Are You the Boss's Favorite?

Figure 1: Favoritism in the Workplace(Source: ( Employsure, 2016)

With the ongoing covid 19 pandemic many business organizations push to their limits to find ways to survive in this crisis. So many adopted and adapted quickly by reopening their offices in a different approach. For example, nowadays many can work from home, and organizations’ in charge are authorized by their management to decide who should come to work and who will work from home. As time goes by many who ask to come to the office for work start to complain that the manager’s favoritism allowed others to work from home, not for them.

What is managers’ Favoritism? And how could it affect overall organization operations and performance?

Managers by authority manage staff and other resources smoothly and efficiently to reach organizational goals. In this process, managers should make sure to have equal opportunities for all staff to perform and should prioritize who performed.

But in a real scenario, we can find managers demonstrating favor to one person or group over all of the other employees for reasons unrelated to performance (Lucas, 2020), that can be identified as favoritism. Favoritism occurs at the workplace mostly due to manager and employee friendship beyond the workplace (Hrab, 2019), managers' personal preferences, nationality, sharing the same faith, age, or residence area, or maybe school employees attended.

According to May(2020), signs of favoritism toward an employee or group are,

1.      Spends more time having informal and formal  interactions with them

2.      Open door policy and let it pass policy for them

3.      Assigns desired light workload and praises when complete, but for others not the same.

4.      Favors them when making decisions or recommendations regarding promotions or pay.

5.      Considers the suggestions from them and  priority to them

6.      Flexible in terms of absences sides with them when disputes with other employees

7.      Nepotism

Table 1: Favoritism and Its Effects

Issue	Effects On Organization	Effects   on "Favorite" employee or group	Effects on Other Employees
Breach of employment obligations	If it is found to breach of your employment obligations, a compensation payout	May disclose their work ethics	Looking for better employers
Loss of respect for company leadership	Hard to achieve organizational goals.	Neglected by other co-workers	Low morale
Hard-working employees have disregarded	loss of productivity and a decline in the quantity and quality of work produced	Missing out on the talents and skills on themselves as they favored.	Low morale
Resentment	Loss of unity may decrease productivity	Resentment toward them	Low morale
Resignation	Loss of talent due to staff turnover	Toward them	Low morale and leave
Business impact	Performance undoubtedly be compromised	Will promoted but will be unable to take the responsibility	Low morale and leave

Favoritism, cronyism, and nepotism or in any form of it give undue advantage to someone who does not deserve it and breach the justice of fairness and violate employee morals (Nadler & Schulman, 2006). 

These types of favoritism practices are very common in the Sri Lankan context and they may reflect the failure we may experience as a nation today.

References

Employsure, 2016. How to Eliminate Favouritism in the Workplace. [Online] Available at: https://employsure.co.nz/blog/eliminate-favouritism-workplace/ [Accessed 2021 December 2021].

Hrab, A., 2019. Favoritism and Nepotism: Managing Favoritism in the Workplace. [Online] Available at: https://www.eskill.com/blog/favoritism-nepotism-workplace [Accessed 12 December 2021].

Lucas, S., 2020. Is Favoritism in the Workplace Illegal?. [Online] Available at: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/is-displaying-favoritism-in-the-workplace-illegal-4159736#:~:text=workplace%20is%20illegal.-,What%20Is%20Favoritism%3F,for%20reasons%20unrelated%20to%20performance [Accessed 2021 December 2021].

Nadler , J. & Schulman, M., 2006. Favoritism, Cronyism, and Nepotism. [Online] Available at: https://www.scu.edu/government-ethics/resources/what-is-government-ethics/favoritism-cronyism-and-nepotism/ [Accessed 12 December 2021].