Tackling Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination (BHD) in an organization

  Tackling Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination (BHD) in an organization Discrimination   26 November 2023 Blog four of Eight -   by Dilshad Banu Mohideen What is workplace discrimination? How often do we witness this? Have you ever wondered or realised that this is a day-to-day thing that we don’t even pay attention anymore. It is unfortunate, but true. You will encounter discrimination in equally in the public and private sector. In accordance with the Constitution of Sri Lanka (1978), there cannot be any discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, language, caste, sex, political opinion, place of birth or any one of such grounds. There is no special provision in constitution or labour laws to prevent discrimination in employment related matters. Laws also prohibit discrimination against disabled persons in matters of employment as well as workers involved in union activities. Constitution of Sri Lanka gives every person the right to apply to the S...

  Tackling Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination (BHD) in an organization   Harassment   25 November 2023 Blog three of Eight -   by Dilshad Banu Mohideen Harassment can be in many forms and covers a wide range of behaviors of offensive nature. Harassment is the behaviors that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person and an act of social and moral reasonableness. According to a Colombo Gazette article, the impacts of workplace violence and harassment has led to the loss of six working days per employee every year, costing the nine Sri Lankan companies surveyed at least $1.7 million, according to a new report by IFC, the International Finance Corporation. According to the Legal Information Institute, harassment refers to words or behaviour that threatens, intimidates, or demeans a  person . Harassment is unwanted, uninvited, and unwelcome and causes nuisance, alarm, or substantial  emotional distress  without any  legitimate ...

  Tackling Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination (BHD) in an organization   Blog 2 18 November 2023 Blog two of Eight -   by Dilshad Banu Mohideen        Tackling Bullying: As I start to pen down my second blog post, I experienced someone from another department in my organization, trying to get in the way of my work area and challenge to interrupt some of my tasks. This is not the first-time, he did this and I had been giving excuses not to report this as it can become very unpleasant. But this time, I decided to report it as it doesn’t seem to stop and has created stress and anxiety in me for no fault of mine. Have you experienced anything similar in your workplace? While my blog is about BHD as a whole, I decided to separately address each topic to give an understanding on how we can deal with it as leaders/managers.   Let me start with ‘bullying’. When we hear the word ‘bullying’ children and students in schools...

    13 November 2023 Blog one of Eight -   by Dilshad Banu Mohideen   I would say that I had been very lucky when it comes to my career path as I had the privilege to work for the employers who took the BHD very seriously and there was mechanism to report and find immediate solutions to prevent escalation of BHD. Despite this, I have been a victim and sometimes a bystander of BHD time to time, but these were one-time incidents which I chose to ignore. Should we ‘ IGNORE’? This is a big question and how comfortable are we to report BHD? We avoid as the work environment become very uncomfortable if we do so. Specially, if the BHD comes from the colleagues higher in the organizational chart.   Does every workplace give importance to BHD and does every workplace has a mechanism to deal with BHD complaints? In an ideal world every workplace should have a mechanism to tackle this issue and this is a fundamental right of an employee.   I will tou...