The Impact on Favoritism in a Workplace

Workplace dynamics play a major role in how employees perform and interact with one another. Favoritism is the practice of giving unfair preferential treatment to one person or group at the expense of another. Workplace favoritism negatively impacts employee productivity by lowering morale, reducing motivation, and creating a sense of unfairness, which ultimately leads to decreased performance and weakened team collaboration. When certain employees are treated better than others, it can create tension and discourage those who feel overlooked or undervalued. In a workplace, there should be mutual respect between bosses and their employees to ensure a fair and supportive environment. By maintaining fairness and respect, organizations can prevent favoritism and ensure that no individual feels left out, leading to a more productive and unified team.

Some people may argue that favoritism in the workplace can be looked at as a reward from some employees performing better than others and that it can motivate others to perform better. However, this issue comes from non-work-related performances and is solely based on how much your boss likes you.

One study on workplace behavior supports this idea. According to the article by Steve Schumacher, “Are You Playing Favorite at Work,” workplace favoritism can significantly reduce employee motivation and overall productivity. Schumacher leads off the article by saying, “A survey conducted by Georgetown University found that 92 percent of senior business executives have seen favoritism at play in employee promotions, including at their own companies [84 percent].” This statement from Schumacher shows how a vast majority of business executives have either experienced or witnessed favoritism at work. Furthermore, Schumacher talks about how favoritism can lead to toxic morale in the workplace. As studies show, if a work environment turns toxic, it can lead to employee morale declining and the chemistry in the workplace becoming shaky. Schumacher quotes, “If your employees see that promotions, pay raises, and advancement opportunities are given to certain people because of things other than performance, it can cause problems.” The problems that Schumacher is referring to can be decreased motivation, communication breakdowns, and damage to the overall culture.

In the article “Favoritism: The Silent Culture Killer Undermining Your Workplace,” the author Heather Nezich goes into detail about how favoritism can affect the culture. Most bosses/managers want to build an environment where employees come in and feel safe and have a good time while working. This is called building a positive culture, and that is all determined by how your boss wants to run the ship. Nezich talks about how favoritism can “erode trust in leadership, reduce engagement among team members, cause loss of high performers who feel undervalued, and lead to retention of toxic top performers whose behavior drives others away.” To sum this up, this means that if you are an employee who is watching another colleague gain special privilege from higher up by not having to do certain tasks that you do while all getting paid the same amount of money, you can potentially feel a different way about said manager or colleague, which would damage the culture.

Nezich gives examples of how to identify favoritism in your workplace. She states that you can notice some employees getting “plum assignments, visible praise, or faster promotions than other employees.” One thing that Nezich recommends HR managers do to stop bosses from inflicting favoritism in their workplace is to “coach managers on awareness.” Bosses should be aware that favoring one particular employee is wrong, and one way to get that across to these managers is by coaching them on how to stop that. This can potentially go a long way in the workplace because then bosses will be aware of how not to leave anyone out.

Favoritism in a workplace can lead to employees who get less treatment than other people showing an obvious decline in their work. This would not be ideal because you want all of your employees to feel at their best and to perform to the best of their capability. If an employee begins to notice favoritism become a consistent thing, it can potentially shift the employee’s mindset from wanting to work at that organization. Instead of that employee who goes into work every day wanting to improve their craft and try to work their way up the rankings, they can potentially consider quitting and search for a job that they feel more included in. If this is something that happens in a continuous cycle, it can influence other people to follow that path, which would result in the company constantly looking to rehire, which further affects the company by having to spend more time looking for replacements.

In conclusion, workplace favoritism to some people can seem like an irrelevant issue, but this issue can have drastic consequences for the employer, managers, and the company as a whole. This issue involves lowering morale, decreased motivation, and creates a sense of unfairness. If HR gets involved by recognizing signs of favoritism and taking steps to help coach bosses into stopping this issue. Ultimately, addressing favoritism is essential to creating a workplace where all employees feel valued, respected, and motivated to perform at their highest potential.