Starting from insensitive statements to uncomfortable questions or even generalized conjectures about marginalized groups are a part of Microaggressions. This is a sort of bullying and unfortunately, not every workplace is immune to this, and neither they should be. Understanding Microaggressions can help you to understand and navigate your approaches towards coworkers.
What is Microaggressions?
Insensitive statements, daunting behaviors, regressive approaches, and biased actions towards marginalized communities can be noted as Microaggressions. Not everyone is going to be the same at every workplace, people with different ethnicities will have different physical appearances or they might be sensitive towards some sort of words. Microaggressionscan be segregated into three aspects:
- Microinsults - Insensitive and rude comments based on their heritage, physical structure, or their gender.
- Microassaults - Avoidant behaviors and name-calling or discriminating actions towards a coworker.
- Microinvalidations - Invalidate people or neglect their identities at a workplace.
The first time Microaggression was mentioned was in 1970 by Dr. Chester M. Pierce, a psychiatrist at Harvard University. He witnessed these regressive behaviors with the African American workers across various places in North America. He expanded the contextual use of this premise he added more marginalized groups to this process and tried to understand the minute stature of Microaggression.
Let’s check out the three types of Microaggression in the Workplace:
Verbal Microaggression
1. Praising a female employee for not having mood swings
2. Dismissing someone for their accent or praising them for it
3. Mispronouncing the name of an employee repetitively
4. Telling an Indian “You are too white to be an Indian”
Behavioral Microaggression
5. Assumptions based on outlook and behaving accordingly
6. Changing seats if people of another ethnicity sit beside you
7. Discriminating based on their health or physical disability
8. Ignoring female employees and their contributions
Environmental Microaggression
9. Ignoring the company's diversity
10. Based on religious preferences
11. Assigning positions
12. Biased acknowledgement
These are some of the most common ways to make someone feel bad about their origin. To these marginalized groups of people, history has to be kind, and being unkind to them can cause a havoc of emotional and mental pressure for everyone. Hence, this sort of behavior can be a result of many drawbacks and a series of enfettering approaches for a group of employees.
Impacts of Microaggression:
This can be a very disheartening approach to experience at a workplace. Here are some impacts that every workplace can witness if they are not taking any actions to these microaggressions. These impacts can be extremely heavy for any company.
- Say “Bye Bye” to team unity and working together
- Less engagement which leads to less productivity
- The stress meter will be on the red side leading to anxiety or even depression
- Hinders workplace diversity and any sort of inclusion efforts
- Damages the reputation of the company
- The company becomes prone to added legal risks
Ways to Handle Microaggressions:
The most effective way to handle Microaggressions is to wait for the right moment and when the time is right respond. Talking openly about the things that have hurt you is the way to share your views with people who are not sensitive enough. Yes, it is not your responsibility to educate them but you surely must stand up for yourself. And finally contacting HR can be a great approach to any of these regressive workforces.
Microaggression management should be a part of the workplace and knowing how to deal with these scenarios should be a part of these. Acknowledge the misdeed without getting defensive. Active listening and validating their experience is also a part of this process. Apologizing and being grateful for their patience is also an important part of this process. Finally, restraining from committing the same misdeed in the future is the best approach.
