EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

HRM ASSIGNMENT 3
44109_Agnip Dasgupta
44237_Moksha Choudhary
44280_Rohan Banerjee

ADDRESSING WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION

RAM Ltd. is a 25-year-old IT solutions provider. They provide a host of IT services, with
expertise in architecture modernization solutions and descriptive and predictive data
analysis. They currently have offices in Bangalore, Gurgaon and Hyderabad with a large
client base from different sectors. The broad segregation of departments within the
organization is as follows: Admin, IT, Accounts, Human Resources and the Solutions
department that finally delivers the solutions to the clients. Client projects are mapped
to employees based on past experience and domain expertise. In cases of team
vacancies across locations, Managers-in-charge open applications for internal hiring
within the organisation.

Bharat, a software engineer, was working in the IT department at Gurgaon since the
past 3 years. Three months ago, he was offered a position in the Bangalore IT team
based on his application for a new cloud migration project for a pharmaceutical
company. Owing to his certifications and past experience with multiple clients in
healthcare sector, Bharat was a great candidate for this project. He was assigned to an
eight-member team, all of whom, including their team manager, Krishna, were native to
Bangalore. Being new to both the city and the team, Bharat often felt like he was being
alienated by his co-workers. He experienced discomfort at the insensitive jokes by
Krishna that had racial overtones to them. Often, he felt as though he was not being
given an opportunity to contribute as much as others in the daily team meetings. They
also excluded Bharat from their informal gatherings, aggravating the situation. Bharat
decided to raise this issue with the Human Resources department.

RAM Ltd has a strict “No tolerance” policy against any sort of discrimination on the
grounds of race, gender, age, religion, or sexual orientation, as well as other categories.
As the HR Manager, you have to decide what actions must be taken to address this
issue. As per the policy, cases of discrimination can also lead to job suspension or
termination. Krishna, the team manager, has been working at RAM Ltd for over 10
years. He has an excellent track record and has converted about 6 large-scale clients in
the last couple of years. He is a valuable asset to the company; hence, it is also
important to keep the company’s interest in mind.

As the HR Manager, there are two major possible courses of action that can be taken to
address the matter at hand. Krishna could be required to undergo a week-long training
of workplace discrimination followed by a detailed evaluation of the learnings, or as per
the policy, Krishna should be given a suspension of pre-decided period as a repercussion
of his actions.

You start by conducting interviews with all the people involved in the case, starting with
Bharat.

Here are the salient points from Bharat’s perspective:

“Krishna forwards multiple jokes on the intellectual capacity of North Indians in the
informal WhatsApp group that we have. Even in formal meetings, he pulls my leg by
making subtle inappropriate comments about my background. He often converses with
the team in Kannada, which I am not yet very fluent in. I end up missing on key points.
I am not given the opportunity of taking any leadership roles in the team despite having
equal if not more experience in cloud migration as the others. I am being considered for
the position of Deputy Manager this year. I am worried that my chances of promotion
may get hampered due to this. In fact, even when it comes to informal gatherings, the
same thing is happening. They forgot to invite me for Arjun’s birthday celebration they
had in the canteen. It has now been 3 months since I joined the team and they still treat
me like an outsider in both formal and informal meetings.”

You then interview the other team members individually, but since confidentiality of the
matter must be maintained, you pose them with questions around the team dynamics,
comfort of the new member in the team and comfort of the team with him while
understanding Krishna’s way of dealing with him.

The important takeaways from these interviews are as follows:

“Krishna jokes around a lot. Sometimes, I think he goes overboard with them, but he
means well. He is playful with all of us, but at times, his jokes may cross a line. Also, I
think he does not include Bharat in decision-making on purpose but I don’t quite
understand why.”

“The team dynamics are great, but Bharat has not completely gelled in yet. The rest of
us are just more comfortable with each other so we hang-out more. He anyway seems to
enjoy sitting by himself.”

“Krishna is a very jolly person, he has been welcoming to Bharat by talking to him like a
friend and teasing him like he does with the rest of the team. But I think since he is new
to the team, he is not completely involved in decision-making.”

The interview with Krishna goes as follows:

“Bharat is a great value addition to the team and performs his tasks well. Yeah,
sometimes I use Kannada, but that’s more force of habit. Come on! Us South Indians are
known to be intellectually smarter, I just crack a few jokes, I’m sure Bharat wouldn’t feel
bad. In fact, he is one of the rare smart ones! I’m sure he gets it. Also, I cannot already
give him leadership responsibilities, even though he has the relevant experience and
knowledge, he has not worked with this client before.”

As per the interviews, it is clear that Krishna has been quite insensitive and is
purposefully not giving Bharat managerial responsibilities. There is a week-long series of
anti-discriminatory trainings that Krishna can be asked to undergo alongside a leadership
training highlighting the qualities of inclusivity and giving employees the appropriate and
unbiased roles based on their expertise. However, according to the “No tolerance” policy,
Krishna should be suspended for a week. But, Krishna will not take this well. That would
cause him to get infuriated and affect his work ethic or even his tenure at the firm. As
the HR Manager, you must now make an informed decision of which course of action to
move forward with.

Questions:
1. Based on the inputs from all members of the team and while keeping the
company’s interest in mind as well, which is the appropriate procedure to follow
to address the current situation?
2. Is the company’s current culture diverse and inclusive enough to prevent such
incidents from happening again in the future? Are the diversity trainings that
make part of the onboarding process effective in communicating their learnings to
the employees?