Globalization and Equality

As globalization made businesses prosper through times, social inequality is still prominent in various patterns, three of which I am going to discuss in this essay that relate to mental health, gender inequality, and unfair pay. Human resource practitioners are capable to help governments, employers and employees adopt and sustain a framework of equitable corporate governance and reporting structure that will sustain a productive workforce aligned with a competitive business model in the long run.

People suffering from mental health problems are treated unfairly due to their mental health conditions. This leads to discrimination and, relevant people have a legal right to challenge it. It is an evidence-led theory that the combination of employee’s engagement together with health and well-being that enables long term sustainable performance levels in any organization. Stress and mental health issues can lead to unfavourable and costly conflict at work: Evidence-based research in the UK conducted on a sample of 2,211 adults revealed that less than half of employees (44%) had a serious conflict during the year and who say that the conflict or difficult relationship has so far been fully or largely resolved, with over a third (36%) reporting it has not been resolved. The most common cause of conflict at work was lack of respect, reported by two-thirds (66%) of employees experiencing their most serious conflict. People professionals can help raise awareness of mental health issues and foster an open culture of communication where employees are more willing to share their mental frustrations at work. Completion of stress risk assessment templates will help top management understand root causes and refer relevant employees to proper behavioural therapy centres. Training of line managers in supporting people with mental ill health can help spotting early signs of distress and initiating early intervention. Training of line managers in handling people management practices such as communication, coaching, performance and attendance, workload pressure, will help line managers have a clear understanding of the link between the corporate objectives and workplace related stress or conflict. This requires a set of clearly communicated HR policies across the organization supporting a positive people approach and open workplace culture with a zero-tolerance approach to harassment or bullying. Workplace adjustments such as flexible working hours, working from home at certain time, changes to break times, time off for appointments related to therapy and counselling, debriefing sessions after difficult calls, customers or tasks, provision of information to promote self-care, and much more similar initiatives by people professionals can help sustain a healthier stress free work culture (CIPD,2018).

Further to mental health causes, gender inequality represented in people experiencing bullying or harassment at workplace are more likely to spread frustration, demotivation, depression, and anxiety. People facing gender inequality have a low opinion of their top management and want to leave their organisation upon the very best new work opportunity to come. As people professionals we strongly believe and act that everyone should feel safe at work, and confident that their organisation will act on a zero-tolerance policy towards harassment of any form. In 2019, women only held 28 percent of managerial positions worldwide, thereby missing full gender equality (UN, 2019), and as people professionals, we are here to promote equal opportunity employment and development of manpower, the asset with the highest value in any organization. For example, we can introduce a competency-based framework recruitment in the form of blind auditions, thus helping employers recruit and select based on technical assessment outcomes instead of having personal specifications as the foundation of selecting their competent employees. The CV and the application form could be entirely removed and replaced with technical assessments or work sample tests. In the UK this approach is proven to increase the success rate for women shortlisting climbs up from 17% to 47% proving that CVs and application as a first stage screening process is not a robust methodology in handling social inequality (CIPD,2019).

Unfair pay is another form of social inequality leading to mental illness if each employee has felt unfairly compensated for the job assigned to. Unjust distribution of rewards and remunerations to employees of equal work value by employers based on disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, or age has led to the birth of “The Equality Act 2010 “in the UK which gave employees the right to make a claim under equal pay, but some employers are still not acting responsibly for a real change ; most are still using contractual terms binding their employees not to disclose their pay details within or outside their organizations (CIPD, 2021).

People management professionals can only combat such risks by designing a holistic approach of the workforce value creation that sustains a competitive business model for organizations to survive (CIPD, 2022). We can define, through people’s surveys, the risks related to unfair pay practices resulting in employees’ high turn overs, declining work productivity, and disengagement. A compensation audit is necessary to follow, helping people professionals, understand the pay gaps starting from the hiring process, all the way through the entire employment tenure. Pay discrepancies will be corrected by giving pay raises to close the gaps between similar roles, easily said than done, pay raises should also come with a promotion to reflect the level of work that the individual has already been doing without being recognized earlier. Once pay inequities are resolved, we must ensure this pay unfairness does not repeat itself, hence, offering better training for hiring teams to eliminate ways that allow pay discrimination get into the hiring process, put policies in place as needed. It is essential to create transparent and fair pay scales and pay grades for each role, based on position, responsibility level, and experience; this will help everyone involved in pay decisions to be more careful while ensuring those decisions are fair. We are obliged to consistently conduct compensation assessments to find risk and fix them before turning into a disaster, explain in policy and practice the clarity of requirements for getting a raise and/or a promotion while consistently following the established guidelines.

Social inequality will remain an uphill battle; even though it comes in different forms driven by different factors, it is still a country-specific challenge depending on cultural values and economic status. HR professionals will always be available to support policy makers by analysing the evidence-led causes leading to worsened social outcomes and start investing in learning and development, leadership, and fair workplace policies that significantly improve people’s productivity.

References

CIPD (2020), Managing conflict in the modern workplace, available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/disputes/managing-workplace-conflict-report (Accessed: 27 May 2022).

CIPD (2018), PEOPLE MANAGERS’ GUIDE TO MENTAL HEALTH, available at:https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/mental-health-at-work-1_tcm18-10567.pdf (Accessed 12 July 2022).

UN (2019), Gender Equality: Why it matters, available at: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/5_Why-It-Matters-2020.pdfv (Accessed: 27 May 2022)

CIPD (2019), The People Profession: The time has come to be serious about diversity, available at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjS_TqPvjfo (Accessed: 27 May 2022)

CIPD (2021), Pay fairness and pay reporting, available at :https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/strategy/reward/pay-fairness-reporting-factsheet (Accessed: 27 May 2022)

CIPD (2022), Corporate governance and transparent reporting, available at :https://www.cipd.co.uk/news-views/viewpoint/corporate-governance-reporting (Accessed 18 June 2022)