Addressing Inequality and Discrimination in the Workplace: A Case Study of Travis Perkins

Introduction

Business environmental analysis including environmental studies dissertation help, is effective for the multinational corporate brands to analyse the market to operate and ensure future suitable growth of the organisations (Yatsenko and Dmytriyeva, 2018). The aim of the study is to conduct PESTLE analysis for the organisation Sainsbury’s which is operating in the UK retail industry. The PESTLE analysis is useful to understand the political circumstances, economic growth and social development, legal compliance, technological and environmental circumstances in the UK retail market which have crucial impacts on the operations of Sainsbury’s.

PESTLE analysis of UK retail industry

Political:

In this report different inequality practices with the examples and suggested solutions has been discussed using key evaluation. The main targeted organization, whose inequality issues were discussed briefly, is Travis Perkins. The discrimination between employees and the issues they are facing in the workplace has been thrown down with deeper level of analysis focusing on its major concerns of ethics.

Company Background

Travis Perkins is a renowned company for delivering building equipments and products throughout the UK. The organization is ruling over the market from 2 centuries. They have their headquarters in both UK and Northampton (travisperkinsplc.co.uk, 2020). The brand used to sell quality materials for building homes and decorating the interior. They have collaborated with more than 645 brands for arranging a large range of variety tools and building materials like, timber, tiles and other designing materials. They have yearly revenue of nearly £7,000 million pounds. The company deals with both small and large scale builders along with the normal people. With more than 3000 employees, the company is one of the largest builders’ merchant in UK.

Identification and discussion of inequality practices at the workplace environment in respect of the organization

Gender inequality:

Gender discrimination has played a significant level of respect towards workplace environment. It can be also seen that people show pity for them and underestimate their skills. More over as the leaders of the company are generally men, women does not get chance to get promoted with their abilities. In Travis Perkins a difference payment and salaries is clearly visible between two genders (Travisperkinsplc.co.uk. 2020). From labours to high standard employees, women are paid less the men for the same job. In this company the payment gap has reached a difference of 6.2%. The hourly gapping is minimum 0.4% less for women. In this construction sector women have always been neglected and determined as inefficient for laborious and field jobs.

It can be seen in studies that the women in the company holds only 24% of its majority. Thus it is clear that the number of women is too low against the men employees. In the year, 2017, the leaders’ position of the company had only 19% women in their group (Travisperkinsplc.co.uk. 2020). Though they take several initiatives for recruiting more eligible women employees, the main hurdle is, not much woman are available in the market for these kind of jobs.

Racial inequality:

Discriminating people with their racial identity or skin colour, is a common matter in UK. The people with darker shades have been dominated by the white skins since several centuries. The back men from Africa and Asia are paid less than the white ones. Moreover, their physical strength and lower educational qualification lead them towards laborious jobs. They are mainly hired in those sectors where physical strength is more necessary. Thus they are managed by the white people and their payment is determined by them (Mongkolhutthi, 2019). The racial issues are very common in this company also. There are several cases where the employees from different racial background filed court cases against the company for discriminating behaviour. Though the case was solved under employer act and no racial issue could be proved by the victim, still the behavioural differences can be easily understood by the dominated ones.

From another case study, a claim of cracking racial jokes has been found against a manager. Though the person id punished, the issues are not totally gone (Pitt, 2020). The construction labours need to tolerate some racial or sexist languages again and again. These small things are never reached to the leaders of the organization and hardly reach any solutions. As per surveys, more than 50% – 70% workers hear about this languages in weakly and yearly basis. Though they have the lowest power, those poor people do not have the courage to speak against the company and losing their source of bread.

Social issues:

The employees in different positions own different class in the society, as per their earning. The leaders and managers usually paid a lot more than the physical workers. That is why the lower graded staffs are always dominated and sometimes insulted by the powerful employees (Wilmers, 2019). Due to their standard in the company the manager positioned individuals usually insults their under working employees for their work related issues, like, uncompleted goals, working procedure or product quality of their work. As Travis-Perkins has thousands of shops and warehouses, it is nearly impossible for the company leaders to micromanage each of the manager’s behaviour and working process with the employees (Nachmias et al, 2019). As the number of lower grade employees is always more than that of the directors of the company, it is normally hard for the leaders to manage things properly. But that does not mean that they need to demotivate the employees. These issues usually lead to labour movements and internal weaknesses inside the company as well as loosen the binding in the workforce.

Psychological discrimination:

People from different backgrounds and with distinguished skills, work in a company as a team. This is reflected through the micro-division in the communities with the likeminded nature. Further, people with different skill levels and discriminated potentials face issues when they have to collaborate with higher or lower skilled individuals with another level of thoughts. Hence this causes work related issues inside the company. Through the Brexit, Travis Perkins has lowered their business to continue their profit margins. This resulted in competition inside the company as hundreds of workers had been washed away from the company (Ruddick, 2020). On the other hand the aged employees are less aware about the new technologies that are affecting the job position with the improved digitalised systems. The managerial enforcing behaviour also depicts the inequality amongst the employees differentiated by their posts and power inside the company. The gender issues and language issues are also added in this matter. The LGBTQ community have to face lager issues than any other ones (Yavorsky, 2016). They become a fun fact to some people who cannot accept these kinds of people, hence they are psychologically tortured.

Critical Evaluation of potential ways of finding solutions in workplace inequalities

1. Gender Inequality:

Gender inequality is one of the most common problems everywhere. The women get fewer facilities than men in the workplace which is considered as offensive (Goldstein et al. 2018).

Gender payment gap:

Based on the research, it has been noticed that Travis Perkins has gone through some gender payment gap practices. In this case, the percentage of the amount the women get, is lower than the amount that the men get for the same responsibility. It affects the efficiency and the mental ability of the women. Some effective solutions have been discovered through which these issues can be overcome.

Potential Negotiation skills:

Most of the time, the women do not get the opportunity to ask for negotiation due to gender bias (Roberts, 2020).The women should also negotiate like the men do for raising their payment. The company must allow and encourage the women to clinch in terms of increasing their payment.

Execution of public involvement:

Some legitimated approaches can be implemented through educating all the people to stand against these practices. Everyone should raise their voice against it, instead of being silent. These ongoing activities must be terminated with valuing the women.

Active participation in social awareness:

Social awareness is one of the best ways to eliminate the inequality of payment that can be achieved through social media also. The voice should be raised to protest against this issue. The basic rights and equality should be claimed actively.

Transparency in salary:

The procedure of transparency must be followed by the company for every employee's compensations which has been done in most of the cases. It can help the women employees to raise their negotiation skills and ask for equal payment for equal work that can help to terminate the payment gap issues.

Re-evaluation of job specification for women:

Travis Perkins can hire women employees for the responsibilities of senior-level. The presence of women participants in the senior management team can help the company and its employees in eradicating their concept of gender-bias. The women with higher level designation can be helpful for the company to fight against gender inequality practices.

Termination of women harassment:

It has been a very common issue for most of the women to be harassed at workplaces that get ignored usually. However, the management should initiate to take strict action against these activities and the persons involved with these. Such activity of management can stop this harassment issue of gender inequality.

Prioritization of the balance of work/life:

The mothers with higher ambition of career should be allowed with the support of childcare. The force for concentrating only on work life must not be promoted. They must not be suffered with potential problems like penalty payment for taking leave in this case. Beside, the parental leave should be considered to be implemented for both fathers and mothers. In this regard, the mothers can focus on their career by contributing more time.

2. Racial Inequality:

Racial bias creates extreme offence in the workplace. It creates frustrating situations among the employees (World Economic Forum, 2020). The company should take some further actions to stop this practice.

Positive activity and attitude of employers:

The employers of the company must have an equal attitude towards all the employees to create a positive environment. They should recruit all the employees in all types of positions without following race culture. Moreover, they must provide equal facilities for everyone in terms of remuneration, promotion and so on without prioritizing racism.

Training:

The employees should be provided some training programs by the company to spread awareness against racial bias practice (Lowe, 2018). It should be designed with the factor of equal valuation of employees.

Diversity:

Travis Perkins should provide a diverse environment for the employee, so that they can work with different types of people from different places. It can create a friendly atmosphere in the workplace among every employee instead of practicing race culture. The employees should be grouped with different employees for team work.

3. Psychological Inequality:

Psychological inequality is somewhat interrelated with gender inequality that creates discrimination between men and women (Sampson et al. 2018). In this context, the women get discriminated against most of the time that makes them mentally weak.

In this regard, the company can facilitate the women with all the provisions that the men receive. The thoughts and ideas of the women also should be appreciated and evaluated. The suggestions of them must be supported and respected in any perspective (Collins, 2017). Sometimes, the employers or employees contempt and ignore the proposals that the women make which is totally unfair. Some of the people own a concept like the women are less efficient than the men. The further elimination of these erroneous concepts is extremely necessary. The employers of Travis Perkins should also train the employees to value the women in providing propositions. It is very much important to encourage them to work independently by appreciating their effort.

4. Social status and position inequality:

The employees of the company belong from different positions of the society. Sometimes, the people from lower status get harassed due to their social identity which is preferential (Sayin, 2019). Travis Perkins should take actions to abolish these social discriminatory activities in the workplace.

Social status cannot be the measurement of someone's efficiency. The company should respect all the employees with different status and positions. The employees should also maintain the norms created by the company to value everyone in an equal way. The employees can be assigned to a work environment for working together with different people. Moreover, any fault related to the promotion of discrimination must not be spared and must be taken further step against the action can stop these issues.

Conclusion and Recommendation:

In this research, it has been noticed that Travis Perkins has been going through some inequality practices, such as, bias, racial issues, psychological mismatch, social status and position. However, these lead the company to deal with critical issues which can lower their position or the rate of progression. In this context, the company has to create an equal environment in the workplace where all the employees can invest their effort without facing any discriminatory issue. In this regard, Travis Perkins can employ different strategies to terminate all the incidents related to inequity (Dhondt et al. 2018). The company must have a positive and equal attitude for every working person and let the employees adopt the concept. Further, they can create and follow some lawful actions against these issues to stop inequality within the company.

Moreover, Travis Perkins has been proposed to value all the employees equally mandatorily in order to have an equal environment. An acceptable surrounding leads the employees to work efficiently and productively. In this context, the company has been suggested to have a practical viewpoint that can inspire the employees. Travis Perkins should overcome the gender inequality issues with providing equal payment for equal effort.

The company has been recommended to appreciate the psychological contribution of women towards the work with the evaluation of the propositions respectfully. The organisation should stand against race culture and educate the employees to work in diverse workplace with friendly behaviour.

References

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• Sayin, K.F., 2019. Identity, Employment, and Inequality: An Examination of Immigrants with Disabilities (Doctoral dissertation).
• Travis Perkins PLC. 2020. Travisperkinsplc.Co.Uk. [online] Available at: [Accessed 6 August 2020].
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