 Welcome back. I hope you all had a good lunch but hopefully not too heavy a lunch otherwise you will start to feel sleepy in this session. This last two weeks have been quite hectic for you because we have had more videos and more topics to deal with. This was because the festive season is coming up and we wanted to give you a lighter load in the next couple of weeks because many of you will be celebrating going on holidays, vacation and so on. We covered four topics in these last two weeks under workplace communication. Human diversity in the workplace, global and cultural awareness, integrity in the workplace and sexual harassment in the workplace. I think all of these topics will be very new to you. Also these are not the usual topics which are covered in these kinds of courses or professional development courses or personality development courses. So these are unique contributions from IIT Bombay since we have expertise in these. So at 3 o'clock Dr. Megheshti Dhalvi will come and respond to your questions, give clarifications and explain a little bit more about global and cultural awareness. In the next one hour or so we will be discussing issues related to gender and diversity, integrity and sexual harassment. If you are reading newspapers and watching media regularly, you will know how important these are because there are cases related to this almost on an everyday basis all over the world and almost no organization is free of problems relating to these issues. So these are very serious issues and it is very important that you imbibe the right values with respect to these topics. So what we are going to do now is to do a small exercise. So the issues of gender and diversity, integrity, sexual harassment, all of these are interconnected. All of these relate to how we as human beings interact with others, how much respect we give to each other, how much trust we place on each other, how well we are able to work together. So the binding theme for all these topics is the issue of respect that human beings have for each other. So we will do a small exercise now and then I will also respond to whatever questions or comments that you may have. So this particular activity is called respect activity. So what we would like you to do is to identify a person sitting next to you. You talk to this person for about 5 minutes. Even if you know this person, introduce yourself and spend 5 minutes talking about respect. What about respect will you talk about? So the points mentioned below are given as guidelines. So when you talk about respect or you talk to your partner sitting next to you about respect, discuss what it means to show respect. That is if you want somebody else to show you respect, what does it mean? What does it mean to show respect for other people? How do you want to be treated by other human beings in the workplace or with your friends, colleagues or how do you not want to be treated? If other people treat you in a particular way and you do not like it, please explain. And maybe you can also discuss what are the ways in which you feel respected or disrespected or in what occasions you feel respected or disrespected. So this can be with reference to your gender or ethnicity or religion or region or language or class or rural background, language, any of these issues. So I am going to give you 5 minutes to talk about respect between the two partners. So maybe spend about 2 to 1 half minutes each and then I will come back and take your response. So we'll go to few colleges and get an idea for what students were discussing about and what is the idea or sense of respect that they had. Can we go to Rootsh Mata? Welcome! Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I am Ashwini. Ashwini. Ashwini tell me. Sir actually I think respect in the way we accept the views of the person who is talking to us. We have to listen to what they are saying and while someone is talking to us, we should not listen to something else. I think the eye contact should be kept hence we could show respect to what they are telling and in general case we have to respect our editors or in public places we have to behave properly to others we should not suppress anyone their views what they are doing. Ashwini hold on for a minute so you are giving a series of ideas about what respect means what did your partner tell you I want to know that. Actually we were discussing the same to each other. Okay the same thing what is her idea of respect? She was telling about while behaving in transport buses and all okay we have to stood up when elders are coming someone with health issues are coming we have to stand up for them okay and something like that. Okay thank you very much because you have actually started off very well by giving a very large number of issues related to respect including accepting the views of other people listening looking them in the face respecting elders how to behave in public places not suppressing other people's voices and so on. Thank you very much. Thank you sir. Can we is there somebody else who has raised go a college of engineering welcome. So according to me respect is being considered when a person shares his opinions you have to agree to it even though it is wrong at some point of time you should listen to it properly and then try to convince that person where he or she has gone wrong. Okay and so I feel if you empathize yourself you will be respecting that person in a better manner. Okay thank you okay I did not get your name. Sir my name is Ritika Tupki Desai. Ritika I can also see that you have imbibed some lessons from the gender and diversity module the way in which you were using he and she. So yeah. I have been through the videos. You have been through the videos okay I hope your friends also have seen the videos. So whom did you talk to? In talking to my partner sir. Okay can you give the mic to your partner. Yes sir sure. So can you tell us what Ritika told you about her idea of respect. Sir we both have same opinion. You have both same opinion. So what about the same thing about empathy? Okay. So why do you think we lack empathy sometimes for other people? Sometimes we see that maybe it's not that case that would happen with us also. Okay. It's two different people. Okay. Eventually. So you see you think that empathy is something that bridges gaps between people even though they may have different experiences. That's a very good point because you can begin to respect other people even if you don't agree with them. If you can empathize with why they are saying something or behave in a particular way. Right. Okay. Thank you very much for sharing. We will see if we can come back to you later in this or another session. Thank you Goa. Can we go to another Tande Periyar from Velour. Good afternoon. Sir my thought is that it's important for any person not learning and understanding. For example, a student's mindset physically and mentally present and respect to someone. For example, I respect to you means my mental total is including in this session only. I understand this view. Okay. It's all respect. Okay. So you are from Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu has been famous for having a self-respect movement started by Tande Periyar. You know Periyar's idea of self-respect. So can you tell, share with us what is this idea of self-respect that Periyar gave us? Our college students are self-motivated and self-experienced. Okay. We don't depend upon some other person. Okay. So without depending on others, you need to respect your own ideas, talents, ability. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Let's just go to one more college IERCM, Banipur. Good afternoon sir. Good afternoon. My question is that how body language can express respect to others? Yeah. So that's a very important point because earlier also one of the students mentioned looking a person in the eye. How do you look at a person is also an aspect of body language or non-verbal communication. Later around 330, we will talk about how non-verbal communication also relates to dignity of human beings. Showing respect for others is also about how you treat others using non-verbal communication. Whether you touch somebody inappropriately if you don't like them, looking people in the eye, that shows that you give them respect, making sure you maintain a proper distance. These are all things. So we will come back to this a little later question when we come to non-verbal communication. But you have any particular, did you discuss about respect? Okay. So what you see is that when you, maybe you should do this exercise again, when you have more time, spend more time, give each other 5 minutes, 10 minutes. So when you talk about respect, what we see is that it means many things to many people. It also depends on who you identify yourself as as a man or a woman or a person of third gender, whether you identify yourself in terms of a peaker of a particular language, your religion, your region, whether you come from a particular rural area or an urban area. So what we see is that each of us has a particular notion of respect. So try and understand where people's notions of respect come from. So as we saw with many of these students' responses, some of these ideas of respect are very general about listening, accepting other people's views, having empathy for others, being considerate towards others and so on. But when you start talking to people about respect, you also see that it comes from their own idea of who they are. So a man may have a particular idea of respect, a woman may have a different idea of respect. So a woman would like to be respected as an individual, as a human being, not as a woman. We need to understand how notions of respect help to protect all of us, help to serve our interests, because if the moment you do not respect somebody because of who he or she is, that is when communication breaks down, that is when trust breaks down and this affects work in any office. The other thing you can try and find out when you have this kind of a discussion is, in general, a golden rule that is given to us is that to treat everybody the way you want to be treated. But maybe everybody does not want to be treated in the same way. People want to be respected for their individuality also. So I want to be respected for the language that I speak. I want to be respected for the region I come from. I want my culture to be respected. So each of us wants respect, wants to be treated with respect. But one important problem is when you talk to other people, sometimes you may find that their ideas are not acceptable, their ideas are oppressive. So there may be people who believe that women are not equal to men, that women do not deserve equal status with men. What do you do with some people? How do you treat, give them respect? Issue is that we all can have disagreements. But even when you disagree, even when you think somebody has a view which is not acceptable, we still need to listen to them and then make an argument based on respect, based on advancing the interest of respect for every people. And what we see is if you do this exercise, you will find that people belonging to different backgrounds will have different ideas of respect. Some people may feel that they are not respected because they are women, even though they may have equal skills in terms of knowledge or in terms of certain other abilities. So this kind of an exercise, please do these with multiple partners for about 5, 10 minutes each and see what you can learn. Because the more we learn to respect others, the better we are at ensuring integrity in the workplace. The better we are at ensuring there is no sexual harassment. The better we are at ensuring that we learn the lessons about gender and diversity and apply them in our communication. I would like to do one more small exercise before I take questions from you about any doubts you may have about these three modules. Now here I would like you to give examples from your own real life. So you are all students. Some of you may have worked for a few months or years. Apart from being students, you are also part of society in general. You may be doing voluntary work. You are part of families. You may be part of NGOs. You may be travelling in public. So have you in your life in the past few months, years ever felt discriminated, humiliated or insulted because of who you are? So when I say you have to think of who you are, you can think of yourself as a person with a particular gender identity, caste or ethnicity or region or rural background, family background and so on. It could of course be a combination of all of these. So if you are not comfortable talking about this, that is okay. You do not have to give me names. You do not have to give me all details. But if you can let us know any incident in your life where you felt discriminated or humiliated, we would like you to share it with us because this would give a concrete example for all the other students about what is acceptable, what is not acceptable, what is considered to be respectful and what is disrespectful. So those who would like to respond to this, please raise your hand. Please press the hand raise button. This is Gitanjali Institute of Science and Technology Gangavaram Nellore. Good afternoon sir, I am Shweta. People notion of respect is coming our heart because if we want to really give respect, it comes from our heart otherwise it will be like an acting. So have you had an experience where somebody acted towards you and did not come from the heart? In some cases. Could you like to give us an example? Can you or someone else from this room give us an example of how they felt they were not treated with respect or they were discriminated against because of who they are. It may have happened to your friends also not just to you. Good afternoon sir. I am very honoured to be in your class of IIT Bombay. We have gone through both sessions that have happened in the past and we are very happy to have that and we also have been well known with many of the issues that will be happening in the workplace communication. And sir, today when topic is about respect actually the respect actually comes from heart as one of my friend told and respect is the most important factor that decides the man's character in my aspect of view. First of all if you are in some place and we need to go through the persons who we don't know. Then I think the respect will make us a way to make our work to do easily because if we communicate with the other person in a respectful manner good outcome from them. So I think the respect is very important for us to be inculcated in us. Thank you. I want to say that we are all equally honoured to have you as students because I know you are all putting an enormous amount of effort. So if it were not for the encouragement we get from thousands of students registering for these courses we will not feel enthusiastic about teaching. So thank you. Have any of you faced any situation in real life where you felt insulted or humiliated or discriminated against because of your background? When we went to another place recently I went to Chennai where I am not good with the Tamil or I am not good with the place. So I had a little work of my technology called research which I am doing currently upon my project. So I wanted to actually communicate with the people there and I don't know how to speak with the Tamil but I am a little bit good with Hindi and English. So I went simply up there, did some notions of what I need in Hindi and some of the persons there had understood what I had actually told and I made my work to do fluidly. So that's very nice because one of the great things we like about our country is that we are very diverse in terms of almost every other culture. So that's the way in which we work together is by accepting each other's differences. So thank you very much for that input and comment. Let's go to another college, J.H. Raisoni, welcome. Sir, our one student wants to ask a question. Sir, I am from Raisoni and my question is what are the basic elegance or rules while rejoining the new workplaces? Actually, I had a very specific question to you. We'll come back to the questions in a little while. My question was, have any of you experienced in real life an incident where you felt insulted or humiliated or discriminated because of your social or cultural background? I think many of you did not get the question properly. Asia Pacific is there somebody? Otherwise, I'll just move to the other general questions. Asia Pacific, would somebody like to share? Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon. Sir, I am Rajesh Sharma from APIAT SD India Panipat. I want to tell about this practice. That is basically the feeling of deep admiration about someone as according to someone's experience in his life, we follow him and his rules and respect him. Sir, I want to ask something as according to the place and time, female developers are in less in numbers, companies hire less amount of girls in their companies. This is the discrimination between the girls and the boys. Yes. Thank you for that question. In fact, we have been here in IIT. I have also been working on that. So, in fact, just last week, we had Deutsche Bank who came and gave a conducted a session on how women can be encouraged to both upset for placement and get more jobs. So, partly it is discrimination at the level of companies, partly it is also related to how we inculcate certain skills in women to apply for these jobs and get these jobs. So, there tends to be a discouragement either from teachers or from family or from their own peers. Even though men and women or boys and girls may have equal ability, we find that in placement, women tend to get less jobs. So, why it happens is something that you will have to sit with all the companies that come for placement in your own organization. There are other expectations and how you can help women to also meet those expectations. Maybe some special sessions need to be organized like we did last week here in IIT so that women know what exactly these companies expect, some training can be given, and then they also perform equally well. That is what we see. But we also need to ensure that companies have this policy of equality for men and women. So, thank you very much for that question. Thank you, sir. Thank you. So, we have about 15 minutes left before Dr. Dalvi, we will come. So, any if you have any general questions, comments or clarifications about the three modules where I give the lectures, that is on gender and diversity in communication, integrity in the workplace, and thirdly, sexual harassment. On any of these videos or the reading material, if you have any questions, now is the time when you can clarify them. You can also use the discussion forum later. IARCEM. In the corporate world, we can see that women are having big blasts. How this can be done? How this can be done? Okay. Yeah, thank you for this question. This question was about the glass ceiling. So, what it indicates is that even though more and more women are entering the workforce, whether in the private sector or in the government sector or in universities, we find very few of them actually go to the top. So, last week, and this is true all over the world, the glass ceiling effect is talked about in the US, in Europe and in all countries. So, last week, there was a visitor from Germany who was telling us that 86% of all the research institutes have men as the directors. Even though women are equally capable, women are in large numbers, women are about 40% of the scientists. They do not become directors. So, having women in decision-making positions is very important because then they can change policies to make them more appropriate and suitable for other women also to get into the organization, make them more friendly to meet women's needs, whether it is maternity leave or other kinds of needs, childcare, having crushes and all those kinds of things and having more flexibility because women play a greater role in family and caregiving. So, this glass ceiling effect is slowly coming down in certain sectors. For example, if you look at banks in India, most of the large banks are headed by women, whether it is SBI or ICSEI or many of these banks. So, slowly the glass ceiling is beginning to come down in some sectors, but not yet in other sectors, especially in the engineering sector. So, what we need is to provide equal opportunities, whether you are male or female, what has to be recognized is the ability, the skill, the talent, the merit. Unfortunately, that is not happening. So, we are hoping that you, who is the younger generation, when you get into the workforce, you will change this. And especially with young men like you, I think the glass ceiling will slowly come down. I am not able to hear you, but we will move on. This is IIT Roper. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon. Firstly, I am saying about respect on my side and my opinion. I think respect is the combination of two things, our body language and our words. Language does not depend upon our respect because our word depends upon our respect and our body language. When our body language is not correct and our word is correct, then we totally respect about ourselves and the show our disrespect to another. So, this point of view on my side. And in gender problem, sir, India, more of issues created by gender. The girls do not prefer and why some things is preferred first. These issues, I think education must be created great help. Thank you. Just two quick responses. While education is important, a lot of educated people also behave very badly. So, what we really need is that beyond education, we also need people who have empathy and sensitivity. Can you give me an example of body language which you consider to be respectful or disrespectful? So, your first point was about body language. Can you give an example? I think you are not able to get our audio. I think technically. Go to College of Engineering. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon. Let me give you back again. So, my question is everyone talks about gender equality like woman empowerment. Besides men, women, there exists a third gender. Yes. Which is legal in Supreme Court. Now, my question is like how you mentioned about the pronouns C class C. What pronoun we can actually use for that third gender? Because it can be a source of disrespect for them too. This is somewhat difficult issue because one is the third gender is used to describe people who may not identify themselves as male or female. But then the third gender is a very broad umbrella concept also to refer to various other kinds of gender identities. My response to you would be twofold. One is to find out what is the gender identity that a particular person prefers. Third gender can be transgender. It can be a person who identifies with a particular gender. So, whether a person would be like to be identified as male or female, you can find out and address the person using that pronoun or noun. Or if we do not have an idea of which gender they would prefer to identify with, then we tend to use the plural pronoun like they. So, that is an accepted practice nowadays. So, if you want to avoid the use of male or female pronouns, we use the plural pronoun like they or there because those are gender neutral. So, you try to use a gender neutral word but we have not yet developed other pronouns to use in the case of third gender. The English language is still not developed. So, because it becomes difficult for addressing you as a third person. Absolutely. So, it is like if I am mentioning myself, if I am mentioning about someone else, if I am talking about a girl, I will like she is something. If I am mentioning about that particular category what should I say. You are absolutely right. So, we have not yet developed second person pronouns to refer to such people. So, we do not have such words in the English language. So, in academic or other workplace communication, you can use plural pronoun like they and so on. Otherwise it is better to ask an individual what he or she wants to be referred to as and then use that term. This is also one of the golden rules in communication. When in doubt ask, find out what words people would prefer and then use them. So, that is one example of respect that when you do not know, do not just use any word, ask people how they would like to be referred to and use that. Thank you. Time for just one last question. Maybe we can go to Valchan. And welcome to WIT. Thank you. My name is Virag Berthia and I am studying in T Mechanical. Sir, my point of view regarding respect is it is something which is not to be formalized means it should come from bottom of heart. Let us go to the basic thing. Just respect is not speaking in as you said there are some specific words which matters. But more important what I feel is it should come from the heart how deep your feeling is like you said the word empathy and that all things come from the ethics. Lastly this all things relates to ethics and morality what you owe and one more thing I like to say sir comfortability. So, respect is something you make comfortable to others like if someone is coming he also feels comfortable and the situation can move on. Respect of which what the present situation is we like to speak or we like to communicate in our own mother tongue or means our own linguistic languages. But the important thing is how comfortable we make person among means front of us and how comfortable he is to communicate that is the point what I feel is. Thank you very much. I think this is a very good summing up that you have done as well. It is a good point to end this segment of the workplace communication face-to-face for these three topics. So, the two points I just like to reiterate for everybody one is making other people comfortable because the more comfortable we are with each other the better we can work with each other. The second thing about empathy that it has to come from the heart. So, it is not just about being politically correct it is not just about using the right words but knowing in your heart that you are doing the right thing towards other people. So, these two are excellent points and we hope that you will continue learning about these issues because these are not things that you learn overnight. These are things skills you acquire over a lifetime. So, please keep practicing and learning more and keep watching the videos that we have given you on these topics and if you have any further questions you can always get back through the discussion forum. So, I am going to end this session here. So, Dr. Magistri Dalvi will join us and any questions or comments you have about global and cultural awareness you can post to her and she will also elaborate on some of the points that she has made and in her video. Thank you very much. I would like to introduce Dr. Magistri Dalvi. You have all seen her videos on global and cultural awareness. So, earlier you told me that you have all seen these videos. If you have any questions or comments you can take them but first I would like to ask Dr. Dalvi to say a few words on her video and why it is so important to learn skills related to global and cultural awareness in the workplace. Good afternoon everybody. You have seen the video global and cultural awareness in workplace communication. Three main points were discussed over there. You are in doubt be formal always observe and then follow and always be polite. Three basic rules of workplace communication in the global environment. There was a quiz following this discussion and video and I am sure all of you have attempted it. If you have any questions or any explanation required please ask. Good afternoon sir. Myself Chinmay. I am from WIT. Welcome you. According to my opinion workplace communication is one type of ethics. It comes from our community what they can teach to how should respect to senior citizens, how to respect some elder person as well as senior faculty. It just I think same thing is there. Now both are communicating with each other. Then what thing when you are seeing that then you say that it is you giving a good respect. That is a thing that you are interacting with each other. What will be your words you are representing in front of the people as well as your gestures and postures that is it matter well I think. Yeah you are very right. When you are talking or communicating with your colleagues whether they are colleagues in office or your remote colleagues. It is very important to respect the other person. And the way of showing respect is typically what we know in our own community from our own experience from our own culture and from our own upbringing. But we also have to understand that the other person may not be from the same. This is true even when you are working in India with Indian colleagues. But especially very important when you are working with colleagues who are not from India who are from other countries. Because their culture their way of responding to different situations. Their way of showing respect is quite different from ours. Typically in Indian culture we say sir, ma'am or we say G like Raghav G and that is a typical way of addressing a senior person. Now what happens in a global business scenario is quite often you do not know how old the other person is. Quite often you have communicated only by email to that person. You have never seen him or her you have never spoken with him or her. So the starting point I would say is always give proper respect even if you have not met the person in person or on phone. So begin your communication let us say email communication with appropriate respect. Now what does respect mean in Indian culture is typically we will say sir. In western countries they do not want to hear sir they just want to hear the names. But in certain countries even in western part of the world they prefer calling mister or miss. So how do you communicate all this without actually meeting the person or actually being aware of this culture. The simple idea is observe and follow. If you have received any communication from that person see how that person has addressed you. If he has addressed you as say mister Raju then while responding you also respond as mister Sam. If he has addressed you as just Raju high Raju then you can respond saying hi Sam. So it is a simple logic of following what the other person is doing. Same thing happens when you are communicating with a person on phone. Since you have not met the person how senior he is. But always presume that he is a senior person show appropriate respect and only when that person opens up towards you and suggests that we become more rather less formal and more informal then only you can drop the titles or show of respect and become more friendly. Does that answer your question? Do you want to ask anything more? Yes mam. What I think is the respect should be given but it should not be given in the sake of expectations. What happens usually is individual is there like a youth boy gives respect to someone or a girl gives respect to someone and if it does not get the same respect same degree of respect. Some other point he feels now that person is not a perfect person to speak out. But what I personally feel is respect of the expectations we should just give the respect as said earlier from the bottom of the heart and next to that is the another thing is as I said if a person beside you is not respecting you and still what you will do means will you respect or how will you react. What I feel is at that time you need to decide your degree of respect but that degree of respect should not include disrespect means you should not disrespect the person. You can decide the degree of respect how much you want to give and that depends upon what it means to you. This what I feel is decorates a person of a person. Yes you are right. To a certain extent it is very true that some minimal respect we have to give whether we know the person whether we are aware how senior how experienced how talented how good he is. There is a minimal level of respect expected in business communications. Whether it is to face communication like we are talking to each other or communication through mail. So always keep that minimum respect level there in all communications the other person will start earning your respect more by his performance. So what matters in business is performance and not age but at the same time you have to remember that in eastern cultures including our culture in India age demands respect so what you can do in Indian scenario is begin with the expected respect of that particular age group and then adjust according to the behavior of the other person. There is also very important thing to remember is never lose your cool in business scenario. If that other person does not give you enough respect you find out how you can earn that person's respect. Typically what happens is when you leave campus and join work place obviously you need some time period to adjust to the work culture in general work culture as well as work culture of that particular company. Now in that situation what happens is the seniors or the persons who have been there for 5 years plus they already have the work culture of that particular company in them and they expect you to immediately follow in line immediately follow that same culture and obviously there will be some overlap of period where this is not going to happen. So that person may I use suspiciously you may I that person suspiciously but in business environment you always have to maintain cool and expect you are expected to maintain a basic respect to everybody whether that person is senior junior experienced not experienced whether his role is much above you or below you whatever. From a personal experience I would say respect and give respect to all the people in the company whether it is a boy serving UT or the lift man or whoever he is. A minimum level of respect is always needed to be given. That is what we mean by work place ethics or work place behaviour roles. Sir you would like to add something. That was a good point you raised and thank you for that prompt. Thank you so much ma'am. Geetanjali Institute. Welcome to Geetanjali. I have a question about global cultural awareness. When a person from any other country or abroad came to India he is exhibiting his customs way of behaviour his way of behaviour in our India that means if he is a client to us he is exhibiting his customs in front of us which makes us to feel so much discomfort. How can we tell him that we are not aware of your culture so we are feeling so much discomfort due to your custom exhibitors but we need to respect his customs without showing any discrimination on to him. How can we convince him that we are respecting his culture but we are not able to follow it. This is a very good question. Typically what happens is whenever one person from any company from any culture or any country visits another country or even opens business with another country they are given a training for get them aware of the other culture and what is typically good, bad accepted, not accepted. For example when I work in industry and quite often we work with US clients. When these clients come to India they are given a brief training about what to expect in India. Now what happens in reality expectations sometimes are very funny they expect cows on the road they expect bad traffic they expect spicy food as soon as they land their entire perception changes now when we are hosting them it is our responsibility to adjust them to this reality. It is not going to happen immediately there will be some mismatch initially and this always happens when people from India go abroad they also take time to get acclimatized to that culture and a similar reverse situation we can expect now the typically what happens is the person who is going who liaisons with this client or the client representative he is expected to slowly, politely, you know indirectly quite often to explain to the guest that certain things are okay in India and certain things are not allowed or they do not look good with our culture it may take 2-3 days time once the person arrives as I said the representative from Indian company who liaisons with the guest it is his responsibility to make this happen and it does happen we have seen this happen so the person typically who will come in shorts and t-shirt on the first day second day he will be slightly better days give them some time to get adjusted if it does not work immediately take the person aside explain what is okay and generally things will be better after 2-3 days you will find that tourists also when they visit India they are typically told what to do and what to wear and how to behave in public so people are generally aware they also check on internet what can work and what cannot and the remaining wrinkles you are supposed to iron out answer your question yes sir I got the answer thank you Amrita school of engineering column good afternoon please ask your question good afternoon sir I am from Amartha University I have a question if we encounter discrimination on our workplace what should we do about it should we ignore it or do we do actually anything about it this is a very good question what typically happens is when you see discrimination against you specifically first step would be to see whether you have read the signals or understood the situation correctly because sometimes what happens is the person may have said something without any intention of discrimination it may be just casual statement and that person in general is not discriminating type of person so first take a call what you have observed whether with you or with another person is really a case of discrimination or not if it is so the next step would be to approach the HR all companies typically in all major companies the HR department is expected to take care of these issues and you can approach them with these concerns and they will be able to talk you through what steps you need to take after that if required they can talk to that person also does that answer your question does that answer your question or is there anything else you want to ask thank you hello yes my name is Amrita so I have been interacting with people from other countries for a few weeks now and it is workplace communication like it is professional so once I was reprimanded for saying something I said it in a very light mood go crazy I was reprimanded for saying that so because they were like it is sensitive to some people they might feel that it is derogatory to people who are actually mentally a little bit off see again this would not be allowed of not sound mind so is there some way that I can know because I don't want to make this mistake again is there somewhere I can know in your video you did say you have to observe and learn but this kind of stuff will not come up in normal conversation it may take time for you to understand and learn but basic rule that you can start with is whenever you are in workplace you are no longer in campus so you have to adjust to that adult environment where saying anything behaving anything is not acceptable there is certain level of formality that needs to be maintained at all times when you are interacting with colleagues especially in workplace you know very light mood or just want to have fun or maybe it is a cultural program or a Friday evening program but still a minimum level of decency and formality is expected if you can maintain that you will not face such a situation however also understand that certain companies take the political correctness to a very high level and they take it very seriously so any casual remark of this kind is also not acceptable to them this will take time for you to learn so as I have said and as you rightly pointed out observe and learn you might make certain mistakes initially and when they hire new persons directly from campus they are aware some such mistakes can take place so from both the sides this observation should go on for some time and then you will be able to align with the culture with the workplace culture properly you also have to remember that many big companies organize orientation program and you can ask such questions about what level of casualness or informality is acceptable in that workplace sir you would like to add something so when you work with colleagues at a particular point of time after several weeks or months you also become friends with them so you have to make an assessment when you become more like friends and you can say certain things and they would not take it amiss and get offended by it so till such time as ma'am was also saying it is always better to maintain a certain level of formality and not indulge in loose talk because people can get offended by this second thing to remember is that many of the terms we are used among friends among in college school and all to use terms like crazy and puggle and mad and all of that what we must remember is that some of these terms are also technical even terms like idiot and moron which we use all the time these are technical terms in psychology which refer to certain kinds of mental abilities so that is the point that I think your colleague was trying to say that these are, these refer to certain kinds of mental issues so you cannot just use them loosely so the best thing always is to learn what is acceptable or not and people do not mind being asked if you do not know just ask what they are comfortable with and then you can use them so remember that when you join a new workplace directly from campus or when you change companies for initial days you have to be very careful because you are in a new place you are being observed and you also have to observe how others are behaving so take it slowly as sir said that even if you are friends with a particular person at a later time when you are in a workplace in office or in conference or in meeting that certain level of formality must be maintained for example certain in certain companies husband and wife both may work but they are not expected to talk like husband and wife in office in office they are expected to talk exactly like colleagues in one place where I was working brother and sister were working together they were working on the same project but they used to maintain a lot of formality when we knew that they were brother and sister we found it funny to a certain extent but they were very right because when you are communicating in workplace decency and formality needs to be maintained I just want to tell you that you have posed a question about how discrimination is to be handled but I think Dr. Dalvi has just responded to a similar question about taking it to the HR and assessing first whether it was meant to be discriminatory so that's a question that's already been answered so we can take one last question because we have to move on to the next session Good afternoon sir, myself Vishnu Priyam Question is that what is in workplace ethic while interacting with senior people in company ma'am? You are talking about communication or ethics see ethics will remain the same whether you are dealing with a senior person or a junior person, client customer anybody but in case of communication whether again similar I will say whether you are dealing with a senior or junior customer, client or anybody in the workplace formality and respect has to be maintained if you are talking to a senior person you are aware that that person has had a lot of experience in that particular field you can learn something from that person and that person is also capable of driving the team to better performance so keep these things in mind always and approach that person accordingly so we are coming to the end of this session and there were lots of good points and good questions raised and I thank you for your contribution and participation just remember these things that when we are talking about different cultures we always have to remember that we have done certain things in a certain way but different people approach things in a different way their upbringing is different their philosophy towards life is different so the simple rule is wait, watch observe, learn from them and try to guide yourself to their culture the next step obviously would be to learn something from their culture and also try to follow that in your own life thank you very much for joining us today bye from here