"They Ain't Fat and Lazy" - Obese Employees also Work Hard

[alisbabe]

Finally, obese workers can heave a sigh of relief! Now certain stigmas held against them have been proved to be baseless!

A Michigan State University scholar has countered commonly held beliefs that obese office goers are lazier, more emotionally unstable and harder to get along with than their "normal weight" colleagues.

With the findings of two new separate but convergent national studies, Mark Roehling, associate professor of human resource management and colleagues have urged employers to guard against the use of weight-based stereotypes when it comes to hiring, promoting or firing.

Roehling and his team studied the relationship between body weight and personality traits for nearly 3,500 adults. And they found that contrary to widely held stereotypes, overweight and obese adults were not significantly less conscientious, less agreeable, less extraverted or less emotionally stable.

"Previous research has demonstrated that many employers hold negative stereotypes about obese workers, and those beliefs contribute to discrimination against overweight workers at virtually every stage of the employment process, from hiring to promotion to firing," said Roehling.

He added: "This study goes a step further by examining whether there is empirical support for these commonly held negative stereotypes. Are they based on fact or fiction? Our results suggest that the answer is fiction."

According to Roehling, who's also a lawyer, the practical implication of the research requires the employers to take steps to prevent managers from using weight as a predicator of personality traits when it comes to hiring, promoting or firing.

He said such steps could include adopting a policy that explicitly prohibits the use of applicant or employee weight in employment decisions without a determination that weight is relevant to the job.

Another step could be structuring the interview process to reduce the influence of subjective biases and using validated measures of the specific personality traits that are relevant to the job if personality traits are to be considered in hiring decisions.

The employers should also include weight-based stereotypes as a topic in diversity training for interviewers.

"Employers concerned about the fair and effective management of their work force should be proactive in preventing negative stereotypes about overweight workers from influencing employment decisions," said Roehling.

The research, done in conjunction with Hope College near Grand Rapids, appears in the current edition of the journal Group and Organization Management.

http://www.medindia.net/news/They-Aint-Fat-and-Lazy-Obese-Employees-also-Work-Hard-39550-2.htm

[girlbug2]

I'd always suspected that my extra body fat worked against me on interviews. Their loss.

[fviegas]

It is one of the things that bothers me most, is how people put the "lazy" always next to the "fat" adjective.
And they laugh, it seems socially acceptable, which disgusts me.
It's ignorant, unfair and downright mean to refer to fat people this way. I hope it stops, but it will take several generations and a lot of public education on why people are fat "slobs" other than the "eat too much, move too little" mantra.

[Glendora]

The association between fat and lazy is obvious: until recent times, you really did have to be lazy in order to be fat. It wasn't until the mid-20th century that cheap foods were commercially available even to those who had little money and there were programs in place across the board to feed people, etc. So before then and for every century we've lived in prior, for thousands of years, if you didn't bust your hump or if you weren't very rich, you didn't have any guarantee of food year-round.

That said, I've had the same experience. Up until the past few years I was never fat. But a year ago I tried to find a job here in southern California and was enthused about over the phone over and over again, then would have the interview, act exactly the same as I did over the phone but magically didn't get the job. I know for a point of fact that it's because I'm fat. Prior to this, at 125 pounds or less, I never, and I mean never was hurting for a job. In a 20-year period I had six jobs, and I can recall a solid THREE times total (out of, I don't know, 25-30 interviews) that I wasn't offered a job on the spot at the interview. :mad: I have every skill and make a great impression and am personable...but now...I'm fat.