What's The Big Deal?

ONE HR EXEC’S APPROACH TO DEALING WITH MICRAGGRESSIONS

- Kandia Johnson

NAMED ONE OF THE TOP 50 UNSTOPPABLE WOMEN in HR technology, Sarah Morgan is a woman on a mission to drive awareness, change, and conversation about controversial issues such as harassment and microaggressions in the workplace.

Her nearly 20 years of experience in human resources laid the foundation for her current role as senior director of human resources at Safe Streets USA. However, her climb up the ladder of success was not without incident. One of the challenges Morgan has faced is dealing with microaggressions in the workplace. “Once, there was a weekly managers’ meeting and the person coordinating the meeting was a man,” says Morgan. He sent out an email to all the women managers asking for volunteers to take notes each week and send minutes to the group; he left off the men who were managers from the request. On another occasion, a woman co-worker who’d just returned from a vacation to the beach held her tanned arm next to mine, laughed, and said, ‘I’m blacker than you.’ According to Morgan, this subtle yet harsh behavior may come in three forms: