I’ve recently taken a job where I go around to about 13 stores in a franchise, owned by this one dude, and make all the employees uncomfortable in order to produce better sales and labor and overhead figures.
I was approached by an employee of one of the stores the other day who told me that something another person was doing wasn’t fair, because he wasn’t going to get his fair cut of some commissions due to the way that the other guy was doing the job.
I knew that the other guy, (the one being complained about) was amongst the most productive workers at this particular location, so I told the guy complaining that fairness, was for losers.
I said, if I were to come in here, and try and make sure everyone thought things were fair, then that might hinder my ability to produce better numbers for the store.
So do you guys agree?
Is fairness for losers?
Is it true that in most cases you stand a better chance at making profits if you abandon fairness and put effectiveness and productivity first?
Effectiveness and productivity should be considered the second-most important thing in this situation, I believe.
I’d like more backround on this story, but my take is somehow the productive worker is productive by way of prohibiting someone else from doing the job productively. If that is the case, the store is worse for the wear because if there was a way to make the situation more equitable and cause both employees to be productive and efficient that would be the best course of action.
You also have to assume that if the productive guy is doing this to one person he is doing it to others but noone else had the balls to say anything.
Overall, the productive guy could be by his actions decreasing overall productivity.
There are a few ways unfairness might lower productivity. It might reduce productivity by disincentivizing hard work. If people feel that they are not paid for hard work they do, they will stop doing hard work. Or, the incentives might be misplaced, so that screwing over people that are being productive is rewarded more highly than actually being productive.
It might also create time- and productivity-consuming conflicts, which could take employees away from more useful tasks, or worse, alienate customers. Conflict is wasteful; properly motivated cooperation is ideal (often impossible, but still ideal).
What are the arguments in favor of unfairness? Are there ways that unfairness actually increases prodictivity?
I’m not denying that there will always be unfairness, however if it’s easily preventable unfairness, it’s likely worthwhile to prevent it. The basic line goes like this: pending any reason to believe otherwise, we have good reason to believe that unfairness lowers productivity, ceteris paribus. So, in a situation where there is unfairness, you’ve got to look at how easy it would be to correct the situation versus how much harm the unfairness is doing. That’s mostly a judgement call, but it’s important to categorize unfairness in the ‘costs’ column when you’re deciding how to improve business.