Gender Discrimination at Tyson Foods
Introduction
Leadership of organizations requires profound understanding of rights as well as the responsibilities of the workers. This is because organizations can realize their objectives in the context where there is a balance of the rights of the workers, as well as their responsibilities. Leaders have the core role to motivate the workers under them to perform their duties in order to ensure the organization can meet its objectives. In order to have a motivated workforce, then the managers are required to create a working atmosphere that is convenient for the workers to be able to perform their work to the fullest. This may take the form of appreciating diversity in the workplace, acknowledgement of human rights and freedoms in the workplace. It also includes appropriate compensation for the workers, and maintenance of excellent working relationships between the leaders of the organization with their subordinates. All these efforts are directed to boost workers engagement, which boosts performance of the organization. This looks at the ethical challenge of ‘sexual discrimination’ in the organization with a specific look at Tyson Food, which has in the recent past, has been associated with sexual discrimination cases (Buckley, 2011).
Tyson Foods
Tyson food, Inc. is a large multinational corporation headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas. The company deals with food and serves many other companies in the food industry. It boasts as the second largest processer and marketer of pork, beef, and chicken. It is the largest exporter of beef out of America. According to Forbes, the company is among the top 100 companies in America. The company involves itself with the production of a wide variety of prepared product s from animal meat in its 123 processing plants, implying that its produces large volumes of animal processed products not only to the United States markets, but also to other external markets. It has a sizeable workforce of over 107,000 employees who are located in its plants, as well as in its 300 facilities that are found in the United States, and other parts of the world. Today, Tyson works with over 6500 contract chicken growers, in its bid to increase the amount of chicken processed products per annum. Tyson supplies beef, pork, and chicken products to various retail brands such as McDonald's, Wendy, Kroger, Burger King, Wal-Mart, as well as other small restaurant businesses (Shilling, 2008).
Gender Discrimination at Tyson Foods
One of the leadership challenges that have affected Tyson Foods, Inc. leaders is the issue of sexual discrimination that has marred the corporate image of the company. The organization had faced various lawsuits against the people, mostly women who are said to be victimized based on their sexual orientation when it came to work related management functions such as recruitment. It is clear that employers, as well as the managers who do the real work of hiring are obligated to conduct such processes in a way that it is impartial of one’s gender, race, disability and other key areas that the law protects the workers against discrimination. Sexual discrimination is an illegal act that that managers and leaders should shun away from, since their impacts are negative to the performance of the workers of a given organization, aside from the enormous litigation costs that organizations are subjected to pay in the event a victim of sexual discrimination sues the company.
Tyson Food has been reported in the recent news from the media, as well as from the press releases of the US labor Department to be one of the organizations that have been characterized by sexual discrimination in carrying out its management functions. The company’s image has also been tainted by the alleged cases of ‘sexual discrimination’ that has been associated with the company. This implies that there is a challenge at management level of how to handle the issue of gender equality in handling workers, as well as in recruiting the workers into the organization. Tyson Food has been reported to be discriminatory when it comes to recruitment of workers into the organization, where several women who have qualified for the advertized vacant positions have been denied the opportunity to be employed, based on their gender. This led to a number of those who allegedly were discriminated against suing the company, and the company subjecting its image as well as money to attend to such suits. The leaders of the company have been said to discriminate women when it comes to recruiting employees positions (Buckley, 2011).
Tyson Foods has been reported by US Labor Department to be among the organizations that account for many cases of worker discrimination based on their sexual orientation. Indeed, from the news release of the State Department, the company is said to account for over 1650 female candidates who qualified for positions in the company-advertized vacancies who were denied jobs in its plants (4 plants in Midwest). Revelation of this allegation was accompanied by legal suits against the company to take responsibility of the sexual discrimination actions that they took against qualified female candidates. This happened, as the law and the human resource statutes of the human resource in the US maintain the importance of embracing gender equality in the workplace, as well as at all other levels of management. It is costly, for leaders to neglect appreciating gender equality in the workplace being an ethical requirement, as well as a legal requirement by the law. Human resource managers ought to value human resources regardless of the gender orientation that one has, since this plays a crucial role in motivating the workers, and thus boost their performance (Shilling, 2008).
Tyson Food has been found to account for 1650 qualified female candidates who were denied the opportunity to work based on their gender. This has led to massive costs that the company has to pay. It has been reported that Tyson Fresh Meats has to pay over $ 2.25 million as back payments for these women; it is also obligated to pay interests, as well as benefits to settle the allegations of ‘sexual discrimination’ against it. In addition to these costs, Tyson has been compelled to offer jobs to 220 of the female applicants who were affected upon the positions becoming vacant.
It has been advanced that poor internal management practices by Tyson’s leaders is behind the practice of ‘sexual discrimination’ in Tyson. The question of why the company showed a preference for men against women in the case where both men and women qualified has been a subject matter of study; with increased criticisms against the managers who were given the role recruiting new employees. With all said and done, it remains that ‘sexual discrimination’ is unlawful, unethical and a vice in the practice of human resource management. It is expected that companies should be able to recruit workers who are qualified without any form of prejudice.
This is because "sexual discrimination" in the workplace has negative implications for the organizations, which include Loss to Productivity. This comes because of the victims of sexual discrimination losing their motivation to carry out their roles effectively in the workplace. Loss of morale would reduce the performance of workers, and this would total up to the gross losses the company would face. The world Watch Institute has pointed out that sexual discrimination against a worker directly affects a worker’s productivity.
Ineffective Promotions; leaders who maintain stereotypic views with regard to work performance with respect to gender makes them pass an employee over for promotion on this basis. This often happens in the form of supervisors passing women or men for promotion, because of their preconceived belief about their abilities and roles and abilities. These often cause ineffective job performance in the case where one was promoted, and cannot perform his or her role effectively (Buckley, 2011).
Destruction; in the event that sexual discrimination occurs within the workplace, the faction that is discriminated may be filled with resentment, as well as lose their sense of self worth. This may cause them to resort to destruction as a way to retaliate on the actions of the discriminatory employer/managers, which ultimately may be costly to the organization (Shilling, 2008).
Ways by which Tyson Foods can eliminate Sexual Discrimination
Tyson Company may be able to address the challenge of sexual discrimination among the candidates who apply for new positions, as well as in its workforce through its managers appreciating the need to appreciate diversity in the workplace. The leaders in Tyson Food need to develop a strategy that will enable all the management processes including recruitment to encompass the values of diversity, and acknowledge that the differences that people are useful in striving towards a specific goal. In appreciating diversity, then both sexes (male or female) are useful in reaching towards the company goals.
Developing definite policies that guide the process of recruitment and selection is also necessary to promoting gender equality. Tyson may be compelled to develop its own policy on recruitment that gives guidelines on how all the processes of recruitment and selection are handled. This will help in defining the intention of the company, as well as bringing accountability on all the managers who will be involved in future recruitment processes. These policies would also be instrumental in putting to book all the human resource personnel that are involved in discriminating candidates from getting positions based on their sexual orientation. The policies will also be instrumental in ensuring that the organizations recruitment practices are fair and free from bias.
Employee Training; Tyson Food may also consider subsequent training on its human resource managers who are majorly involved in the company’s recruitment processes. This training may be tailor structured so that the manager can have a better understanding of the internal policies, as well as procedures. The training would also be helpful in giving them skills aimed at making them familiar with expected recruitment practices (Shilling, 2008).
Conclusion
Overall, the challenge of ‘sexual discrimination’ is not only a challenge of leadership in Tyson’s Food, but also a global challenge. In addition, an ethical issue is being handled by various civil groups that advocate for the rights of the gender groups that are discriminated in the workplace. In this sense, it is necessary for Tyson’s leadership team to consider encouraging the practices of fair recruitment practices, appreciation of diversity in the workplace, and respect for human dignity. The suggested views when fully implemented may help the company and others facing the challenge to overcome it, and attract more employees.
References
Buckley, J. (2011). Equal Employment Opportunity Compliance Guide. London: Aspen
Publishers
Shilling, D. (2008). Complete Guide To Human Resources. New York: Aspen Publishers Online
