The Manager
Favouritism is a three-way relationship, the practitioner: often the manager, the receiver: often an employee, and the victim(s): the other employee(s) that make up the team/department. From the employee perspective, unless it is the employee that is lavished with praise, all other employees will have some feeling of resentment and unfairness, especially if one of them is the one who actually deserved the positive attention in the first place. This is a slippery slope for managers because the atmosphere created as a result of favouritism will be far from ideal, where the victims may lack motivation to improve themselves or to contribute to the effort.
Having said that, a manager can have positive reasons for practicing favouritism. A good manager should be transparent about the motives that inspire such actions. If employees know why the manager adopts a policy of favouritism, then the most common factors often associated with favouritism such as nepotism, friendships, sexual relations, and common interests (such as: children, pets, music, sports etc.) can immediately be ruled out. Transparency sends a clear message: you are being favoured for a clear and specific reason.
An observant and effective manager will want to practise favouritism when trying to foster improved performance within a team. It is, however, a fine line to walk. For example, an employee can be the favoured person today because of the exceptional performance achieved, but if outperformed by another team member in the future, then the new star should replace the previous one. In other words, favouritism should be adaptable and purposeful. Blind or continued favouritism is destructive, imagine in the same example, the employee that now deserves the praise is side-lined by the previous employee, maybe because the previous employee is related to the manager, or they play tennis together at the same club – what then would be the motivation for any other team member to put in their best effort? So to avoid a demoralized or underperforming staff, favouritism should be endowed on whoever deserves it.
Deserved Attention
Hardworking employees deserve the manager’s attention. If they are outperforming their colleagues, trying harder, or delivering consistently better results, they should be rewarded for their efforts. The reward should be within reason, perhaps in proportion to performance, so that others can be motivated to improve. Consider that when the underperformers compete with the star performers and overtake them, then they would have surpassed the level of the star performers. In this way, the manager creates an effective positive cycle so that there is constant competition to outperform; and by so doing, increasing the overall benchmark of output. But this should not be done at the expense of quality. If competitiveness becomes too intense, then it is highly likely quality may decline, and worse, the employees would rather compete than cooperate together. Again, the manager walks a fine line to know when to rein in the competitiveness.
People can often be inflexible or hostile to change. However, some working environments require flexible employees, or employees willing to adapt, learn, improvise etc. Therefore, a good reason to practise favouritism is to reward those employees who are willing to compromise and change for the benefit of the team or project. It is never easy to step out of one’s comfort zone, much less change for the benefit of a job. Such commitment deserves reward.
Employees who collaborate together to achieve better performance, regardless of whether the job asks for such collaboration, also deserve attention. To take the initiative, work as an improved team and deliver better results are all in favour of the organisation. The good manager should foster this kind of behaviour and reward such individuals to help set an example to others. In some cases, if it is a team effort, then the team can be rewarded as a whole, especially if there are other teams under the manager. The risk with team favouritism is that there might be free riders in a team – people who do little – and yet end up in the collective reward of the team. As long as this is a minimum, it may still be worth considering the team-based reward.
Conclusion
All in all, we see that favouritism is not always a bad thing, done for the right reasons, it can be an extremely effective tool for improving competitiveness amongst employees, and in so doing raising the overall benchmark of output performance. However, this should be carefully managed in order not to diminish quality. Effective favouritism also fosters hard work, compromise and collaboration, all of which enhance output and improve performance. So, managers should practise favouritism for the right reasons, and keep a close eye on who is actually deserving of it.
Samir Rawas Sarayji