Imagine if every employee started their day with a giant stack of marbles.
Each marble represents emotional resilience. A marble is removed from their stack whenever they experience a negative workplace interaction. Losing one marble might not seem significant at the time, but these losses add up. Because when enough marbles are removed, the entire pyramid topples over.
The thing is, you don’t know how many marbles someone is starting their day off with. Some employees come to work with low levels of emotional resilience and a snub, insult or off comment like a microaggression can make an employee crack.
Which is why it’s important HR educates the organisation about microaggressions and establishes clear guidelines to prevent them in the workplace.
What are microaggressions?
Microaggressions, defined by The Micropedia of Microaggression (an encyclopedia of microaggressions), are intentional or unintentional yet subtle workplace snubs or insults that communicate prejudice toward any group, particularly marginalised groups at work.
A microaggression might appear as a compliment, like “You're beautiful for an Indigenous girl”, or something seemingly harmless to someone of Asian decent like, “Where are you really from?” or a subconscious action like moving to the other side of a meeting room to avoid someone from Indonesia because they have a different diet.
Microaggressions can be intentional or unintentional, covert or overt. A colleague may be trying to give a compliment, but it rubs off as thoughtless. Sometimes, people are just trying to make connections and understand why people are the way they are and are curious about someone's background, and without realising it, their line of inquiry moves into insulting territory.
Microaggressions can be verbal, like when an employee makes a comment or asks a hurtful or stigmatising question. They can also be behavioural, such as when someone acts in a discriminatory or hurtful way. Or environmental, when a workplace discriminates or makes an employee feel excluded through design.
Microaggression examples
Examples of verbal microaggression are:
- Commenting to a person of Asian descent “You like noodles, right?”
- Calling a colleague something different to their name and letting them know, “Your name is too difficult to say”
- Using derogatory phrases that others find offensive, even though you know people find it offensive
- Asking a gay colleague, “Who is the ‘man’ in your relationship?”
- Commenting on someone’s English who isn’t from Australia and assuming they weren’t raised in an English-speaking country
Examples of behavioural microaggressions are:
- Mistaking an Asian/Indian colleague for a service worker
- Assuming an older colleague is not digitally literate and excluding them from a work chat or tech reward program
- During a performance review, telling a female colleague they have a “bulldog mentality”
- Making a disabled or neurodiverse colleague feel excluded by assuming they can’t participate in after-work drinks
Examples of environmental microaggressions are:
- Naming conference rooms exclusively after men
- Failing to create processes or an environment where people can share gender pronouns or their sexual orientation
- Displaying office decorations that are culturally incentive that feature stereotypes of a particular cultural, racial, or ethnic group
- Office collateral or promotional materials like brochures, website images, or recruitment ads that only feature people from a dominant group
Most of the comments made are usually well-intentioned, which makes them ‘micro’. However, intent is not the same as impact, and a throwaway comment can significantly affect someone’s day. So, HR must educate the rest of the organisation on microaggressions and develop clear guidelines that keep microaggressions out of your office.
Building an inclusive workplace takes time. And when an employee experiences microaggressions, it tears down the work HR and other employees have spent creating an inclusive and safe environment.
The best way HR can protect employees and the culture they’ve built is to educate employees and create awareness about microaggressions and how to address them in the workplace.
How to deal with microaggressions
Implement regular training sessions that go beyond the definition of microaggressions and use real-life scenarios to illustrate how they play out.
Depending on the makeup of your organisation, incorporate interactive elements like role-playing exercises to help employees recognise and respond to overt or covert microaggressions. This helps employees identify and address microaggressions effectively.
Also develop clear and accessible reporting mechanisms should be developed that employees can use to report microaggressions confidentially.
When a microaggression is reported, address it promptly and impartially, using transparent processes that may involve mediation or disciplinary action if necessary. Regularly review and update company policies to reflect a genuine commitment to diversity and inclusion, ensuring they clearly define unacceptable behaviours and outline the consequences.
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