Not all discrimination is bad. Being discriminating, having the ability to discern, is essential in life. If you can’t tell the difference between day and night, you will have issues. If you can’t distinguish between hot and cold, you can get burned or frozen. If up and down are all the same to you, don’t go scuba diving or mountain climbing and avoid acrobatics at all costs.
Discriminating means being able to differentiate. Negative connotations due to events in American history have shifted that original definition of “discriminate” from "to make or see a distinction" to the widely accepted meaning of “to treat unfavorably with prejudice.”
Some discrimination is prohibited. The United States has declared certain classes to be protected against discrimination and harassment based on:
• race
• color
• religion
• national origin
• age (40 and over)
• sex
• family status (re housing)
• disability
• veteran status
• genetic information
• sexual orientation (in some jurisdictions)
• gender identity (in some jurisdictions)
That is only a partial list, not even comprehensive for the U.S.; and other nations will have their own rules as well.
Every place prohibits certain forms of discrimination even as they encourage other forms of discrimination. The very act of discrimination can be either bad or good, because some differences must be ignored while other distinctions should be noted.
Discrimination is needed to create pay equity. Yes, pay equity is a semantically loaded term. It not only involves comparable worth but also includes perceptions of fair treatment by all employees.
If you don’t distinguish between good performance and bad performance (i.e., “discriminate”), you will outrage your workers and upset your customers. As fellow Café contributor Derek Irvine posted last month, employee perceptions about reward fairness are critical. In effect, you must discriminate in order to be fair and to run an effective business.
Failure to differentiate between positive contributors and feckless shirkers will demotivate productive people who will conclude that management just doesn’t care about work output. Regardless of what you SAY, human beings respond to what you DO. When the company recognizes differences (“discriminates” in a proper manner) and offers appropriate consequences (both rewards and punishments) according to variable actual job results, desired behaviors are reinforced and undesirable behaviors are extinguished… at least, that’s the psychological theory which has proven valid in real life for ages.
That topic of internal equity in pay (only one of the remuneration elements relevant to “fairness”) was covered in detail by a panel whose forty-five minute discussion is available online in this embedded link.
As we share thoughts on all these topics, remember not to jump to conclusions, because context is everything.
How does the elephant appear in your discriminating view?
E. James (Jim) Brennan is Senior Associate of ERI Economic Research Institute, the premier publisher of interactive pay and living-cost surveys. Semi-retired after over 40 years in HR corporate and consulting roles throughout the U.S. and Canada, he’s pretty much been there done that (articles, books, speeches, seminars, radio/TV, advisory posts, in-trial expert witness stuff, etc.) and will express his opinion on almost anything.
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