Treatment of workers with disability - Essay Example

? Treatment of workers with disability BUSINESS ETHICS: TREATMENT OF WORKERS WITH DISABILITY The business world is characterized by competition as each enterprise strives to dominate a market and make the most profits. The owners of the firms have to introduce creative and sometimes shrewd ways that would enable them to maneuver through the stiff competition and make a name for themselves. There are annual awards to be won, stocks to be bought and customers to be wooed into buying the goods and services offered by a company. In order to this, all efforts have been made that surpass all logic. Some measures have to be introduced in order to ensure that businesses remain within the legal brackets. Otherwise the employers would work their staff to death in this competitive world of business. The business ethics sought of bring a semblance of sanity in a world that firms would do just about anything to remain at the top of their game. Working hours has been a major issue in the business world. Luckily, this has been quelled by the onset of overtime payments. A worker should be paid for the extra time they work outside their normal working schedule. Ethics are very important for a business. It involves the making of decisions that are in accordance to the firm’s culture. This largely involves the abandoning of methods that would lead to big profits within a short span of time, because such ambitions are usually the reason that businesses veer off the path of ethics. The ethical issues in a business are of major importance since they may attract to or send away customers from the company’s products. This will either boost sales or cause the sales to plummet. They may also encourage the employees to stay or equally send them away, hence affecting the firm’s productivity. Employee loyalty is very important to a firm. Apart from these, they may attract the employees to the firm. This will consequently reduce the recruitment costs and enable the firm to acquire the most talented of staff. Abiding with the ethics may also result to the attraction of investors which will increase the share prices and thwart any chances of the firm’s takeover. The most prevalent ethical issue in the business world in this paper will concern the treatment of workers with disability. There are laid out laws that prohibit the mistreatment of persons with disability. Campaigns have been carried out in order to change the people’s attitudes towards the disabled persons who have been viewed as outcasts. Disability is not by any means inability. Hence, the disabled people and especially workers should be accorded the same treatment as their normal counterparts. They are entitled to earning a living as the rest and should never be discriminated upon. At least that is what the business ethics state. Abercrombie and Fitch is a clothing retailing firm. In 2009, the firm was sued for allegedly hiding a student in the store stockroom who had been working in the store in the store stockroom because her prosthetic arm did not augur with the ‘look policy’ of the firm. The employee had been working as a sales assistant in the firm’s London outlet. The student, Riam Dean, twenty two years old and had been studying law at Greenford in west London. She related that the company transferred her form the shop’s floor that was situated at the company’s Savile Row branch when her disability came to the attention of the management. Dean was born without her left forearm and had worn the prosthetic arm ever since she was three months old. She pressed charges against the company for disability discrimination which had left her feeling belittled and humiliated. This came after she had declined to take off her cardigan while at work in the store. She felt bullied out of the job and admits that this incident was one of the worst times in her entire life. She asked ? 25,000 in compensation for what she had undergone during her time in the stores. When she applied for the job, she had informed the management about her problem. They had given her their go ahead to wear a white cardigan which covered the link between her arm and the prosthesis arm. However, when she started working things changed. She was approached with instructions to leave the shop floor because by keeping the cardigan on she was going against the firm’s ‘looks policy’. Message from the head office required her to remain hidden within the precincts of the stock room until the winter uniforms arrived. The A& F looks policy dictated that all staff "represent Abercrombie & Fitch with natural, classic American style consistent with the company's brand" (Pidd, 2009 ). They were also supposed to “look great while exhibiting individuality” (Pidd, 2009 ). Besides that, workers were expected to maintain a "clean, natural, classic hairstyle" and keep their nails "no more than a quarter inch beyond the tip of the finger" (Pidd, 2009 ). There is this female manager of the firm who therefore resorted to the ‘look policy’ as an excuse to keep her in the stockroom. Dean felt shattered by this allegation and her confidence simply melted away. The shell she had made around herself in whose confines she felt that she was something more than a lady with a single hand simply collapsed around her. Dean further says that the “look policy” is greatly inconsistent. Much as it does not allow for visible tattoos, there is an employee who spots a visible tribal tattoo on his arm. The company allows this worker to continue with his duties about the shop floor despite the open display of breaking the policy. The segregation therefore has nothing to do with the cardigan breaking the look policy but rather relies on the fact that Dean is disabled. This is something that has made the lady cast aspersions on her worth as a human being. Her character without flaw, everything considered. So it really worries that she has to be discriminated upon on the basis of a small aesthetic mistake, something she cannot really help. The firm focused too much on the notion that beauty lay in perfection that it forgot to consider that beauty also has a source in diversity. Dean changed drastically after her stint in the Abercrombie that she wonders if this would just be a taste of much more tribulation and torment that is to come because of her disability. The case of Dean is an example of what happens when a firm fails to adhere to the business ethics. A & F was a clothing retailer and it is true that they needed to be foremost in depicting smartness so as to go in accordance with the policies of this line of business. However, this did not mean that some workers ought to be discriminated if they did not meet the expectations of the firm. Questions would be rightfully raised if the worker’s character did not meet the skills threshold of the company, this would be only fair to a company that sought to make profit and remain relevant in its line of business. However, the gauging of workers on the account of their physical appearance was just a step too far. Dean’s disability was not mentioned to in any way affect her competiveness in the shop. The only problem they had was her cardigan which comes across as rather mediocre apart from being too petty. The firm would never be sure that all their customers were free of any form of disability. Maybe by seeing Dean a potential but disabled customer would have considered the firm’s shop a haven for doing her shopping without feeling intimidated by the perfection that was splayed around her. By choosing to hide Dean in the stockroom, the firm crashed her ego and humane feelings. It is therefore no wonder that she opted to sue the firm, they owed her something big. The disabled top have feelings that the people around them should be careful not to trample on. In Dean’s case, the discrimination came from her employer. However, the fellow employees are also expected not to look down upon any disabled workers. Many companies have included this in their employees’ code of conduct and failure to do this usually results in punitive measures. Disability is sometimes not very obvious. In law, the Equality Act 2010 defines a disabled person as someone who is who has physical or mental impairment that has considerable and long-term serious effects on the individual’s ability to go about their normal day-to-day activities. The mentioned normal day-to-day activities imply the things that usually make up a normal day like reading, walking, writing, holding a conversation and such things. Long term here means the impairment has lasted or the anticipated period that it would last is not less than a year. Considerable here stands for substantial, something that is not minor. One thing that the employers should always consider is not the kind or type of disability but the effect. Some disabilities such as migraines, dyslexia which impairs the person’s ability to read and back pains are considered very minor but their effects are detrimental to the person. Discrimination involves subjecting somebody to unfair treatment on the basis of something linked to their disability. This kind of discrimination is not allowed by the law, more so in instances that the employer or the person acting as the employer is well aware of the disability or has an idea that the disability exists. Employers should take it upon themselves that their employees with disabilities are not subject to any harassment, discrimination and victimization. Employers are also expected to make some reasonable adjustments in the work places that would provide the disabled workers with a comfortable environment as they go about their jobs. This means that they should provide equal opportunities for the people with disabilities to apply for jobs and keep them. Adjustments at the places of work may be made for a short time too depending on the circumstances involved. The adjustments that may be made include: Adjustments to the workplace to make the access or layout better. This includes the construction of ramps to enable the people using wheelchairs to access the workplace buildings with little difficulty. Allocating some of the disabled person’s tasks to another person. The disabled people cannot handle as much work as other people so it would be against the business ethics to expect them to work as hard as the others. A temporary worker may even be brought in to help with the duties as the person with disability gradually adjusts. The person with disability may be transferred to fill a vacancy especially if the work they were doing was too demanding. The working hours may be altered to suit the needs of the disabled person. This may include coming to work later than the rest or leaving for home earlier. They should be granted time off to enable medical check-ups, rehabilitation and assessment by medical practitioners. Training should be provided for disabled workers so that they may be at par with their colleagues. The equipment that is acquired should be those that fit the needs of the people with disability, for example, desks, and brailed computer keyboards. The instructions and procedures should be altered as per the impairments of the workers. For those with visual impairment, the text should be bigger or should be written with the Braille. Communication should be improved among the people with disability and other workers. The firm may employ the services of an interpreter to aid with the employees with hearing impairments. References Davis, P. (2003). E?--using the power of ethics and etiquette in American business. Irvine, CA: Entrepreneur Media. Pidd, H. (2009, June 24). Disabled student sues Abercrombie & Fitch for discrimination. The Guardian, 1, 1-5. George, R. T. (1982). Business ethics. New York: Macmillan Pub. Co. ;. Read More