Dealing with discrimination of overweight employees

What happens if you hire the competent, motivated, and best person for the job? Usually this means you expect this person to benefit your company and help it grow. What happens if this person is overweight? Even though we live in a society that teaches us to overlook small things like this, there is no getting around that fact that discrimination may occur. You can hope that your employees will overlook the weight issue and respect this person for who they are, but it is common for other people to give them the cold shoulder. So what do you do? Is it time to hold individual meetings with everyone and find out why they are not including the new employee? Should you talk to the new employee and ask them how they feel about their co-workers? It would be nice for everyone to get over it and see the error of their own ways, but production doesn't have time to wait for people to sort through their feelings.

The worst thing a company can do is hold a big staff meeting and put this person on display. You don't want to embarrass your new employee and you are not the mom and dad of the other employees sent there to teach them manners. You may need to face the fact that everyone won't get along harmoniously. Some people may like to work with their favorite music playing, which is fine until it distracts their co-workers that don't seem to share their appreciation for heavy metal music. Other employees may prefer to work alone and they do not like to participate in the group.

Set some clear rules in the office and let everyone know they need to treat one another with mutual respect. Explain to everyone that their personal judgments are to be let outside the door and they cannot discriminate against one another. Set guidelines about everyone's job functions and discuss the importance of recognizing when a staff member is courteous, responsive, and helpful.

Set a good example for your new employees by including the new employee often. Invite this person to lunch and be-friend them. Once the other employees see that this person is on your "good side" they may make a stronger effort to include them.

If you have a manager over that department, talk to them about the situation. Ask them to report to you what they observe about the way the new employee works with others. Watch for any sign of harassment or discrimination because the overweight employee could always hire a good lawyer and take your company to the cleaners. If the situation doesn't improve, you may need to re-assign the employees to different areas. Try placing them on different shift schedules where they will not run into one another. Of course if the overweight employee is not accepted by anyone in that department, you may want to speak to them and discuss their options.

Assign this person to a new team where they will have new employees to work with. Hopefully the new group will be more accepting of this person. If you have a meeting with this group before you bring in the overweight employee, you can prepare them and explain to them the consequences of discrimination.

The rules of the office should be clear. Respect for one another should be one of your top priorities if you want to have a successful business. Employees do not need to like each other but they at least need to respect one another for the different skills they each bring to the table. Have regular employee performance evaluations with each employee and rate them on how they are living up to the rules of the company. Tell them where you expect to see improvement. You don't need to flat out say "be nicer to your coworkers" simple tell them you feel their skills need to improve when it comes to working with their co-workers. If they ask about it, give them a little detail about things you have noticed like not asking for help or ignoring other employees.