Can favoritism at work be a motivator?
How can managers set clearer expectations and better motivate their employees? Pick favorites, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky recently said.
He argues that when done right, it encourages staff to be more like the top performer. But when done wrong, it can drive toxic work cultures, heightened turnover and lower productivity with staff feeling devalued and disengaged, according to workplace experts.
A survey from TalentLMS, a learning management system, including responses from over 1,000 workers at U.S. tech companies, found nearly half said rooting out favoritism can play an important part in wiping out workplace toxicity, and about the same share said they plan to quit their job because of it.
While some favoritism will naturally exist in the workplace, loyalty-based favoritism — rather than performance based — is what will breed toxicity, resentment and division, said Doug Dennerline, CEO of Betterworks.
“There is an important distinction between favoritism and spotlighting employees who are performing well. A strong leader will naturally tend to show favoritism towards the employees who perform at the highest level because they want to learn from them,” Dennerline said. “If a leader shows that loyalty is a stronger attribute than achievement, that is when there will be a negative impact,” he said.
Managers may treat their “favorites” differently by giving them extra attention and help and taking their opinions more seriously than others, or by putting them on special assignments and favored projects. They also likely relax consequences for their favorite, brushing off tardiness or poor work performance while others are called out.
“Favoritism can make people feel like promotions and opportunities to progress are based on things other than doing a good job,” said Lucy Kemp, a future of work researcher and business consultant. “Your workforce becomes demotivated because people stop believing that the effort leads to rewards. They ask…”why do I bother?” “Even if I do a good job I’m not going to get rewarded because I’m not the favorite,” Kemp said.
Playing favorites can also involve some potential legal risk. While favoritism itself isn’t illegal, giving preferential treatment to certain employees based on protected characteristics can be.
“There’s a possibility that treating one employee differently to another person may discriminate against protected characteristics such as race and age. Employers could therefore find that they face claims of discrimination from workers who feel they aren’t being treated equally and feel that this is due to a protected characteristic they have,” said Jennifer Smith, partner and head of commercial employment at Forbes Solicitors.
While intentionally playing favorites isn’t the best practice, workplace experts say it’s still important for managers to recognize achievements and have positive relationships with everyone on their team. “There is a real difference between favoritism and recognizing excellence,” Kemp said.
“Good leaders should champion high performers — and recognize those people who are going above and beyond. The key is transparency, people need to see that the recognition that they are being given and that the promotion — what they are seeing as favoritism — is earned. That it isn’t being handed out because of politics, or friendship preferences.”
And being the favorite isn’t exactly a badge of honor, in the end. “I don’t think anyone should be aspiring to be someone’s favorite,” said Kaitlin Howes, HR business partner at employee experience platform Reward Gateway-Edenred.
“I think it’s really important for us to feel appreciated for who we are, recognized for what we’re contributing, and given feedback if we need to improve in areas. But I think in terms of work-life balance, being motivated to be a leader’s favorite just feels really not conducive to the boundaries that need to be set at work,” added Howes.