employee suffering debilitating side effects from medication or […]