Workplace discrimination and its impact on employees’ performance Perceptions of private sector workers in Ghana

Abstract

The study examined the effect of workplace discrimination on the performance of employees in selected private companies in Ghana. The study adopted the quantitative approach and descriptive research design using randomly sampled 123 members from the population size. Structured questionnaires were used to obtain data from the respondents and processed using the IBM SPSS Statistics version 24. Using the mean, standard deviation scores, and Pearson product-moment correlation matrix, and multiple regression analysis, the findings of the study revealed that the respondents agreed that disability discrimination had the highest mean with standard deviation, followed by gender discrimination. The findings of the study also revealed that the respondents were of the opinion that they stand to be neutral. Thus, racial discrimination had the highest mean with standard deviation followed by age discrimination and finally, ethnic discrimination. In furtherance of the study revealed that there is a significant negative relationship between racial discrimination and employee performance. Correspondingly, the results of the study showed a significant negative relationship between gender discrimination and employee performance. The results revealed that there exists a significant negative correlation between disability discrimination and employee performance, similarly, the results show an insignificant positive relationship between age discrimination and employee performance, and finally, the results revealed that there is a significant negative relationship between ethnic discrimination and employee performance In furtherance, the results of the study revealed that racial discrimination significantly and negatively predicts employee performance. Finally, the results of the study revealed that ethnic discrimination insignificantly and positively predicts employee performance. The study recommends that human resource managers should be careful while hiring and promoting employees and providing facilities to employees in order to avoid any workplace discrimination because it has a direct relationship with employee performance.