Hostile Work Environment

Answer

Hostile Work Environment

The primary focus of human resource managers in many organizations around the world is to create a conducive work environment that is free from conflicts, employee grievances and all forms of unwelcome behavior. Despite these efforts, cases of hostility in the work environment and their related offensive behavior remains on the rise. A 2010 research by Bellingham, a Workplace Bullying Institute based in Washington, established that approximately 34% of workers in the U.S. believe that they have experienced workplace hostility at one point in their employment life (Saade, 2019). Today, news in both mainstream media and social media platforms are replete with cases of hostile work environment, particularly in large organizations.

These news can be detrimental to an organization, especially when confirmed to be true because they not only damage the organization’s corporate image and reputation among the public, but they also limits its ability to attract talented and skilled employees. This research essay looks at a case of hostile work environment at Nike Inc. with particular emphasis on the facts reported about the case. Thereafter, the identified facts are analyzed using the law of hostile work environment. Subsequently, type of case is identified and recommendations made on what Nike should have done to prevent the hostile environment as well as what can be done to prevent its reoccurrence in the future.  

Case of Hostile Work Environment at Nike Inc.

Nike Inc. is among the many companies whose business practices and management decisions engendered a hostile work environment between 2017 and mid-2019. In May 2019, three shareholders filed a lawsuit against Nike Inc. and its top executives; namely, Mark Parker (CEO), Phil Knight (co-founder) and Trevor Edwards (former brand president) (McDonald, 2019). Citing the lawsuit, McDonald (2019) writes that the shareholders raised allegations that the three top officer had wittingly “knowingly ignored the hostile work environment that has now harmed, and threatens to further tarnish and impair, the company’s financial position” (para 2 line 3 and 4). Specifically, it was alleged that they failed to conduct any investigation on reports of sexual harassment and discrimination in the organization as well as failed to take appropriate measures to prevent harassment and discrimination of female workers by some managers. They were also accused of creating and perpetuating a hostile work environment for failing to enforce effective reporting procedures and appropriate internal controls that would have helped promote a favorable work environment for all employees.

The lawsuit came barely a year after two legal complaints were levelled against the company for unfair promotions and compensation. Responding to the complaint, Nike had admitted that it had failed to observe gender and racial equality in its promotion practices and compensation schemes. The company later implemented a 10% pay rise in an effort to eliminate the inequality. Nike again faced another case in August 2018, when two female employees sued the company for intentionally marginalizing them and other female workers regarding promotion and pay. They further claimed that the male-dominated management at the Portland Ore branch had created an unwelcome environment for female employees (McDonald, 2019). In October the same year, a former software developer raised a racial discrimination case against the sportswear powerhouse, in which he accused the company for denying him promotion in his department in favor of a white manager that he believed had lesser experience. Despite these growing claims, Nike’s management insists that the company lives by its core values of opposing discrimination of any form and promoting workplace diversity, respect and inclusion.     

Analysis of facts using the Law of Hostile Work Environment

The law of hostile work environment highlights practices, behaviors or actions that can be considered hostile in the workplace or contribute to the creation and upholding of a hostile work environment. A hostile work environment essentially refers to the offence or unwelcome behavior and practices in the workplace that can cause employees to feel intimated, unwanted, uncomfortable or insecure. According to the law of hostile work environment, a management practice or behavior in the workplace must be discriminatory, pervasive, severe, unwelcome, or experienced on large-scale, for it to be considered abusive, hostile, and hence illegal. The Supreme Court also makes a provision that the hostility of a misconduct behavior can be decided based on its frequency and whether it had negative impacts on the employee’s performance (Bachman, 2019)

It can be deduced from Nike’s case that the key factor or HR management practice contributing to a hostile work environment at the company concerns gender and racial discrimination. This is because allegations in all the three lawsuits against Nike in 2018 were centered on issues of discrimination in promoting and compensation of employees. Thus, although Nike maintains its HR practices focus on creating an inclusive, respectful and discrimination-free workplace, the company’s work environment can be considered hostile for various reasons. First, complaints of discrimination experiences from three four different plaintiffs can be enough evidence that gender and racial discrimination exists at the company. Discriminating employees on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, social class, religion or any other factor that make the employee underprivileged in illegal under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Browne, 1991; Bachman, 2019). Discrimination is also hostile and abusive in the sense that as Combs and Milosevic (2016) established, it makes employees feel unsafe, unwanted and disrespected, which consequently affects their psychological wellbeing and impairs their job performance.           

Type of the Case and the Protected Classes Involved

The incidences of discrimination levelled against Nike Inc. is a case of pervasive multiple acts of unwelcome management practices. Cases of gender and racial discrimination in promotion and pay seem widespread at Nike. Notably, as McDonald (2019) states, one of plaintiffs in a 2018 suit, a former female employee, remarked how female employees were exposed to a hostile work environment at the company’s headquarters – Portland Ore because top managers were predominantly male. Male employees of color have also reported situations where they were denied promotion to top ranks in favor of their white counterparts. This qualified the form of promotion and remuneration practices at Nike as unwelcome since those experiencing the acts of discrimination are members of protected classes; namely, women and people of color (Lewis, 2016; Combs & Milosevic, 2016).

Recommendation to Prevent Reoccurrence of the Hostile Environment in Future.

HR managers and top management should stop insisting that their workplace is inclusive and promotes diversity. Instead, they need to focus on investigating and addressing current allegations of gender and racial discrimination in order to maintain a positive corporate image and attract skilled and motivated workforce. Second, the management should create and support a culture of bureaucracy at all levels of the organization. In this way, they will ensure that HR managers, supervisors and other people in management positions are following the company’s core values of inclusivity and diversity promotion by remaining impersonal and impartial when planning for promotions and pay rise (Sharma & Mann, 2018).