Describe ways in which discrimination may deliberately or inadvertently occur in the work setting

Discrimination occurs when people are treated differently and often negatively because assumptions are made about them or a group to which they belong or appear to belong to.

Some examples of discrimination include:

• Labeling – giving a ‘label’ to a group of people because of characteristics (e.g. an individual being labelled as ‘Indian’ based solely on the colour of their skin)
• Stereotyping – assuming traits and characteristics of a group of people (e.g. all individuals with Autism are highly intelligent)
• Prejudice – not liking somebody solely because of the group they belong to (e.g. racism, sexism, homophobia etc.)

Direct or deliberate discrimination occurs when individuals belonging or assumed to belong to a particular group are treated differently from others. This is usually quite easy to notice. For example, a landlord refusing to let a flat to a homosexual couple would be deliberate discrimination.

Indirect or inadvertent discrimination is not so easily noticeable and is often unintentional. For example, if an employer makes a policy that all employees must work on Saturdays, this could be discriminatory towards a practising Jew because Saturdays are a religious day in Judaism. The employer may not have known that they were being discriminatory when writing the policy because they were not aware of the importance of the Sabbath in Judaism.