Workplace Discrimination and Harassment at DHL: A Research Report

This report examines the impact of workplace discrimination and harassment on the quality of service delivery within DHL, a global logistics company. The research, conducted by a student, investigates the concepts of workplace discrimination and harassment, exploring various forms such as retaliation, sex, racial, and disability discrimination. The study aims to determine how these issues affect DHL's customer service quality. The report includes a literature review, research methodology, data analysis, and discussion of findings. It addresses the negative consequences of discrimination, such as reduced employee performance, diminished customer trust, and higher employee turnover. The report also examines the application of quality service models like SERVQUAL and ISO/IEC 25010 to assess and improve service quality. Recommendations for overcoming workplace discrimination and harassment within DHL are also provided, aiming to enhance the company's brand image and attract talented employees and clients.

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Signature Victoria Roxana Lupascu Date: 25/04/2020
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Workplace Discrimination in
DHL Company
Module Tutor: Kwabena Frimpong
Student Name: Victoria Roxana Lupascu
ID Number: 24363

Topic: Workplace discrimination and harassment and impact on quality of service delivery
in DHL.
Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Structure of the report.................................................................................................................1
Research Aim..............................................................................................................................1
Research Objectives....................................................................................................................1
Research questions......................................................................................................................2
Importance of Study.........................................................................................................................2
Literature Review.............................................................................................................................2
Summary of Literature Review........................................................................................................4
Research Methodology....................................................................................................................5
Proposed time scale/ Gantt chart......................................................................................................7
Data analysis and Interpretation.......................................................................................................9
Results and Discussions.................................................................................................................20
Research limitation/ Evaluation.....................................................................................................20
Areas of future research and recommendation on areas of improvement.....................................21
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................22
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................23
Appendix.......................................................................................................................................24
QUESTIONNAIRE......................................................................................................................24

INTRODUCTION
Workplace discrimination is referring as usage of different policies by management of an
organisation for employees by considering the factors like age, sex, religion, colour etc. The
impact of this over an organisational image is negative. This will also diminish the employee’s
performance and create distrust towards organisational functioning. Harassment is wide in nature
from the determinant of workplace discrimination (Marchand, Gonzales and Williams, 2019).
This includes usage of tactics by management against an employee to hinder from the
ascertainment of basic rights. This is worse in nature and have wide worsened impact over
organisational functioning in market. It is important for each kind of organisation to focus over
these two different determinants for the purpose of attaining long term success in market.
Elimination of these is important part in every organisation as help in creating positive working
culture along with brand image in market. This will help in attraction of potential talented
candidates and clients towards an organisation that contributes to continuous growth in future.
The organisation considered to carry on research is DHL. This is an American German courier,
parcel, and expresses mail service which is a division of the German logistics company Deutsche
Post DHL. Deutsche Post DHL is a German postal and global messenger administration
organization with home office in Bonn. The organization is the successor to the Deutsche Bund
post, Germany's administration office liable for postal administrations before being privatized in
1995. It turned into a completely autonomous organization in 2000 and converged with DHL
through obtaining in 2002.
Deutsche Post DHL has since developed to get one of the main coordination’s
organizations around the world. Deutsche Post DHL's complete income in the monetary year of
2018 added up to over 61.5 billion euros and the organization's all out resources in that
equivalent year remained at around 50.5 billion euros. Today, the German organization has a
normal number of more than 489,500 workers worldwide and conducts business in more than
220 nations, working in the accompanying sections: Post-eCommerce-Parcel, DHL Express,
DHL Supply Chain and DHL Global Forwarding/Freight. In 2018, the income from the express
post part added up to more than 16 billion euros.
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Structure of the report
The different aspects cover in this report in relation to effective completion of this
research includes framing of research aim, objectives, questions, literature of study, research
methodology, proposed time scale/Gantt chart, data analysis & interpretation, results and
discussions, research limitation/ evaluation, areas of future research and recommendation on
areas of improvement and conclusion. The importance of effective completion of all aid in
proper formulation of report along with presentation of appropriate results (Flick, 2015).
Research Aims and Objectives
The research aimed to identify the influence of Workplace discrimination and Harassment on
quality of customer service delivery of an organisation. A case study on DHL. The main research
objectives are to ascertain the information about the concept of Workplace discrimination and
Harassment and to determine the impact of Workplace discrimination and Harassment on quality
of customer service delivery of DHL. Further aim is to identify the measures that will help to
overcome from Workplace discrimination and Harassment within an organisation.
Research questions
 How can workplace discrimination and harassment impact on quality of service delivery
of DHL?
 What will be the measures that help to overcome from Workplace discrimination and
Harassment within an organisation?
Importance of Study
This study is important because it helps an individual, society and organisation by
increasing awareness regarding the harassment and discrimination at workplace and its impact on
business organisation and customer’s trust. Along with this, this researcher will also support
researcher by improving its knowledge about the workplace discrimination and increasing
different types of research skills such as data collection, time management, data analysis,
literature review and many other relevant to the study (Goya, Corley and Hamilton, 2013). This
is the main issue present in the organisation done based on the different factors. For ex., 8.2
million people have the view that they discriminated at workplace based on gender. The impact
of this has direct over employer in negative terms where it reduces their capacity to retain
employees for longer period of time that resultants into high employee turnover.
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Literature Review
Literature review refers as a documentation and process of the current relevant research
literature about a specific topic or subject of interest. It is a summary and explanation of research
findings reported within literature. Therefore, literature review is a process of data collection
used by researcher for gathering in-depth and previous published information from number of
sources including magazines, books, articles, publication research, journals and many other
sources relevant to the topic. Main rationale of literature review is to find out consequences in
previous study. These consequences are mainly related with the conflicts and gaps in previous
studies. Along with this, literature review is a useful part of research as it supports researchers to
deal with each objectives of the research project and attain as per the same (Graham and et. al.,
2019).
Concept of Workplace discrimination and Harassment
According to the Benstead (2018), Workplace discrimination is linked to different biases
and arises when a person is treated unfairly for reasons of orientation, gender, ethnicity, religion,
pregnancy and disability. It is a major issue within an enterprise that has an unfavorable impact
on the success of both company and employees. Furthermore, employment discrimination is
linked to treating, or attempting to treat, others unfairly because of law-protected individual trait
or function. On the other hand, Workplace harassment refers to the threatening or belittling
behaviour directed at a single employee or a group of workers. As both workplace discrimination
and harassment are main issues over an organisational performance. There are many factors that
cause discrimination at workplace. All these are defined below:
Retaliation: With this kind of work separation, a business makes a move against a
representative for either recording a business segregation guarantee or went about as an
informant
Sex discrimination: This is about discrimination based on gender. For ex., less payment
and growth opportunities to female workers.
Racial discrimination: With these segregation cases, a candidate or representative is
dealt with horribly because of their race or has been bothered because of their race.
Disability discrimination: This is about discrimination due to inability of a person as
compared to other either able to perform the work properly.
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There are many challenges associated with the addressing the issue of workplace
discrimination within an organisation. The first is about the employer nature. The main aim of
the employer is to earn profit and reduce the costings. In this regard, they followed unethical
practices that discriminate between the employees based on the different factors. The second
point is also about the presence of office politics that restricts the application of effective
practices of morally correct in nature.
The impact of Workplace discrimination and Harassment on quality of customer service
According to the Harness (2018), harassment and discrimination at workplace have
negative or direct impact over quality of customer service. Inclusion and diversity efforts
may also end up being ignored by business managers, which also affects their customers.
There are certain impact of harassment and discrimination on customers including
inappropriate behaviour of employees, payment and its related issues and late delivery. These
are biggest issues that have unfavourable impact on customers. As it turns to impact on
organisation by reducing number of customers, decrease trust and loyalty of customers, higher
employee turnover rate etc. These issues are also impact on business reputation and goodwill in
customer’s mind.
The presence of discrimination does not affect the working of those who are affected but
also creates the negative environment where everyone feels discriminated. The direct of this is
have upon on the performance of all employees that resultants into the poor deliverance of
services. The quality of working is not only diminished but the change in behaviour also creates
the negative perception about the organisational services in market.
As per the view presented by Van Vliet and et. al., (2019), ISO/IEC 25010 is an effective
quality model that is cornerstone of the product quality evaluation system. This model helps an
organisation by determining which quality characteristics will be followed when analysing the
properties of a software product. The quality of an effective system is the level to which the
system fulfils the stated as well as implied requirements of its different stakeholders, and
therefore gives value or importance. Those stakeholders require (functionality, security,
maintainability, performance etc.) are incisively what is delineated within the quality model, that
categorizes or classify the quality of product into characteristics and sub-characteristics.
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Illustration 1: ISO/IEC 25010 is a quality model
(Source: ISO/IEC 25010 is a quality model. 2020)
Application of quality service model SERVEQL
It is one of the effective model that was developed by the American marketers named
Valarie Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman and Leonard Berry in year 1988. This has the main work
related to measurement of the service quality experienced by consumers. In the initial steps,
emphasis is provided over development of quality systems in respect to the improvement of
product quality. Over the period of time, this has significant amount of relevance in improving
service quality. The positive impact of same will be ascertained by an organisation as
competitive edge in futuristic business operations. This model focuses over qualitative analysis.
While analysing transaction, major focus is provided over general and environmental factors that
associated with its performance. Initially, it is helpful in measurement of the 10 aspects related to
service quality such as credibility, security, reliability, responsiveness, competence, access,
courtesy, communication, understanding of the customer & tangibles and measuring of gap
between consumer experience and expectations. Afterwards, these 10 collapsed into five
dimensions RATER. These are known as Reliability, tangibles, responsiveness, assurance and
empathy. This is used twice in respect to analyse information in two different form such as
expectations and perceptions. The detailed level explanation of dimensions is provided below;
Responsiveness: This focuses over point of willingness to help consumers and
providence of prompt services in respect to satisfying their needs.
Assurance: This is about the knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to
convey trust and confidence.
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Tangibles: This is about physical facilities presence, equipments, personnel and
communication materials.
Empathy: This is about caring and providence of individualised attention provided by
firm to its customers.
Reliability: This is about ability to perform promised services dependably and
accurately.
Acceptance of all these will help an organisation to improve their services along with
deliverance of positive experiences to consumers. Effective level of dual application will provide
an opportunity to build strategies and practices that aid in further delievring positive experiences.
The measures that help to overcome from Workplace discrimination and Harassment within
an organisation
There are some forms suggested to the organisation in addressing the issues of
discrimination and harassment in the workplace according to the Weekes 2017. The description
in respect to this is further explained in detailed form. First, company should be educating all
workers regarding discrimination. As it supports them to retain employees for long time and
maintain them strong relationship. Second, organisation will educate its managers and executive
on how to handle discrimination and harassment in the workplace. As it supports an enterprise in
improvement of its growth and success at marketplace. Third, company must adherence of all
government legislations; develop positive working culture and formulation effective
organisational structure. As it turns to support them in reduction of discrimination and
harassment in workplace. This will also assist company in enhancement of its brand reputation
and market image in customer’s mind. Fourth, an organisation must focus over adoption of TQM
approach as this will help in adding up of quality among all other aspects performed by
employees. This has direct impact over the reduction of discriminative practices as all loopholes
from where it delegates or disseminate will be captured and removed. In future, this will have
positive impact where all employees adopt the quality approach regarding performance of their
work. This also have future benefit regarding development of behaviour implications that have
negative impact over consumers and other staff members. Fifth and last, an organisation must
focus over training that includes both that how to remove the aspect of discrimination along with
improvement of their skills regarding their work. This will must provide dual benefit to an
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organisation where they able to get rid of discrimination along with attainment of improved
service deliver level.
Summary of Literature Review
From the above-mentioned literature review, it has been summarised that discrimination
and harassment at workplace have negative impact over quality of customer service delivery
within an organisation. Harassment and discrimination among employees have negative impact
on business performance of Organisation. As it reduced productivity, increased higher employee
turnover, decreased sales and many others. These are main issues that turn too impacted
overgrowth and success of company at marketplace (Green, Camille and Elmore, 2012).
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Research Methodology
This is referring as the use of specific techniques and procedures for the purpose of
carrying investigation in form of identifying, selecting and analysis of data related to the study
topic. The importance of this section will be ascertained in the manner of its supporting role to
reader in process of determining the validity and reliability of the topic study (Kumar, 2019). To
carry on this section, the method of research onion will be used as this will provides an
opportunity in determining the best method of research by researcher in accordance with the
nature of study. There are many layers are present in research onion which are explained below
detailed manner.
Research philosophy: This is one of the important sections of research. This divides the
whole aspect of research in two different sections i.e. interpretivisim and positivism. The method
used for carrying this research will be positivism. The main reason behind the selection of this
method is that aid in effective collection and analysis of quantitative data relatable to the current
topic of study. The philosophy not used is named as interpretivisim. The main reason behind its
non application is the nature of covering qualitative research that requires a greater number of
resources.
Research Approach: The approaches which are used for the purpose of carrying
research are known as deductive and inductive. A deductive approach is mainly related with
“developing a hypothesis that is based on current theory, and then planning a research strategy to
test the hypothesis. Inductive approach is another type of approach that starts with the theories
and observations are projected towards the finish of the research process as an output of
observations.
The approach going to be use in the current research will be deductive (Marchand,
Gonzales and Williams, 2019). The main cause behind its application that help in ascertaining of
quantitative and reliable information. This will provide an opportunity in perfect determination
of the presence of workplace discrimination and harassment within an organisation along with its
impact over different functioning. The approach not used in this research will be inductive
because of its time-consuming nature and usage of large number of resources that impacts the
ability to get the results in short period of time.
Research strategy: This includes the collection of various strategies which are used for
the purpose of collecting data. The different strategies included under this are case study,
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