Managers need to get work done through others. It requires cooperation.

Fairness greases those wheels by giving everyone something they want and need. Unfairness throws sand in the gears.

What that means for managers is that fairness is not about charity. It’s smart business.

It’s also an obligation under the social contract that governs healthy relationships.

Fairness at work is about recognizing the underlying social contract that exists between employees and employers.

It’s about appreciating what motivates us as human beings, regardless of where we sit on an organizational chart.

Unfairness and toxicity creep into organizational cultures when we lose sight of our shared humanity, when the collective “we” gets supplanted with “us versus them” thinking, allowing unchecked positional power to exploit workplace relationships.

Employees push back against unfairness at work in multiple ways. Being less engaged in their work is how employees reset the balance and create a new “fairness” setpoint.

Short answer: no. It’s about reasonableness. It’s about balance.

Every contract, including the social contract between employees and employers requires reasonableness.

What fairness looks like in practice is achieved with open and honest communication to help manage expectations on both sides of the desk about what successful job performance looks like in terms of results and in terms of the support needed to achieve those results.

Too often those expectations go unsaid and the resulting disappointment, when left unresolved diminishes the relationship by fueling perceptions of unfairness.

Research shows employees have been reevaluating their life, clarifying priorities, and reexamining their careers for more than ten years.

As part of this process employees have been moving the high cost of unfairness at work into the “unacceptable” column on their emotional balance sheet due to a number of societal changes, namely:

• the War for Talent amid the coming of age of two large workforce cohorts (Millennials and Gen X) that research says have different workplace needs than their predecessors and whose sheer size affords them the extraordinary market power of demanding change and rejecting command and control leadership;
• the #MeToo movement that mandates accountability from organizations for employees who use positional power to sexually harass and extort others in the workplace; and
• the Black Lives Matter (#BLM) movement whose social justice mission spills into the workplace with calls for more diversity along with meaningful inclusion and equity to counterbalance structural inequalities and fundamental unfairness.

These changes in the labor market have permanently altered the very meaning of work, leaving organizations scrambling to catch up. Seeking Fairness at Work is a road map for how to reevaluate fairness and a 5-part strategy closing toxic loopholes.

The economic imbalance of power between management and the employees who report to them requires management to take the lead in keeping the relationship on track.

Employees are never more engaged than on their first day at a new job. It’s only after the new hires discover the unwritten rules that their enthusiasm drops faster than a new car depreciates when leaving a dealership.

Management’s positional power hasn’t changed during that window of time, but its influence has due to the unfair norms they enable and condone.

To effectively lead requires keeping employees engaged. And keeping them engaged requires fairness.

Leadership and empowering employees are not a zero-sum game. Fairness, the ability to honestly connect with people, expands rather than diminishes, a manager’s sphere of influence and overall power.

As a result, being fair can increase a manager’s power because they’re able to get more done through others.

It calls for relationship building skills, also known as emotional intelligence, to supplement and complement management’s existing industry and business expertise.

Authority stemming from robust workplace relationships grounded in mutual respect and healthy boundaries is more enduring than positional, command and control, power plays. It engenders more employee trust and loyalty because it reflects more good faith and fair dealing, more fairness.

Seeking Fairness at Work speaks truth to power by identifying how unfairness creeps into workplace cultures and betrays employee trust.

Unlike other business leadership books, Seeking Fairness at Work offers a deeper understanding of the how unfairness is most commonly experienced by employees and why behaviors management often condones and enables is perceived as unfair.

The issue is a multi-faceted problem and requires a multi-pronged approach to successfully resolve. That’s why traditional employee engagement improvement programs that only focus on one or two areas fail. It’s like trying to bake a cake with too few ingredients.

Seeking Fairness at Work reveals the nooks and crannies of organizational unfairness and offers a holistic 5-part strategy for sealing those fissures to help build more trust, cooperation, and the collaboration that supports high employee engagement, retention, and satisfaction.