Favoritism is prevalent in our personal lives—like that neighbor who always holds the door open, or the friend who is constantly featured in your weekend plans. When the inevitable tendency to pick favorites bleeds into the workplace, employees on a manager’s good side—even unintentionally—can see perks such as better shifts and more flexible time off.
Workplace favoritism has an inverse effect on those who do not experience preferential treatment, leading to disengagement. The resulting turnover costs organizations anywhere from 16 percent to 213 percent of each lost employee’s salary.
Emerging technology is helping reverse the effects of inadvertent supervisor biases through employee scheduling autonomy, clear communication and training, and more automated processes. The key is to deliver a single employee-facing tool that empowers employees. Here’s how implementing a digital workplace can help alleviate manager favoritism in the workplace.
Democratized Scheduling
Adopting a digital workplace solution creates objective scheduling, letting employees sign up for hours that work best for their lives while eradicating the influence of manager subjectivity. Since 84 percent of senior executives admit favoritism takes place at their own organizations, it’s clearly a common issue. Digital workplaces reduce the risk of employee attrition due to manager subjectivity while also allowing managers to spend time on more meaningful tasks than drawing up paper-based schedules.
Empowering Employees with Greater Autonomy
By giving employees the power to choose and trade shifts to build a schedule that works best for them, last-minute shift changes and searches for replacements become a thing of the past. By leveraging employee availability and access to an openshift marketplace, employees can create better base schedules and make adjustments autonomously. Employees who pick up shifts by choice show up to work more engaged and productive, creating stronger relationships among staff and fostering a stronger workplace culture.
Improved Engagement and Productivity
In addition to objective scheduling processes, digital workplace tools facilitate clear communication, opening doors to higher staff engagement. Digital workplace solutions also enable targeted training, allowing workers to grow in their roles and upskill to take on new jobs within the company. A digital workplace’s unified communication hub ultimately helps connect employees and management, keeping workers interested and motivated to grow within the company.
Lower Attrition
By empowering employees through additional training, flexible scheduling, and increased communications, managers are putting the power into associates’ hands—ultimately creating a highly motivated and plugged-in staff. Keeping employees constantly updated and entrusting them with scheduling autonomy makes them more inclined to stick around, as highly engaged teams see 59 percent less turnover. High retention rates means lower hiring and onboarding costs, good news for the company’s bottom line.
Digital workplace tools equate to higher engagement among employees and elevated manager productivity. By removing human influence and bias from the scheduling and communication processes, business leaders put more power in employees’ hands, ultimately leading to a more satisfied workforce, streamlined operations, and lower turnover.
Steven Kramer is CEO of WorkJam. He identified a gap between traditional workforce management systems and how retailers hire, schedule, and manage their hourly employees. With this in mind, he co-founded WorkJam and is responsible for the strategic direction of the company. He has 20 years of executive leadership experience driving business results and developing disruptive technologies for the retail industry. In 1999, Kramer co-founded iCongo, a leading global software provider for omni-channel retail and B2B commerce solutions, which merged with hybris Software in 2011 and became the largest independent provider of e-commerce solutions with 27 offices worldwide, 1,000-plus employees and more than 600 customers. hybris Software was purchased by SAP in 2013. Kramer holds a Bachelor’s of Commerce degree from McGill University.
