Fairness at work place

Fairness at Work

 

Introduction: Fairness mean impartial and just treatment or behaviour without favouritism or discrimination. In other words, it means the quality of having light-coloured hair or a pale complexion. Whereas Fairness at work means treating employees justly and individually, depending on the specific situation and the employee's participation. This means using good judgment when making decisions regarding your employees.

HR professionals are responsible for upholding, modifying and updating company procedures and policies. In doing so, they are ethically responsible for promoting fairness and justice to all of the employees including leadership, in the company.

For example: In Hindustan Unilever, Fairness in the workplace is about respecting the rights of all those who work with them. Millions of people work in Hindustan unilever operations and extended supply chain, helping them create the products used by billions more.

As mention above, they believe respecting and promoting human rights forms the foundation for a healthy, sustainable and equitable business, and are essential for effective relationships with everyone we depend on. This is reflected throughout the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, and in many areas of this Sustainable Living Report, including in Sustainable sourcing, Opportunities for women and Inclusive business.

Fairness in the workplace is a vital element of maintaining people's trust in our business and is directly linked to our licence to operate, and to the reputation of Unilever and our brands. It contributes to business continuity, helps us attract and retain the best talent, increases productivity, and builds long-term value to shareholders.

There approaches to human rights as Fairness at work in Hindustan Unilever

o   In our operations by upholding our values and standards.

o   In our relationships with our suppliers and other business partners.

o   By working through external initiatives, such as the UN Global Compact, the Consumer Goods. Forum and the Institute for Human Rights and Business to name a few.

 

  Four Ways to Foster Fairness in the Workplace

1.      Reaffirm that everyone will receive an equal opportunity to be recognized. One of the fastest ways to erode a workplace's sense of fairness is by giving recognition unequally.

2.      Create a sense that promotions are handled fairly.

3.      Add transparency and a commitment to equity to the pay check.

 Main Ideas and argument of fairness at workplace

Listen to employee: Listening is one of the easiest ways to make your employees touch valued and promote fairness in the workplace. By knowing that you care about their opinions, your employees will feel important and valued. Be constant in your attending. Don’t listen to some employees and not others so that you keep trust with all employees. 

Favouritism in the workplace can have an important effect on employees, resulting in outcomes like higher salaries for some employees and lower salaries for other. Fairness in the workplace (or lack thereof) can create reduced employee productivity. When all employees in the office are treated fairly, relationships become stronger and trust increases. 

Opportunity Fairness: Equality of distribution refers to the rewards that managers give out. Whether it is a monetary reward, a promotion, or a desirable assignment, fairness of distribution is crucial. Thus, managers should create environments in which equal opportunities, not equal rewards, are given. In other words, employees should feel that they have a fair chance to earn a reward if they work hard enough for it. In addition to rewards, managers should be sure to distribute tasks, attention, and feedback fairly. In meetings, employees should be offered a fair chance to speak up or present ideas.

Process and Communication: While it obviously does not make sense to hand out rewards equally, as this would defy the purpose of rewarding exceptional work, there must be some recognisable and fair process through which rewards can be given. It is also critical that the process of rewards is transparent and explained, so that fellow employees can recognise why rewards are given. When the communication is working and there is a clear reward system in place, employees will be more motivated, as they feel that rewards are achievable and hard work is appreciated.

Open Feedback: The best way to make sure all your processes are fair, and employees feel that there is justice in the workplace is to keep the communication channels open. Get regular feedback from your co-workers, and hear them out when they say that they are not being treated fairly. By sending out surveys continuously with services like team bay and allowing people to voice concerns, you will enable the first step toward a fair work environment. Act on these feelings and make processes and decisions more transparent. This will not only ensure fairness, but will create incentives and motivation to enhance productivity and creativity. With a healthy amount of fair competition, employees will contribute more, which will only improve the firm.

Imagine being told “well done” on every assignment, then not receiving that yearly bonus when it comes down to it. Or an employee not complaining once about anything, then leaving because he/she did not like the workplace. Managers and employees need to keep an open channel of feedback, in which either side needs to be completely honest with constructive communication. If an employee is underperforming, let him/her know at the time so that he/she has the opportunity to improve, rather than saving it all for one devastating yearly review. People are bound to feel like they are being treated unfairly if nobody communicates with them until it is too late.

Show Empathy: The issue of unfairness will often play itself out in a discussion between a manager and an employee, where an employee feels he has not been heard and leaves with the perception that he wasn’t treated fairly. This is why it’s important for managers to make time for one-on-one, face-to-face conversations with their employees, he says, even if you don’t want to discuss why they didn’t get the promotion or raise they wanted

Handle Promotions with Care: Often when someone is passed over for a promotion, they have no idea. They are just told they didn’t get it or they weren’t qualified. The best way to combat unfairness is to bring objectivity and criteria into the promotion process.

Avoid Favouritism: One of the hardest perceptions to combat in the workplace, experts say, is favouritism. This has become increasingly tricky, they say, because many millennials seek to have a close friendship with their co-workers and manager.

Fairness promotes long-term relationships since it deals directly with the equitable treatment of others despite unjust behaviour. The definitive factors of fairness include equality, impartiality, honest communication, and justice.

Equality is an ideal of uniformity in treatment or status by those in a position to affect either. Impartiality is a decision that is made regarding an individual on none other than consideration of what is fair and just for that individual.

Honest Communication is necessary. It’s a combined effort of reaching a mutual understanding in which participants exchange truthful information and share meaning. Honest communication allows for what needs to be said to one individual and what needs to be said to another, and justice which is integrity and equity in dealing with each other, conformity to the principles of righteousness in all things.

The best way to be fair in the workplace

First, employees like to feel involved, updated, and knowledgeable about their jobs. Ensure you remind your management team of the importance in explaining the reason for the new sales program or operating hours to their direct reports. There will be less anxiety and reason to complain about the changes with this level of communication.

Second, recommend they clarify any matters about the changes while allowing the team members to ask any questions. Tell them to make the vision and goals of the program clear and set the expectations for employees. This will help eliminate any future problems or uncertainties and lead to enhanced productivity. Employees will feel like they’ve been fairly included in the new processes and appreciate the support.

Lastly, not all changes will be positive and being honest about the potential risks will leave the team better prepared for the outcome and feel the company was fair in discussing the possibilities through initial concerns. As you can see, fairness plays an important role in boosting employee morale.

Conclusion 

Thus, in order to conclude, I find that even at a time of transformational change staff perceptions of fair treatment will in the main result in high job satisfaction extends the literature in this area. Also, increasing rewards for staff who perceive low levels of organisational justice does not increase satisfaction as much as for staff who perceive high levels of fairness. If people feel negative about their role, but feel they are well paid, they probably still have negative feelings overall.

Fairness approach says that people need to be treated equally. If they cannot be treated properly based on some criteria. This means that the communities or people effected by your decisions cannot be favoured or benefit from an unfair advantage.
There is more than one fairness and judging what is fair is not so simple but we need to recognize this and do our best to care about all the fairness that we, as language testers, must be accountable for.

Fairness = Equal Freedom for All.