Monkey see—monkey don’t (AKA fairness)
by Miki SaxonI coach on MAP—it’s effects, uses and how to enhance/change it—so I tend to collect articles and information that will help illustrate and/or drive home a critical point. MAP is both timely and timeless with the same topics arising in successive generations of managers, so the past articles are often of just as much use now as when they were written.
Obvious as it may seem, fair treatment of employees is one of those things to which managers constantly make exceptions citing all sorts of “reasons.”. So you can imagine my glee when I picked up my newspaper a few years ago and read an article about a new study by Sarah Brosnan, of Emory University in Atlanta.
Briefly, what Sarah did using capuchin monkeys working in pairs was to start by rewarding them equally with a slice of cucumber for performing a specific task, then rewarding one of the working pair with a grape instead (capuchins eat cucumbers, but love grapes). The results? The performance went from 95% success to 60%, but at least they still did the same amount of work. However, when one received the grape for doing less work, i.e., not performing the task at all, the success level dropped like a stone—all the way down to 20% for the cucumber crowd.
OK, back to the managers. Frequently, when I ask managers about a discrepancy in treatment, compensation, promotion, etc., what I often hear is along the lines of, “X and Y are equal with similar experience attitude, and duties, but…” (In grammar “but” is a conjunction used to indicate an exception to whatever was said previously.) and they finish the sentence with comments such as:
- “X should earn more because he’s supporting a family.”
- “X needs the promotion because her husband walked out on her.”
- “X just moved here and the housing is expensive!”
- “X is too short to be a manager.”
- “X and I went to the same school.”
- “X is cute.”
- “X reminds me of _________ so I will/won’t…”
- “I don’t like X.”
Enough! This list could go on all day, and it just gets sillier.
However, what never ceases to amaze me is that these managers see nothing wrong (let alone illegal) in their actions and expect either no repercussions or maybe some minor grumbling—or they just don’t care. What they never seem to expect are significant drops in productivity, high levels of turnover (no matter the economy) and the occasional lawsuit. In fact, most of them are shocked when something does happen, and harbor serious doubts as to whether the inequities actually have anything to do with it.
Of course, the most hilarious justification I hear is that “nobody will find out.” You would not believe just how many line managers, not to mention HR people, at all levels actually believe that people don’t discuss their compensation/stock packages. Why companies even have rules stating discussing it is not allowed and can be “cause for dismissal.” Understand, these aren’t old-line, dark ages managers I’m talking about, but really enlightened, 21st century, believe-in-empowerment types! When will managers learn that secret compensation is right up there on the reality scale with Santa and the Tooth Fairy!
Being treated fairly has always been at or very near the top of people’s wish list. The only real change in the last thousand-or-so years is that it’s moving from the wish list to the demand list.
So the next time I’m faced with a manager who doesn’t have a clue, I’ll just whip out a copy of the article to get my point across—and what do you want to bet some exasperated manager is going to look at me like I’m nuts and say, “So what? I hire people, not monkeys.”
