Pay Attention to the Little Inequities
They make more of a difference than you realize
If you’ve worked anywhere for more than a minute, you’ve undoubtedly witnessed something that makes you think:
That’s not fair!
Whether it’s something big or something small, I guarantee one thing — it’s not just you. We all notice injustices. And most of us keep a tally of them in our head, even if we try not to.
We can’t help it. It’s in our nature.
We’re Hard-Wired to Detect Inequity
From a very young age, as early as 12 months, children expect to see resources divided equally. This yearning for fairness extends to other primates, as this video excerpt from a study by Dutch primatologist Frans De Waal and psychology professor Sarah Brosnan illustrates. Watch it; it’s worth two minutes of your time.
To me, the video is both funny and sad, precisely because the behavior of the wronged monkey seems all too human. You can almost hear his (her?) internal voice screaming,
This isn’t fair! I should get a grape too!
Group Fairness Matters
The small town I live in is home to about 35,000 people. Jobs aren’t scarce as a whole, but there’s a much smaller range of good-paying opportunities than you’d find in a larger city.
I have friends at a couple of companies here that also have locations in a larger city several hours away. In both cases, each companies’ employees perform similar jobs in each location. Yet, the management has chosen — either deliberately or by neglect — to treat the employees in the two locations differently.
Company 1 is in the food and beverage industry. They have service staffers that do essentially the same job here and in their city location, with hourly wages that also roughly the same.
Sounds pretty fair so far, right?
Here’s the difference: In the city location, the point of sale system displays a tipping option to customers when they pay. In the small town? No tipping option.
The result: Even though the small town location sells almost the same amount in dollars as the city location — with about 1/3 the staff — the small town employees take home far less money per person.
When it comes to tipping, out of sight, out of mind.
Company 2 is a software company. Like Company 1, they have employees that do the same jobs in both locations — mostly developers and project managers.
The pay scale is quite a bit higher in their city location. Their management cites the lower cost of living here as their justification for the discrepancy.
Maybe that’s reasonable and maybe it’s not — I’ll leave it to the HR folks to work that one out. In any case, it’s something that they employees know and complain about.
There’s another difference between the city and small town office though; something that many might think is downright trivial.
It’s snacks. Everyone knows that people like free snacks.
In the city office, free snacks abound. And free beer after 5.
In the small town office, there’s no free food or drink.
Well, except for coffee. You can’t have a software development shop without coffee.
Both of the offices know about the disparity. It’s even become something of a joke within the company. Well, that and the fact that the company flew in a few of its big-city employees to be in a photo slated to appear in the local newspaper — a photo the local employees weren’t invited to be in.
Why Managers Should Care About Fairness
Putting aside my thoughts about the bad karma that results from treating employees unfairly, I’d also argue that employers should think about the effect inequities have on their profits:
- Perceived unfairness at work is linked to higher levels of employee absenteeism. And higher absenteeism means less efficiency and higher labor costs.
- Perceived unfairness at work is linked to higher blood pressure in employees. So companies that care about their employees’ health — or at least about trying to keep their health care costs under control — should worry about employee equity.
Now back to the examples I mentioned above.
The common thread from these two companies is that their actions make their small town employees feel like second-class citizens. Like their contributions are valued less than their big-city coworkers.
And maybe because of the limited job market, the companies can get away with small slights that they wouldn’t be able to otherwise.
Or maybe not.
In the case of the food and beverage business, it’s far from being the only game in town. There’s a thriving tourist business here, with a ton of bars, restaurants, cafés, and dozens of beer and wine tasting rooms. That gives servers plenty of opportunities — and little reason to stay somewhere that they don’t feel like they’re being fairly compensated.
And although the situation is somewhat different for the software business, since there aren’t a lot of opportunities in town for people with programming and project management skills, it’s not as different as the company might think.
What the company’s management might be ignoring is that they’re operating in a global employment marketplace. Many businesses now offer remote work opportunities to people with the right skills.
So here’s the bottom line: even in the smallest marketplace, your employees may have more opportunities than you think. Treating them fairly is one simple way to earn their loyalty.
I’ll end here with a quote from the great Maya Angelou — something I think all humans — managers or not — should keep in mind.
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Thanks for reading. If you’d like to read more of my thoughts on management and work, you’ll find them under that heading here:
