Reference no: EM133505033

"Mark Diaz joined Copperas and Lanai Metal Fabricators as a human resources manager after earning his graduate degree in Human Resources from a university in New York. An American-born Latino of African descent, Diaz is bilingual and speaks without accent English or Spanish. Early on, Diaz's Latino coworkers spoke Spanish to him but ceased doing so when Mark did not seem to understand or attempt to reply in Spanish. Mark had learned to hide his bilingualism early in his work-life to avoid having to do uncompensated translation that kept him from doing the work he was hired to do. In his HR first role out of college, Mark was required to translate all the hiring documents into Spanish and to conduct all training sessions in Spanish and English. When he asked for more compensation for these tasks, he was told that these were within his job requirements, even though the other, monolingual HR employee employed at the same company did not have to conduct double training sessions and was not able to help with translating documents. After those experiences, Diaz made the decision to hide his Spanish fluency when he was hired at a new company. Passing for monolingual has come with a cost for Diaz, and now he must make a decision that will compromise his cover after six months at Copperas & Lanai. Diaz recently overheard two Spanish-speaking employees describe a series of offensive remarks that a supervisor made to the receptionist, who also speaks Spanish. Presumably because they assumed Diaz didn't speak Spanish, the two employees were talking candidly about the incident while having lunch together in the breakroom. The supervisor in question had apparently told the receptionist, a newly hired recent graduate, that she could progress more quickly if she "dressed more feminine", and "maybe wore a bit of makeup". The receptionist had confided in the other employees that she was thinking of filing a complaint with HR, but the other employees discouraged her not to do so and instead encouraged her to take the advice of the supervisor to advance and mot importantly, to avoid any negative repercussions from filing a complaint, which they had seen happen in other cases. As an HR manager, Diaz knew the supervisor had crossed a line and should be reprimanded and corrected before the situation deteriorates further However, a someone who clearly was not expected to understand the conversations between the two employees, he is unsure of his next steps.

What should Diaz do about employees who may feel the need to pass in other ways at work?