Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, and the Age Discrimination Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967, discriminatory practices and behaviors in the workplace are forbidden. One common form of employment discrimination is harassment, both sexual and otherwise.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines harassment as: “the act of irritating or tormenting persistently.” In a work environment, harassment can take many forms: racial slurs, offensive language, or unwanted sexual contact, to name a few examples. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission defines illegal harassment using several criteria:

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Every day in workplaces - from the Fortune 50 to NGOs, from non-profits to mom and pop ventures - folks at work are living in fear - fear of losing their jobs, fear of being judged and criticized, fear of being disliked, fear of being embarrassed, fear of being ostracized, or fear of facing uncomfortable challenges or problems.

Every day in workplaces, folks experience inappropriate and egregious behaviors - deceit, fraud, harassment (verbal, sexual, physical, etc.), gossiping, bullying, lying, cheating and stealing.

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In the late 1950’s Fredrick Herzberg did a landmark study on human relations and how it related to motivation in the workplace. He concluded that there were two factors relating to motivation in the workplace and broke it down into the hygiene theory and the motivation theory. The first part if his findings related to the work environment. The elements of hygiene involved:

•The company

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1. Identify who is angry

Train your managers and employees to identify the behaviors that can signal an anger challenged co-worker and have a positive system that will report these behaviors to management for further investigation. Do not wait.

2. Identify why they are angry

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Knowing thyself is an in-depth understanding of “who I am.” and “how I am.” This understanding of one’s self is the product of the formal and informal experiences of living life. But, to be clear, this understanding is not the result of simply “having” experiences, but is the result of deep, consistent and conscious reflection on one’s experiences, i.e., lessons learned (the good, the bad and the ugly).

Much self-awareness occurs as the result of experiencing an inner conflict which tugs on our sleeve and forces us to change. One of the results of such transformation is that we often change our value system which is reflected in new ways of thinking, be-ing and do-ing.

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A basic requirement as a merchandiser, accident prevention is the responsibility of a store owner who is expected to assist management in any unsafe behavior as outlined by the company’s established safety regulations and procedures. Employees should never be expected to work in an unsafe environment.

And while most people blame accidents on unsafe conditions, most accidents are caused by unsafe behaviors and the best way to eliminate accidents is to avoid unsafe practices.

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An office affair can have a detrimental effect on your career and on the dynamics of the workplace in general.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, and despite the danger of sexual harassment, there’s a lot of loving going on in the office. The warming of the workplace reflects a much more wide-scale upheaval in the ways we work. Given endless workweeks, the reclaiming of emotional wholeness, and a new ideal of love as partnership, it makes a lot of sense to a lot of people – except the human resources department! In an age full of disclosure, it may be wise, anyway, to meet under fluorescent light than candlelight.

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The work environment is undergoing constant change, i.e. in factories, manufacturing units; production houses the work scenario and working condition is changing. Prolonged working hours, specialization of job profiles, technical complexities for jobs, increase in work pressure, etc are some of the major aspects of work environment that are undergoing changes. In the industrial set ups competition is growing by leaps and bounds. So the main concentration of employers is to increase production, maintain quality of the products yet make the long working hours more pleasant and safe in terms of accidents and fatigue for the employees. There are certain aspects of work environment which could exert positive effect on working capacity of the employee like better working atmosphere and certain which could exert negative influence on the employees like unhygienic working interiors.

Hours of work and its effect on production

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