Discrimination and Stigma Surrounding Employees with Limitations

In reality, most people with limitations who can do even the basic duties of a job, are often denied, demoted, paid less, treated poorly or even harassed because of their limitations (legalaidatwork, 2019). However, this is apparent in the film when Officer Judy was taken by Nick to see his friend, Flash the Sloth at the Department of Mammal Vehicle (DMV) and was surprised to find that all the employees were sloths. In this context, Flash is referred to as an individual with physical limitations as he is slow.

Instead, a uniform workforce was not opted by the company and he was instead welcomed to work in his current position, seen as a potentially reliable, talented employee.

This phenomenon of welcoming physical and mental limitations is not just apparent in the film, but practiced in the hospitality industry too. For example, KFC Malaysia introduced a project of establishing community restaurants operated by hearing and speech impaired employees and has even hired as much as 350 individuals with limitations, through these outlets alone (KFC, 2019). This CSR effort by KFC was to help this deserving section of the community to help themselves to have the right to lead an ample livelihood.

Embracing Cultural and Ethnic Differences

The next issues in diversity are the need to embrace cultural and ethnic differences. This type of embracement musn’t be taken lightly especially in the workplace, it is an incredible aspect that may inspire greater results, stronger creativity and open new windows in an organisation (First2Recruit, 2019). When an organisation adopts a strategy to have a diverse and cultural group, it may enable the company culture to be more appealing (First2Recruit, 2019).

Culture is our viewpoint in which we evaluate what is abnormal or normal, improper or proper through our culture as it forms our identity, referring to our shared values, beliefs, languages, behaviours and norms passed down to us from previous generations (PurdueGlobal, 2019).

Cultural and ethnicity differences are slowly embraced by organisations worldwide, the hospitality industry today are gradually recruiting labourers from different racial, ethnic and cultural groups, therefore, it makes work culture more interesting, because they are able to introduce new ways of thinking, knowledge and experiences, and contribute in language skills. This can be highlighted in the last final scene at the ZPD where Chief Bogo was addressing Nick as the new recruit, you could see different police officers of different ethnicities such as hippo, rhino and lion. All these different individuals with their own cultural perspective make up the extraordinary workforce, which may have been lost if the company had opted for a more uniform workforce.

This embracement of cultural and ethnic differences is not only seen in the film, but practiced in the hospitality industry too. For example, at Hilton Hotel, their core values, vision, and mission revolves around diversity as they are committed towards acquiring a workforce that represents many different background, viewpoints and culture (HiltonNewsroom, 2019). This shows how diversity is important because today, we are living in an era where billions of diverse individuals exists together and diversity is a situation that is inevitable.

Challenges in Practices

One of the challenges that could be identified is Resistance To Change in the workplace. No matter the industry, there will always be employees who will deny to accept that diversity within the workplace is increasing, although gradually. The mentality that an organisation has ‘always done it this way’ would only inhibit company development and hush new ideas, skills and abilities that may have benefited the organisation.

Resistance To Change is more inclined towards the flow of a company’s culture than to integrating more diversity in a workplace. Each worker that brings in new skills and abilities within a company can cause the norms of the organisation within the service industry to change by giving rise to the need for flexibility, in order to have a broader culture — although sometimes these needs are resistant by long-term employees (Lumen, 2019).

Thus, if an organization is unable to create a work environment that acknowledges these new skills and abilities, it could have negative outcome on an employee’s productivity. This challenge would force the minor employees to carry the burden of altering to suit into the current existing culture, therefore, their momentum of work life is repressed to a certain cultural context that is part of the organisations daily encounters (Lumen, 2019).

In the film, even when Judy was able to be ZPD’s first police bunny, she still faces resistance from her colleagues and doesn’t feel welcomed. Furthermore, Chief Bogo despite mentioning that there were 14 missing mammal cases, he was reluctant to give the case to Judy, despite knowing what she is capable of and her proactiveness to step up and handle one of the cases. This shows that there was a lack of acknowledgement of abilities and skills through acceptance and respect.

As a suggestive solution, it’s unimportant why the resistance is, but it is significant that organizations should always educate employees of the reason for their attempts of tapping into the field of diversity, especially to employees who don’t understand why doing so is essential (Sophia, 2019). When organisations makes their standing on diversity transparent, employees would notice they’re at the wrong place and opt to leave eventually. This doesn’t mean they are excluded but mean that these individuals acknowledge that they do not share the same convictions as the remainder of the organisation (Sophia, 2019).

The second challenge is Overcoming Bias Barriers. Humans are always full of bias as a majority of their decisions revolves around intuition, biases and beliefs first, not logic or facts. And with that, even those with no intentions, individuals can still tend to bring bias into daily interactions within the workplace (Sophia, 2019). When a leadership does not overlook a hostile work environment, employees with limitations would be discouraged as they would be less committed and productive towards the goals of an organization, rather they would search for work in another environment instead (AzCentral, 2019).

In the film, Officer Judy was surprised to find out that all employees at the DMV, including Flash were sloths. This shows Judy’s biased attitude towards sloths who work things out at a slower pace, despite the departments acknowledgement of the sloths capabilities. Even if they are sloths, it doesn’t mean that they cannot get the job done well, only just at a slower pace. The same applies to the real world where most often than not, people have that mindset that physically limited people or mentally disabled people are not able to get the job done and would only jeopardize the organisations flow of workforce. The industry should give chance to them, we might learn something from them.

As a suggestive solution, organizations should have employees to go through additional training with the purpose to specifically overcome biases within the workplace. It is important that employees should have a basic understanding of being aware of common biases and how to address or avoid these group biases, although it is unavoidable that certain biases will crawl back into the workplace (Sophia, 2019). In the industry, employees with limitations do tend to run into certain forms of discrimination from insensitive colleagues or maybe overlooked by their employers for their needs or special equipment. Thus, a diverse workplace can be achieved when organisations are informed about behaviour concepts and has effective communications within the workplace (Lumen, 2019).

The last challenge is Conflict Among Employees. Diversity could include age, sexual orientation, gender, disability status and other elements like personalities or work skills. Thereafter, to identify what category these different groups are can be challenging (Lumen, 2019). Unfortunately, in a world full of cultural and ethnical differences, humans will always have unjust preconceived opinions against individuals of different culture, skin colour, religion and ethnicity in their heart and minds than against their own. Such prejudicial mindsets can cause conflict within a work environment and must never be condoned at a workplace or any other place for that matter, and should be dealt immediately with civil manner (Small business, 2019).

Even if there is no prejudice among employees, a diverse work environment can still raise certain communication issues (Smallbusinesschron, 2019). In the film, as Judy links the predators’ barbarity to biology in front of the live press, the situation immediately takes a turn and feels grim. This shows relativeness to our industry, prejudices that individuals have buried will just turn around and cause misinterpretations between employees and reduce workplace efficiency.

As a suggestive solution, leaders of organisations should emphasize on having a culture which values individuals of different backgrounds for their contributions. It is essential to promote an inclusive environment because workers would feel unappreciated for their contributions when they are discriminated. With this, organizations will benefit from the experiences of individuals of different backgrounds within the workforce. (Azcentral, 2019).