The Age Old Debilitating Disease - Preferential Treatment

How many times do you come across questions like "Are you planning to get married any time soon?" at interviews just because you are a single woman and you take it for granted?  How frequently do you "let it go" when you realise your manager is being biased towards people who share the same community or the same first language as that of your manager's! Non-coherent promotion(s) the entire department couldn't wrap its head around? How seriously do we choose to contemplate such situations rather than choosing an easier alternative to shrug it off? As a manager, if you have a relative of senior or upper management reporting to you, you will always be in a moral dilemma in doing the right or doing what saves your job and thereby destroys the balance and health of the entire team's ecosystem.

Establishing our credibility as Managers and Leaders requires one to understand the crucial forces that influence team dynamics. Preferential Treatment, conscious or unconscious, is one such force which can disrupt the team dynamics.

In order to avoid such disruption one has to be aware of the forms of preferential treatments we witness in organizations;

1. Favouritism: The general inclination to favour one person or group over others. It refers to the provision of special privilege to friends, colleagues and acquaintances in the areas of employment, career and personnel decisions.
2. Nepotism: It can simply mean hiring and advancing under-qualified family members based simply on the familial relationship.
3. Cronyism: This concept is a compound of the word crony, which seems to have originated as a slang, meaning close friend. Cronyism as the preferential treatment only to friends regardless of their qualifications, such as skills, competence, success or level of education.
4. Regionalism/Communalism: Biases due to regional/political/communal/linguistic preferences.
5. Patronage: a Patronage is a form of extending preferential treatment to our affiliates or patrons, i.e., providing jobs to their underqualified references of our clients /connects.
6. Sexual favours: Any kind of preference given on the grounds of gender or sexual orientation. As much controversial, it may sound but it is still an impediment towards a healthy culture. Though many global organisations have policies to promote Diversity and Inclusion the other side of the story cannot be neglected. As, as many from the fairer sex are emancipated sometimes it leads to unpleasant career progression forms for both the sexes. The one getting benefit out of it is the victim and the opposite gender is also a victim for not getting a fair chance. Even if the situation is consensual, the exchange of sexual favours or romantic involvement for career advancement or any decision centred around such criteria is a form of discrimination.

Any form of preferential treatment is discrimination and is considered as corruption that can maim the engagement health of the organization. The signs of preferential treatment although can be indistinct at times but most of the time they can be as subtle as a brick through the window. And thereby leading to a demoralized and toxic ecosystem for other employees within the organization.

• Unfair Allocation of Duties – An employee or a group chosen for better or more interesting tasks than others, even if there are other employees who would be better qualified.
• Frequent recognition of or perks for only a few employees and not recognizing other deserving/performing team members. More so when the criteria for recognition is not metric driven or lacks substantial results or proofs.
• Nomination for Training/Employee development program not directed at the target audience without taking a feedback from the team.
• Discrimination in Promotions – Promotion of lesser deserved/qualified employees resulting from not following the proper appraisal practice
• The Trusted Advice - If noticed that a lead/manager is particularly open to give or take advice or suggestions and/or ideas of/to a certain employee/employees all the time.
• When an employee is subject to less scrutiny for their performance, or they are never criticized, others notice; it’s almost as if that person is being treated more as a peer than a subordinate.
• Sketchy workplace practices and inconsistent policies which keep changing as per one's convenience.

Implications of preferential treatment;

Biased preferences damage exactly the kinds of social relationships that make for a humane and tolerable workplace and foster organizational performance.

• It leads to a low commitment of the employees to the business operation. Employees feel underappreciated and unrecognised even after their effective contributions. And thus brings down the morale and confidence of the employees.
• Disrupts the harmony and organization credibility in the employee market and instils trust issues within and outside the organization.
• Hires made due to biases or discrimination bring the hiring standards in question, thereby affecting those hires that may be done on merit basis but due to the previous hiring decisions made in the organization has been inferred unscrupulous.
• Inequality between the contribution rate and the benefit offered leads the employee to question the competence of the management and thus, making the workplace distressful.
• Unfair competition leads to Job dissatisfaction and decreases performance which ultimately leads to a decline in organizational efficiency and lower organizational commitment
• Retaining and hiring talents becomes a challenge due to preferential treatment the better-deserved employee goes unrecognized. And thereby leaving us with the ones who are Manager fit instead of being an organization or culture fit.
• The situation will become worse when the company is unable to attract ambitious employees to their company. One of the factors of this is to happen is, mouth to mouth information spread by the unsatisfied worker in the company has also created a poor company image to the public.

Corrective measures can keep preferential treatment under a check by defining the clear lines between ethical and unethical paradigms;

•  Check your prejudice and discrimination by ensuring appropriate and justified opportunity or task distribution along with fair development opportunity for every individual to bring the best expertise to the enterprise.
• Crafting, re-regulating, and enforcing transparent policies and human resources practices in the organization so as to ensure fairness and in favour of all employees.
• Recognition and feedback system should be vivid and transparent. Ensuring entry into an already existing and vital position with determined pay and performance expectations as per standard organization policy, backed by right instances and right metrics.
•  Moral obligation to maintain a strong character strength and should be bound by a strong code of conduct so that any kind of romantic relationship and/or cliques are not responsible for unfair play or harmony disruption within the team.

It's not evil to have favourites within in the team as long as hiring and promotion decisions are purely based on determiners like right talent and competence. We have to be sensitive about what fits into the integrity and fairness template and what doesn’t. The culture of the organization is something that reflects its values and integrity, thereby shaping it in a form that it nurtures trust and talent should not only be a moral obligation but should be a responsibility of paramount importance for each stakeholder. Managers being the torchbearers play a crucial role in instilling an exemplary image of the organization both inside and to the outside world and hence they are privileged with responsibilities to ensure fair practice and execution of organizational policies and thereby are the main stakeholders towards creating an equitable and inspiring ecosystem within the organization.