Types of Discrimination and Their Impact on Employee Performance at H&M

RESEARCH
PROJECT
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Executive summary
Main purpose behind doing this research project is to identify the different types of
discrimination and their effect over performance level of employees in the workplace of H&M.
In order to attain this purpose, researcher developed some objectives and questions that helped
them in accomplishment of research aim. Along with this, literature review has been completed
by researcher by using secondary sources for addressing each research questions in effective
manner. Under research methodology, researcher followed number of research methods which
are positivism philosophy, deductive approach, quantitative research etc. All these are effective
in collecting of quantitative information from questionnaire. For the section of results and
findings, researcher made frequency and developed effective graphs that are useful in presenting
of results of findings. Discussion was completed for discussing and interpreting primary data,
and linking this data with secondary data that are gathered for literature review. Conclusion has
been done by summarising entire information of report in briefly. Under recommendation
section, some suggestions were given to the company that are related with the research topic. At
last, reflection was completed by identifying experience of researcher for performing this project.
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Contents
Executive summary..........................................................................................................................2
Introduction/ background to the research area.................................................................................5
Research Question.......................................................................................................................5
Sub-questions of research ...........................................................................................................5
Research aim and objectives .......................................................................................................5
Rationale and importance for choosing the topic .......................................................................6
Literature review..............................................................................................................................7
What types of discrimination that can occur in the workplace? .................................................7
What are the negative effective of discrimination on employee’s performance at workplace of
H&M? .........................................................................................................................................8
What strategies may be use for managing discrimination at workplace of H&M? ....................8
Research Methodology..................................................................................................................10
Research Approach ...................................................................................................................10
Research techniques .................................................................................................................10
Data collection methods ............................................................................................................10
Research Philosophy: ................................................................................................................11
Qualitative and quantitative research ........................................................................................11
Primary and secondary sources of data collection: ...................................................................11
Sampling....................................................................................................................................11
Data analysis approach .............................................................................................................12
Timeline of research activities.......................................................................................................12
Research Instruments ................................................................................................................14
Ethical issues: ............................................................................................................................16
Research reliability and validity ...............................................................................................16
Results/Findings.............................................................................................................................17
........................................................................................................................................................20
Discussion......................................................................................................................................21
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................26
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Recommendations..........................................................................................................................27
Reflection.......................................................................................................................................28
References......................................................................................................................................29
Appendices.....................................................................................................................................31
Questionnaire ............................................................................................................................31
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Introduction/ background to the research area
Workplace discrimination meaning is treating someone negatively due to their personal
characteristics. These characteristics are race, gender, age, religion, sexuality, disability etc. All
these have negative impact on employees at workplace (Cho and et. al., 2016). There are
different types of discrimination that can happen or occur in the workplace of an organisation
such as age discrimination, disability discrimination, gender discrimination and many others.
These types of discrimination have negative impact over performance of employees. These
impacts are lower productivity, poor confidence, reduced performance etc. This turn to impact on
business performance and productivity in negative manner. H&M is a chosen clothing retailer for
this research. It was founded in 1947 by Erling Persson and headquartered in Stockholm,
Sweden. Company specialise in selling of clothing for women, men, teenagers and children. In
the workplace of H&M large numbers of employees are working with the aim of achieving long
term goals and objectives. Some employees have issues about the discrimination, in order to
reduce such issues, company have to use number of ways for managing discrimination at
workplace.
Research Question
a) What are the types of discrimination and their impact on employee’s performance at
workplace of H&M?
Sub-questions of research
a) What types of discrimination that can occur in the workplace?
 What are the negative effective of discrimination on employee’s performance at
workplace of H&M?
 What strategies may be use for managing discrimination at workplace of H&M?
Research aim and objectives
Research Aim:
Main aim of this research is “To study about the types of discrimination and their impact
on performance of employees at workplace. A study on H&M.
Research Objectives
b) To explore different types of discrimination that can occue in the workplace.
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c) To analysis negative effective of discrimination on employee’s performance at workplace
of H&M.
d) To determine ways for managing discrimination at workplace of H&M.
Rationale and importance for choosing the topic
Main reason behind choosing the topic is to explore number of discrimination that can take
place in the organisation. This research is essential at academic as well as practical way.
Academically, this research support students by enhancing their learning and understanding
regarding the types of workplace discrimination and their impact on employee’s performance. At
practical level, this study support in analysing of ways for handing discrimination at workplace.
Along with this, if this study is publish will helps societies, individual and organisation by
enhancing their knowledge about the discrimination that can happen in the workplace (Derous,
Pepermans and Ryan, 2017).
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Literature review
Literature review is an essential part of the research because it help researcher in
gathering of information from secondary sources such as articles, books, magazines etc. All these
sources help researcher in collecting of secondary information about the discrimination that can
happen at workplace and its negative effect on performance of employees. Purpose of literature
review is to recognize gaps or conflict in past research. Literature gap of current study is the
impact of all types of discrimination on employee’s performance at workplace. In order to fulfil
this gap, research questions will be used. This will also support researcher in accomplishment of
research aim and objectives in systematic manner (Dwertmann and Boehm, 2016). Research
questions will be explained as below:
What types of discrimination that can occur in the workplace?
According to the Benstead (2018), Discrimination is known as unjustified treatment with
different categories of people on the basis of race, age, sex, religion, gender etc. This is the
negative activity that exist within an organisation and responsible for bad results only. This
diminishes the working ability of employees within an organisation that creates the negative
perception about policies and practices. This will also reduce the level of motivation that does
not allow to perform with full capacity in direction of accomplishing organisational objectives.
There is different type of discriminations which are defined below:
Disability based: This includes the discrimination with disable people within an
organisation. It includes payment of less money or bulling at workplace due to presence of some
physical disability.
Gender based: This is the most common one where discrimination is done between male
and female within an organisation. This can be done through various ways such as less amount
of salary, unequal opportunities etc.
Age: This includes the discrimination between the personnel of an organisation on the
basis of age. For ex., two persons are working on same position and have same amount of
experience but the one who is elder in age is preferred for promotion. This kind of situations is
covering under age based discrimination.
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What are the negative effective of discrimination on employee’s performance at workplace of
H&M?
As per the opinion of Harness (2019), Discrimination is the negative activity and only has
negative impact over the performance of all employees of an organisation either who suffered or
the one who not. The main impact of discrimination at workplace is creating negative vibes
where no one can work with positive attitude. It promotes bad office politics and creates negative
working culture. The impact of discrimination at employee performance will be ascertained upon
different areas. The chance of its occurrence in multinational organisation like H&M is high due
to presence of employees from different cultures. Any type of discrimination either age based or
gender has impact over all different areas associated with employee performance. Firstly, it
diminishes the level of trust among employees. The level of distrust impacts the performance as
nobody is ready to support each other and wants to complete their own targets. This reduces the
level of creativity in employee’s performance that resulted into deliverance of poor results and
non-attainment of organisational objectives. Secondly, this impacts the engagement level of
employees. The low of level of engagement decreases the level of motivation that resulted into
poor performance not in accordance to the provided standards. In last, this will also impact their
perception towards organisational policies and practices. This simultaneously motivates in the
usage of unethical practices in completion of work where they not able to attain high level of
performance.
What strategies may be use for managing discrimination at workplace of H&M?
According to the view presented by Mazzotta (2019), H&M is multinational organisation
and having the business functions at worldwide level. It is the duty over the management of an
organisation is to manage the level of discrimination so positive culture will be built within an
organisation where employees work properly. The different strategies that will be used to
manage discrimination include:
Adherence of legislation: The management of an organisation must focus over the fulfilling
different legislations prevail at various nations so they can perform the functions as per their
standard. This will provide the opportunity to create an obligation over the management of
different departments so they can adhere the policies in deployment of their functions.
Building separate team: The top management of an organisation is must needed to create
separate team that focuses over the completion of the activities on the basis of standards and
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