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Don’t play favorites with your employees
By Lauren | April 24, 2010
Continuing my Friday series on keeping your business out of court, let’s talk about a legal risk that managers take all the time. Unless you’re a sole practitioner, your business has one or more employees and, if you’re human, you’re going to like some of them better than others. That’s fine, but unless you’re careful about how your feelings impact their professional lives, you could be setting your company up for a lawsuit.
I’m not one of those lawyers who believes that employers can never safely distinguish between their problem employees and their superstars. The trouble is, employers are often sloppy about their preferences. They know they like some employees better than others, but they don’t really know why and, if challenged, they can’t provide specific examples of what makes one employee’s work better than another’s. That makes it all too easy for less capable workers to believe that they’re being mistreated because of unfair favoritism, and to look for reasons like prejudice on the base of race, gender, age or disability to explain why the boss doesn’t like them. Those suits can be won, of course, but not without squandering enormous energy and money on the defense.
The remedy for this one is simple. When you value one employee more than another, make sure you can readily explain why and that the reason for your preference is legally permissible. You’re allowed to dislike certain employees and, if your business is to succeed, you must be able to give your top performers the lion’s share of compensation and other benefits. A little thought now can save your business a world of legal trouble later.
Topics: Business Ethics, Legal Ethics, Professional Ethics, Risk Management |
April 29th, 2010 at 1:14 am
I agree that you need to be able to explain why you prefer one employee over the other - but the best way to do that is to set performance expectation that are measurable. Then when challenged you have demonstrable proof as to why one employee is getting preferable treatment.
May 12th, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Nicely written…because favoritism and unfair discrimination are unethical and unacceptable.
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