Preferential treatment within the workplace

“Fairness is not an attitude. It’s a professional skill that must be developed and exercised.”  – Brit Hume

Establishing and maintaining fair relationships with employees is the very essence of a successful business entity. An effective business management entails making fair and effective policies to direct the organization in all decisions and services and activities. When implementing policies, it is important to be aware of whether or not management is committed to make ethical considerations, as it is responsible for dealing with situations that involve discrimination or preferential treatment. Complaints on preferential treatment should not be treated without due consideration, as they may pose serious problems for employees as well as organization affecting its overall performance and progress.

Preferential treatment is when an employee receives benefits being considered as he or she is of the correct race, nationality, gender, status or on grounds of other categorization. Preferential treatment is made if the relatives are also coworkers. However, preferential treatment is not a good practice in a business, specially, when people work together in the work place. It is due to this practice that one gains, another loses. Also, there can be no justification made with reference to the policies in respect of promotions, salary increments or allotting incentives, having been formulated for all the employees to be followed fairly.

Since a business is supposed to maintain high ethical standards that all the employees must conform to while acknowledging their ethical obligations, practicing favoritism leads to create conflict of interests which is against business conflict of interest policy. If a manager with his own likes and dislikes gives special treatment to particular employees, he is unable to build a culture of trust. It’s a destructive trait that causes employees to deviate from working with interest hurting their morale and affecting their loyalty to the company.

Special treatment by affirmative action is possible when management works constructively on the basis of individual accomplishments, not on the basis of bias. Since each and every employee is supposed to contribute to common goals of business with desired performance, it is possible when management is willing to maintain open-door policy of granting equal treatments to the employees ending the practice of preferential treatment within the workplace.

Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India