Transgender Mistreatment and Challenges at Work
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Transgender people face numerous challenges everywhere but mostly in places of work. Once they come out openly, people despise them, including workmates and employees. Some transgender people have reached the breaking and now wish to disclose the truth to others about who they are. These people often become compelled by the inner being to disclose whom they are to enable them build strong and authentic affairs with close people. This is particularly true at places of work, where they spend many hours with other people. Whilst such disclosure comes with benefits, there are also grave risks and repercussions involved (Miller, 2014).
In most places of work, transgendered people may be singled out for discrimination based on their nature. These people know how to take inventory of the consequences involved when they come out at workplaces. Coming out on their job can potentially affect their livelihoods, as we do not have a federal law to protect a person from being sacked because of his or her gender identity. Nonetheless, some states, counties, and cities have ordinances or laws that prohibit overt discrimination based on expression and identity of gender. In addition, other states often interpret the existing non-discrimination policies to safeguard the interests of transgender people amongst them. Because of the risk of potentially losing their jobs, transgender people in most workplaces remain silent about their identity, a factor likely to affect their social lives adversely. Instead of concentrating on their work, the transgender working in companies that do not encourage diversity spend much energy pretending to be what they are not and concealing an important aspect of themselves (Leiter, 2013).
There are several ways of ensuring that transgendered people are treated well at work. One way of overcoming the challenge is to cover gender identity and expression in the organization’s non-discrimination policies. A large number of multinational employers are now including gender identity in their non-discrimination policies, UHD being among them. In addition, the organization can have a system where such sensitive disclosure is first made to a trusted human resource manager prior to doing it to co-workers (Dietert & Dentice, 2009). This is established in the light of the fact that an employer cannot create a hostile environment for its employees knowingly after investing so much time and money in their training and development. Additionally, when seeking to know the gender of prospective employees, the employer can include transgender in the section the applicant is required to tick ‘male or female.’
UHD has made important progress in addressing the issues of the transgender in its workforce pool. They have set their employment policies in a way that helps their transgendered workers remain most productive. They try to avoid the stress likely to affect the employees if they were denied the right to disclosure. In addition, the company has segregated a fund for paying transgender health benefits for transgendered workers who achieve record performance.
My work place has not done many things to address the problem of discrimination of transgender people. However, a number of appreciable proposals have been made, and plans are underway to have a policy for non-discrimination. As part of the gender-sensitivity program, the organization is planning to reserve a few posts for transgender and other minority in society. In addition, such people who have not yet come out in the open will be encouraged to do so. This will aim at diverting the energy they use to conceal their identity at work.
Transgender Mistreatment at Work