Understanding and Recognizing Microaggressions in the Workplace
Let’s take a moment to think about your workplace. Answer the following questions to help guide the creation of your mental image. It may be helpful to take some notes on your reflections, but these do not have to be shared.
- What does your office look like? Do you work in-person or remote?
- Do you have coworkers in your position? What is your relationship with your coworkers like?
- Do you have a supervisor? How does your supervisor contribute to your work environment?
- How does the physical environment of your workspace make you feel? Does it help or inhibit positive interactions with those you work with?
Some of these questions may be easy to answer, after all, you are thinking about an environment that you are in many days out of the week. However, there is one question that is equally as important to creating your work environment that we might consider less often. That is:
“How safe do you feel at work? Have you ever seen microaggressions in the workplace?”
This question can sometimes be difficult to answer, because we are often not taught to fully understand and recognize microaggressions.
In this lesson, we will be exploring how we can understand microaggressions in the workplace, and how we can recognize them and their impact. Let’s get started!
Learning Objective
By the end of this lesson, I will be able to:
- Understand the impact of microaggressions on the emotional and professional well-being of Indigenous employees.
