Everyone deserves to be treated with respect at work and should be allowed equal opportunity to progress up the career ladder and participate in other development schemes your employer has in place. Discrimination would never be an issue in an ideal world, but unfortunately, this does occur even though it shouldn’t. Suppose you feel like you’re being discriminated against at work due to your race, religion, social background, sexual orientation, gender, disability, or mental health. In that case, this can be an incredibly distressing experience that can knock your confidence and leave you feeling frustrated and traumatized. You should never have to put up with this, and although it might feel intimidating to speak up, you should do so to put an end to the bullying and to make sure you’re getting fair treatment. If you feel like this is happening to you at work, you should do a few things.
Refer to Your Employer’s Discrimination Policies
A good place to start if you believe you’re being discriminated against at work is looking at your employer’s discrimination policies. When you began working for them, they should have provided you with an employee handbook that contained information on these policies, including what protocols you need to follow if you wanted to report any issues. If you don’t have an employee handbook, you might be able to find these policies on the company website or request a copy from HR.
Gather Evidence
You should also be gathering any evidence you can that you believe proves that you’re being discriminated against, whether that’s by your manager or other colleagues. This can include emails, instances where you have been excluded from meetings that you should have been present for if you think you have been stopped from applying for a promotion or denied training that is important for your role. Again, you should print these emails or direct messages if you use these communication tools with the conversations you believe highlight discriminatory behavior and/or harassment, as well as anything else you think, can be used to prove your claim.
Legal Advice and Action
If you have tried to resolve the problem yourself with HR, you might need to take more drastic action to no avail. First, seek legal advice from attorneys who have experience working on workplace discrimination cases, like this one that is the best law firm in Chicago for this type of claim. Take your evidence with you and explain to them what has been happening to you at work. They will be able to give you further advice and help to represent you in a lawsuit against your employer to make sure that you get compensation for the distress and lost opportunities you have suffered as a result of discrimination against you at work.
Report It
Once you have your evidence ready, you should report your concerns to either your manager or go directly to HR if you feel like your manager is part of the problem. They will be able to talk to the other parties involved and take disciplinary action, and conduct meetings with you to discuss the process and support you during this time as well. Hopefully, this will resolve your problems, but you might need to move on to the next step if they persist.
No one should ever feel as though they aren’t being treated fairly at work, and if you feel like you’re being discriminated against, you should take action against this injustice.
