Fairness Revisited

On January 14, I did a post called “The Matter of Fairness.”  It dealt with the fact that when an employment case is tried before a jury, jurors almost always want an answer to this question: Was the employer fair with the employee?  Thus, the best way for employers to win cases–even better, stay out of court altogether–is to keep “the matter of fairness” in mind when dealing with employees.  An article in the Washington Post offers another, quite timely, reason for employers to take fairness seriously.

Today’s workplace is filled with tension, what with the economic slump, layoffs, outsourcing, restructuring and increasing prices paid by employees when they leave work.  Employees are concerned about losing their jobs or ending up in a job they don’t like.  They’re working harder and living paycheck to paycheck.  It’s the perfect storm for employee burnout.  Not according to a new study by a couple of psychologists titled “Early Predictors of Job Burnout and Engagement” and recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The new study says that the single biggest difference between employees who suffer burnout and those who don’t is whether they think they’re being treated fairly or unfairly–which necessarily means that an employee is comparing the way she is being treated with the way other employees are being treated.  If an employee feels that she’s being treated unfairly, she feels disrespected, angry, resentful, depressed and unmotivated.  It’s unlikely that she’ll accomplish much of anything worthwhile in her job.

On the other hand, an employee who feels that she’s being treated fairly has polar emotions.  As long as she believes that the burden is being shared equally, she’ll not only do good work, she’ll be willing to endure tough times (like those we’re experiencing now).   Fairness is the key. 

My fairness post (mentioned above) provides a recipe of sorts for employee fairness.  Numerous ingredients must be used by an employer to promote fairness in the workplace, but perhaps the two most important are:  being honest with your employees and being consistent with your employees.  If you blow off fairness as just being too relative to get your arms around, you make a critical mistake–in terms of legal trouble and employee productivity.  This isn’t rocket science.  This is common sense.  It’s needed in the worst way right now.