Impact of Workplace Discrimination on Women's Working Performance at Sainsbury

Research Proposal Form
Student Name: ______________________ Student ID: ____________
Centre Name: _____________________
Tutor: ________________ Date: ___________________
Unit: ____________________
Proposed Title: Equality and diversity in the workplace of Sainsbury.
______________________________________________
Section One: Title, objective, responsibilities
Title or working title of the research project (in the form of a question, objective or
hypothesis)
Research objectives (e.g what is the question you want to answer? What do you want to
learn how to do? What do you want to find out?):
Introduction:
Equality and diversity is the actual term followed for equal opportunities. This is the legal
obligation to protect employees against any type of discrimination. Workplace discrimination
can be against an individual's gender, disability, sex, beliefs, race, religion, sexual orientation or
age. This research project is based on the case study of Sainsbury that is the supermarket chain
in the United Kingdom. Company was founded by John James Sainsbury in 1869 and
headquartered in London, UK. This case study is based on providing equality rights to the
women employees at workplace. It is important for company to provide flexibility to women in
different ways such as child-bearing age, maternity leave and parents etc. By providing
opportunities to the women will be essential for success and growth of company (Arshad,
2020). There are different significance of having women employees at workplace including,
boost productivity levels, expand network of talented individuals, attract younger employees etc.
All these advantages will support company in attainment of competitive advantages
successfully.
Research aim:

Main aim of this research is to identify the impact of workplace discrimination on working
performance of women employees. A case study on Sainsbury.
Research Objectives:
 To Identify the impact of discrimination in the workplace of Sainsbury.
 To determine the issues faced by women due to gender based discrimination at
workplace of Sainsbury.
 To explore ways by which impact of workplace discrimination on women's working
performance can be eliminate by the Sainsbury.
Research questions
 How discrimination impact on workplace of Sainsbury?
 What type of issues faced by women employees due to their gender in the workplace of
Sainsbury?
 What are the effective ways through which Sainsbury can easily overcome impact of
discrimination over working performance of women?
Section Two: Reasons for choosing this research project
Reasons for choosing the project (e.g links to other subjects you are studying, personal
interest, future plans, knowledge/skills you want to improve, why the topic is important):
One of the main reason behind selecting this topic or research is to identify the impact of
workplace discrimination on working performance of women employees. This research is
essential because with the help of this, researcher can easily determine importance of equality
and diversity practices in reduction of discrimination in the workplace. Along with this, current
research is important at personal as well as academic level. At personal level, this research will
support investigator by improving its research skills that results in completion of full project
successfully and systematically (Flabbi and et. al., 2019). At academic level, this study will
support students by improving their knowledge regarding the importance of women employees
in the workplace.
Section Three: Literature sources searched
Use of key literature sources to support your research question, objective or hypothesis:
Literature review is an important part of the research project as it will helps investigator in

gathering of secondary type of data from various sources which are books, articles, magazines,
publication research and many others. All these are valuable sources for researcher to use and
gather secondary data regarding the discrimination and its impact over working performance of
women. This section of the study will support researcher to identify research gap in previous
investigations. Within a research, main research gap is the impact of workplace discrimination
on working performance of women employees (Fuller and Hirsh, 2019). In previous studies,
there were data available regarding the impact of workplace discrimination on employees
performance, but there were mission information about the impact of discrimination on women
at workplace. In order to fill this missing data, research questions has been followed which are:
How discrimination impact on workplace of Sainsbury?
According to the Landsberg (2018), discrimination at workplace has negative effects. There are
some negative effective effects which will be described as below:
General negative atmospheres: Discrimination at workplace creates a poor working and
negative atmospheres that directly impact on business performance. Discrimination in the
workplace leads to a culture of hostility, suspicion, mistrust, rivalry and resentment among the
employees. All these creation spread negative vibes as well as harm relationships at work,
particularly loss of cohesion and free flow of communications within the Sainsbury which
impacts on teamwork (Heilman and Caleo, 2018) .
Decreased employees productivity: This is another major impact of discrimination in the
working place of Sainsbury. When a workers is discriminated against, they feel helpless as well
as anxiety-ridden, and may show a lack of involvement in fulfilling job responsibilities. This
turn to impact over growth and success of company.
What type of issues faced by women employees due to their gender in the workplace of
Sainsbury?
As per the view presented by Stamarski and Son Hing (2019), gender inequality within an
organisation is a complex process that can be observed in organisational practices, structures and
procedures. For women employee, there are some harmful gender inequalities that are enacted in
HRs practices which are policies, decision making and their enactment. All these will impact on
women in different situations such as hiring, training, pay and promotion. According to the
current case study of Sainsbury, it has been determined that women employees faced different
issues at workplace due to their gender, marital status, being a mother etc. All these are major

issues that have negative influence or impact on working performance of female employees in
the workplace. There are number of negative effects of gender discrimination on women's are
low self-esteem, decreased productivity, feeling unsafe or fearful, workplace conflict, isolation
from other co-workers etc. All these have negative effect over working performance and
productivity of female employees at workplace of Sainsbury.
What are the effective ways through which Sainsbury can easily overcome impact of
discrimination over working performance of women?
As per the view point of Fuhl (2018), there are different ways that will be useful for Sainsbury
in reduction or overcoming of impact of discrimination on working performance of employees.
These ways will be explained as below:
Arrangement of flexibility working option: It is an effective and essential way for company to
provide option of flexible work to their female employees in different situation such as
pregnancy, family issue, child health issue etc. This will be beneficial for company because with
the help of this option, they can easily retail women employees and increase their productivity
level (Panicker, Agrawal and Khandelwal, 2018).
Have a clear policy on a discrimination: This is another important way for Sainsbury to have a
clear policy on any kind of discrimination. For this, equality act 2010 is best way for company to
use and protect women employees from any type of discrimination such as race, gender, age etc.
Section Four: Activities and timescales
Activities to be carried out during the research project (e.g
research, development and analysis of ideas, writing, data
collection, numerical analysis, tutor meetings, production of final
outcome, evaluation, writing the report):
How long this will
take:
Milestone one: _________________