Ensure fairness at workplace, make it impartial
DOES YOUR boss always consider a single employee for assigning important tasks? Does he tend to ignore the mistakes committed by that person? No doubt, your boss is smitten by the bug of favouritism. How ethical is it to favour somebody in the workplace ?
Though nobody discusses it openly favouritism exists in various forms and guisse in a workplace. Right from the office boy who carries your mail to your boss everybody favours somebody in the workplace at one point or the other. Favouritism, even when shown to you or anybody else should be curbed; it is as bad as discriminating a person from the others or preferring a particular person over the others.
Remember that the workplace is the wrong place to play favourites and if you are the one who is being favoured you should stand up to yourself and say no to it; in order to save yourself from future embarrassment.
Favouritism at the workplace might give rise to unhappy situations, tensions, accusations, suspicions, misunderstandings, creating an imbalance in inter-personal relations amongst employees, finally leading to unavoidable divisions amongst employees.
Favouritism shown by your boss, if not checked in the initial stages can lead to unwanted, awkward situations like:
.Some of the team members may feel ignored, team bonding is affected
Shows your boss in poor light
It also involves loss of reputation and identity for the employee who is being favoured by the boss. For instance, if a particular employee favoured by the boss happens to succeed in a particular task by the sheer dint of his hard work his colleagues might say it is because of his boss that he had succeeded. The employee's efforts might go unnoticed, leading to the identity crisis of the individual.
When the boss himself shows favouritism to one of his employees, then it might be difficult for his sub-ordinates to question his behaviour. Try the following tips to dispel the favouritism misting your workplace :
Observe the ways in which your boss is showing favouritism to that employee. Is he offering the employee a promotion which he didn't deserve? Is he assigning the credit of completing a project successfully to that employee alone, ignoring the other team-mates? Is he praising his work all the time, with no apparent reason?
Make a note of the instances wherein your boss has favoured that employee.
Talk to your colleagues and find out about such other instances which haven't come to your notice.
If your colleagues also express the same kind of opinion then try discussing the issue openly with them.
Gather the evidence about the rewards given to that employee and document it.
Play safe and find out about the kind of relationship between your boss and that employee. If that employee happens to be related to your boss in some way or other or happens to be some special friend of your boss, then you might end in trouble. Your boss would definitely not want somebody snooping around about his relations in the office.
Try talking to your boss in a composed manner. Do not outrightly accuse him of showing partiality.
Tell him how his favouritism is affecting the workplace scenario.
Give him time to change his behaviour. If there is no change in his behaviour even after a frank discussion then its time for you to take the matter to the higher authorities.
Most of the organisations consider the issue of favouritism as flimsy and ridiculous; and tend to overlook such complaints when made by their employees. Organisations should have a strong code of ethics, discouraging the employees from being partial to any individual inside the organisations or to outside clients as such.
Such a code of conduct should be made the ideal behaviour expected of everyone related to the organisation.
SANDHYA. U
faqs@cnkonline.com
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