The so-called "fairness" refers to a distribution model that people can accept in their hearts and think is reasonable, not only the fairness of interests, but also the fairness of procedures and interactions, which are one of the important reasons for unfairness. But if one of them is not done well, it will leave unfair seeds for people. For example, the company raises salary at the end of the year, and the leader gives a small salary increase 1 10,000 yuan. Xiao Li was very happy to hear the news, but two days later he heard that Xiao Zhang in the same department gave himself a salary increase 1500 yuan, which was undoubtedly a heavy blow to Xiao Li whose performance was not as good as Xiao Li's. Xiao Li's mood immediately fell into a trough, thinking about why Xiao Zhang had 500 yuan more than himself. This is a typical unfair distribution because there is an external reference.
Fairness is the cornerstone of managing an efficient team. Only fairness has the foundation of trust, and the team can form a strengthened loop in a fair atmosphere. For example, whether to provide equal selection opportunities for all people when there is a promotion opportunity, and create fair election opportunities in procedures, instead of black-box operation and cronyism; There is also whether there are differences in personality, especially whether the distribution of praise and criticism is reasonable. If you praise the cronies in the team more, you will deny others more, which forms a very obvious interactive difference. Such a team lacks the essence of fairness.
The essence of a sense of fairness
People's sense of fairness is an uncertain concept, which may change at any time. It satisfies personal interests to the greatest extent in "logic". By comparing with the same type outside, when the actual income is lower than the expected value, the unfair feeling naturally occurs in the mind, which is a dynamic process. The more parameters are compared, the higher the psychological activity is. For example, when a person gets a year-end bonus of 5,000 yuan, he will feel very gratified when he knows that the year-end bonus of other colleagues around him is 3,000 yuan, and his efforts in the past year have not been in vain; When I suddenly learned that some colleagues' year-end bonuses were 8,000 yuan or more, I immediately felt unbalanced. I think I have paid so much, but I have not gained as much as others. The sense of fairness is not directly related to what you actually get, but the psychological gap caused by comparison with the outside world.
At the same time, people of different sexes have different understandings of fairness. For example, in the previous example of accepting money from Party A and Party B, if the party accepting the distribution plan is a woman, the rejection rate will generally be lower. For women, something is better than nothing. This is a natural sense of gain, and women will not object because they get less, because women will carefully consider the cost of opposition. Generally speaking, everyone's sense of fairness is different, which is related to gender, age, education, culture and other factors, which will affect people's definition of the standard of sense of fairness.
Therefore, the sense of fairness is a particularly important management concept in team management. Whether it brings fairness to employees should be considered in the salary system, promotion system, procedure system and interaction system. If managers consider these factors, they can create more sense of fairness for the team.
Principle of sense of fairness
The fairest thing in life depends on the college entrance examination. From the beginning of the examination paper, all participants will form a closed management, cutting off all contact with the outside world. Until the end of the college entrance examination, people think that the college entrance examination is fair because it is open and the college entrance examination is conducted in a strict invigilation environment. Candidates get high marks according to their own strength. Although selecting talents from high scores to low scores may not be the best way, it is at least an open and transparent selection method. In fact, justice is the goal, openness is the process, fairness is the result, and the truth is understood, but few people really do it.
Most enterprises basically have a financial regulation that requires employees to keep salary information confidential, which is very common for office workers. Employees are not allowed to discuss salary issues with each other, and everyone can cooperate peacefully without knowing their income and salary. Once you find that the salary of the person sitting next to you is higher than yours, you will immediately whisper, "Why is his salary higher than mine, his seniority less than mine, and his experience less than mine?" When you find the gap, you will naturally feel something. At this time, the seeds of unfairness will be planted quietly, so there is a basic principle of fairness, which is openness. The so-called fairness is impossible to talk about.
In order to solve this problem that makes employees uncomfortable, many companies also try to create a sense of fairness in an open way. For example, Huawei's salary structure is basic salary+job performance+post allowance+equity dividend. Whether an experienced employee or a new employee, he can basically judge his monthly comprehensive income by querying the level in the system. Enterprises will make salary calculation transparent, and employees will no longer care about others earning more and earning less, but focus more on improving work performance. This open salary calculation method will also have a drawback. Although the problem of openness has been solved, it has brought new problems that everyone is easy to question the evaluation criteria. Nothing is perfect, which requires both a running-in time with employees and the continuous optimization of the salary system by the human resources department. This is a long-term process of cultivating tacit understanding.
The principle of fairness is openness, information transparency can reduce mutual suspicion, and mutual trust is more sticky. Especially in the team, the weight of fairness is particularly important. As long as managers act according to the principle of "fairness, openness and justice", the cohesion in the team will be stronger and the sense of purpose will be clearer.
How to create a sense of fairness
Fairness is not a slogan, but a behavioral constraint. When preparing to reward an employee, managers need to consider the feelings of other employees, whether this reward method is appropriate and whether it can promote and motivate the team. For example, two children go to school at the same time, the eldest daughter goes to the third grade of primary school and the youngest son goes to the first grade of primary school. One day, my daughter got a score of 100 and happily told her parents that the response was "Keep working hard, don't be proud". On the contrary, my son got 100 in the exam a few days ago, and his parents gave him a material reward. This differential treatment will be given to her daughter.
Adams, an American psychologist, put forward the famous theory of fairness in 1965. He believes that what people care about is not the absolute degree of their own results, but whether the results are relatively fair. Later, some scholars further developed Adams' equity theory. Research shows that different organizational goals (pursuing team harmony or maximizing efficiency) and different personal motives (egoism or altruism) will affect different distribution rules. To sum up, there are several principles that will affect the fairness of distribution.
Principle of fairness: whether the contribution and return of employees to the team are consistent.
Principle of equality: Does everyone in the team enjoy equal treatment?
Demand principle: whether the team provides enough resources for employees.
Principle of power: whether the higher-ranking people in the team have enough command power.
Responsibility and power: do people who are willing to take on greater responsibilities and risks have higher incomes?
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The sense of fairness is mainly people's psychological security. As a media, uneven distribution will lead to the gap in the mind and form an unfair feeling. The prejudice of leaders will also cast a shadow on employees' hearts, and opaque information within the team will also form a sense of injustice. This is the result of many factors. There is a common condition behind these factors, that is, psychological security. All fairness is to promote employees' psychological safety, which has a more significant impact on employees' working status, attitude, values and performance.
Sense of fairness is the gene for the healthy development of the team. How to create a sense of fairness meets the following five characteristics: first, consistency, and the distribution procedures between different people, different times and different places should be consistent; Second, fairness, managers should try to avoid personal preferences in their work; Third, accuracy, managers can accurately identify things without any doubt; Fourth, it can be corrected, and when an error occurs, it can be remedied in time through procedural mechanisms; Fifth, comprehensiveness, managers should follow the mainstream ethics and ensure that the interests of different groups can be considered.
Creating a sense of fairness is a kind of management soft power, which can quickly gather people's hearts and increase more effective followers. If a team lacks a sense of fairness, the result is that employees will resist and even retaliate, such as deliberately damaging equipment and wasting company items. On the contrary, in a fair environment, employees are more aggressive. There is a management concept called "the goal of management should be based on the enterprising spirit of employees." "
Fairness in the team can stimulate the initiative of employees, which is also a self-initiated work behavior. Under the catalysis of this initiative, the subjective initiative of employees can be effectively brought into play. If managers turn a blind eye to the sense of team fairness, they will start another "passive work" mode, and employees will complete tasks with a coping attitude. These two different working modes will produce completely different results.