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21 Sep 2021
by David Watts

What reward professionals can do to combat the toxic effect of workplace favouritism

Workplace favouritism can creep into everyday working life with preferential treatment given to ‘high fliers’, those who talk the loudest and are skilled at flattery. The impacts can be disastrous, leading to resentment, disengagement and stifled career development opportunities. But is favouritism endemic in UK organisations and can reward professionals do anything about it?

 

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The toxic effect of favouritism

Favouritism is holding back career development, with just 53% of UK employees believing that everyone in their organisation is given a fair opportunity to develop and grow, not just the favourites, according to O.C. Tanner’s 2021 Global Culture Report.

Favouritism is also impacting recognition and reward programmes, with 45% stating that their company consistently rewards high performers. Reward managers must therefore acknowledge that favouritism may be an issue and find ways to address it. A key solution is to incorporate effective recognition into everyday culture.

A recognition culture

Currently, only 38% of organisations incorporate recognition into everyday culture, and less than half of UK employees (47%) admit that their efforts or accomplishments were recognised within the past month, show figures from our Global Culture Report. A recognition-led workplace culture in which appreciation takes place daily, and both managers and peers can recognise and reward employees, helps to avoid a culture of ‘favourites’. Such a culture needs to include the following:

  • Recognition of career anniversaries, employees’ efforts and results. Ongoing effort should be recognised weekly or even daily, results should be rewarded each time an employee accomplishes great work and careers of loyalty should be celebrated on employee work anniversaries. And when recognition is given, it must be clear why that piece of recognition was given, thereby supporting transparency and fairness.
  • Peer-to-peer recognition. The full impact of recognition will only be truly realised when workplace culture centres on employees recognising the efforts of their colleagues, celebrating with each other when great work is accomplished and career milestones have been achieved. Wherever the team is around the world, it’s vital that everyone can give, receive, and observe recognition regularly and equally, regardless of their location, department and job role.
  • Tailor the recognition experience. Create genuine personal experiences so that recognition moments are truly memorable rather than routine. So instead of passing over a gift voucher to an employee as a sign of appreciation, consider a personalised book of memories and meaningful symbolic awards. It’s also important to involve others in the recognition celebrations – leaders, peers and even family members – to create extra special recognition moments.
  • Ensure recognition technology is part of the daily flow of work. Recognition software must be integrated into email, the intranet and mobile plug-ins to ensure that a “thank you” can be quickly and easily given and received. If giving and receiving appreciation is seen as a time-consuming chore requiring logging out of your work and logging into a separate system, it will never become embedded into the culture. When technology becomes integrated within an organisation’s culture, there is five times’ higher employee engagement.

Train leaders to spot favouritism

In addition to focusing on a recognition-led culture, reward professionals should work with leaders to ensure they’re aware that favouritism might creep into decision-making. Training leaders on how to spot and avoid favouritism is also advisable. 

Keep an eye on the data

Finally, drill-down into your recognition software to find out which employees are being recognised and how often. If any patterns emerge to suggest that certain colleagues are being recognised more than others, it would be worth investigating to ensure that favouritism isn’t at play.

Fair and transparent recognition

Nothing positive comes from workplace favouritism and at its worse, a toxic workplace culture will develop. This is why it’s so important for reward professionals to play a role in spotting it and promoting a culture of recognition in which everyone gets recognised fairly and transparently.  

The author is David Watts, culture and engagement strategist from O.C. Tanner Europe.

This article is provided by O.C. Tanner Europe.

In partnership with O. C. Tanner

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