PSY 665 Topic 1 DQ 1
answer:
What Is a Hostile Work Environment?
A hostile work environment is one in which harassment or abuse interferes with an employee’s ability to perform their job or forces them to do it in an intimidating or offensive setting.
Workplace harassment can be motivated by race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, gender, nationality, age, physical or mental handicap, or genetic information. While you may be most familiar with the concept of workplace sexual harassment, there are numerous more sorts of workplace harassment to be aware of.
Harassment, sexual harassment, discrimination, victimization, violence and many other kinds of offensive or inappropriate behavior qualify as unwelcome conduct. All of them will create a hostile work environment if they’re happening consistently or purposefully, or in the case of a single incident, if they’re severe.
For example, if someone makes a sexist comment toward a colleague, they need to face repercussions, but, their off-hand comment will probably not foster hostility in the workplace.
On the other hand, if that person is a supervisor or makes similar comments on a regular basis, their conduct can create a hostile environment. The same applies if the action is severe enough.
What aspect of a work environment do you believe has the biggest impact on whether or not the atmosphere becomes hostile?