“Covering” in the Work Place

Covering in the workplace is a clear indication of discrimination against racial minorities. People find themselves being subjected to covering demand in order to fit in a certain social setting. Covering denies individuals the freedom to really express their real personality, according to Molloy, self-manual help “New Dress for Success”, the model of success is “white, Anglo-Saxon and protestant.” Those with no possession of these traits, he says “will elicit a negative response to some degree, regardless of whether that response is conscious or subconscious.” With reference to these, the African- Americans in a certain institution run by Americans will be forced to emulate the traits hence they are denied the chance to express themselves fully and they end up not being who they are (Yoshino 1).

Covering is also taken up by people who are esteemed by society. For example, eminent people like Margaret Thatcher underwent voice coaching to lower her voice pitch, Jon Stewart was initially known as Jonathan Leibowitz and when confronted about the issue he said that the name Leibowitz sounded ” to Hollywood.” Another instance is where renowned Roosevelt usually stationed himself behind his desk just before holding a meeting with his advisers Roosevelt did this to cover or play down his disability for people to focus more on his presidential qualities (Yoshino 2).

Workplace diversity encompasses the variety of differences existing between people in an organization. This may not seem to carry a lot of weight, but diversity brings together gender, ethnic group, race, cognitive style, organizational function, personality, age, background, education and so on. Diversity is not only about self-perception, but how people perceive others. These particular perceptions have an upshot on person-to-person interactions. Diversity is increasing significantly, therefore, organizations have to adopt a way of dealing with it. Success on organizations will depend on the ability of those organizations to recognize the urgency of implementing immediate action and their willingness to expend resources on diversity management in the workplace (Yoshino 6).

Diversity in the workplace comes in handy with numerous benefits. The competitiveness and success of an organization are inclined to its capability to embrace the whole issue of diversity and realize the attached benefits. These benefits will arise when an organization assesses how it handles issues related to workplace diversity, development, and implementation of diversity plans. Some of the benefits are: increased adaptability, a diverse workforce supplies a greater variety of sourcing, resource allocation, and service problems. If an organization demands covering, then the benefit of increased adaptability will be ruled out, the reason being when a person is subject to discrimination he or she develops stigma, this stigma affects the person’s performance in the organization. Employees from backgrounds that are diverse tend to bring in individual experiences and talents in coming up with ideas that are supple in fluctuating customer demands and markets (Yoshino 2).

Another benefit of covering is that it is broader and with diverse service range. Different people come in with diverse experiences and skills collection e.g. cultural understanding and language. These give the organization a chance to provide global-based services to its customers. This would not be achieved if some of the employees are under the siege of discrimination since covering makes the employee lose the sense of belonging. Kenji Yoshino gives an example of workers who were fired for lapsing into Spanish in an English bond workplace (Yoshino 6).

A diverse workforce, with good social relations, is able to communicate comfortably their varying viewpoints provides a broader pool of experiences and ideas. These enable the organizations to have a pool that it can draw ideas to meet business strategy and consumers’ need more effectively. These will not be achieved if the covering is implemented since stigmatized workers will not be free to air out their views for fear of embarrassment and rejection since they are held in low esteem (Greenberg 2).