Why Your Employees Hate You and Why Fair Management Practices Can Change That

If you are a manager in today’s world and you haven’t heard of Fair Management Practices, there is a very good chance that you have given your employees a reason to dislike you. (maybe hate is a strong word.) Fair Management Practices are defined in their name – management practices that are fair to all employees.  While this may seem simple, it’s far from easy, but it’s a critical part of managing an inspired and productive staff.

Fair management practices inspire trust.  Your employees must be able to trust you and know that everyone on your staff is treated equally and held to the same standards.  If they don’t, discontent and distrust will tear your team apart.  The biggest hurdle to fairness is that managers are human.  They have biases and stereotypes racing through their head and they manage people that are completely different from them in every way along with those who are very much the same.    While most managers would like to believe that they are completely free of bias, it’s simply not the case.  Biases span the depth of humanity…even Mother Theresa had biases.  The best people with the best intentions must stay vigilant to avoid letting biases effect management decisions, but there can be no trust when decisions are biased.

For instance, let’s say you are a mother and there is another mother on your staff who is consistently 5 minutes late every day.  Because you are a mother yourself, you understand just how difficult it is to get your kids up, dressed and take them to school all before you arrive at work.  You have a bias toward this employee.  You can empathize with her because you have walked in her shoes, so you look the other way and ignore that she is consistently late.  What does this tell your staff, though?  If you ignore the tardiness for this employee but reprimand other employees who arrive late, your staff will see this inconsistency and believe that you play favorites.  You may have thought you were doing a good deed for a fellow mother, but what you have also done is plant the seed of distrust. 

Fair management practices must be consistent.  If your employees know that tardiness is not acceptable and that the consequences for tardiness are the applied consistently for every employee, you will plant the seed of trust.

Fair management practices are also legal management practices.  When making decisions on who to hire, promote, demote, give work assignments to and every other one of a thousand management decisions, it’s critical that you are fair.  Making decisions based on facts and not biases will not only help you make better decisions, it will help you remain legal as well.   When managers make decisions that are not fair, it’s easy for employees to believe they have been discriminated against…and they may be right.

It’s illegal to discriminate against employees for being a member of a protected class.  The protected classes include race, color, ethnicity, age, religion, national origin, citizenship, genetic information, veteran status, disability, and gender.  This discrimination often is inadvertent.  Managers who are guilty of discrimination don’t always set out with the intention of discriminating against a class of people…remember that we all are biased.  If management decisions are not made on job-specific facts, it’s easy to make decisions that are biased toward people we relate to and like.  Mistakes that result in discrimination claims can end or severely damage a manager’s career.  Even if biased decisions never result in legal trouble they plant the seeds of distrust in your staff and seriously damage employee morale and productivity.

Fair management practices are effective management practices.  Management decisions based on job-related information and facts only are much more effective than those based on biases.  Not only will they create trust and inspire motivation with employees, but they will create a higher level of innovation, productivity, and efficiency as well.  When job-related facts are used for decisions, your staff is better utilized.  Employees are given job assignments suited to their talents and hiring decisions bring talent that will take your team to a higher level.  The greater level of diversity that results will inspire creativity and innovation and ideas will form that never would have developed with biased decision making.

Lastly, fair management practices build accountability.  When your staff sees you keep your word and treat everyone on your team fairly and consistently, they are more likely to be accountable in their job as well.  Additionally, demanding accountability consistently from every member of your staff leads to increased productivity and efficiency.  No one wants to let their team down and knowing that everyone on their team is accountable for their part in the process inspires an effort that never would develop in a team led by a manager who plays favorites.

Fair management practices are critical.  They can mean the difference between success and failure as a manager.  Practicing fair management techniques will build trust, accountability, innovation, productivity, and efficiency.  It keeps management decisions legal and organizations out of court.  There isn’t a more effective tool for today’s manager to utilize and the best part is…your employees won’t hate you and they may even like you.

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