About fairness in the workplace

Following a discussion with a colleague about fairness in the workplace, I gave myself two hours to research it. A good starting point turned out to be Fujishiro, K. (2005), Fairness at work: its impacts on employee well-being.

What is fairness in the workplace (organisational justice)?

Distributive fairness (justice): individuals assess their own contribution-to-reward ratio and compare it with their assessment of their colleagues’. This looks like deservedness-based fairness, as distinct from sameness (everyone gets the same reward regardless of contribution) or need-based fairness (reward based on need rather than contribution). High distributive fairness might be thought of as a meritocracy based on equality of opportunity.

Procedural fairness: involvement in decision-making processes. This enhances the perception of fairness, because people feel they can influence a decision, and because merely expressing an opinion can have positive effects on its own.

Interactional justice: fairness in how employees are treated within organisational procedures — e.g. during a hiring or promotion process — enhanced by truthfulness, respect, appropriate questions, and clear justification.

On equality versus equity: in the workplace, equality seems to be the stronger influence, though measures to promote equity also exist. As Dr Angie Hobbs put it on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “For me, the most attractive interpretation is that each person is of equal worth and should have the opportunity — ideally, an equal opportunity — to access goods, but most of the goods themselves will be proportionally distributed, according to need in some cases and merit in others.”

Fairness assessment requires perceiving one’s own situation relative to others’, so accurate perception matters — and accurate perception is likely tied to effective communication (my own thought, not from the literature).

My conclusion: workplace fairness is mostly about how fair workers perceive their environment to be, largely on meritocratic grounds.

Is fairness in the workplace important?

Two meta-analyses found that high workplace fairness predicts “high job satisfaction, high performance, low withdrawal, fewer counterproductive behaviors, high organizational commitment, and more organizational citizenship behaviours” (Fujishiro, 2005, citing Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001, and Colquitt et al., 2001).

A few more quotes from Fujishiro (2005):

“Fairness, or justice, is one of the most fundamental concerns in society.”

“A lack of perceived fairness was negatively associated with employee well-being.”

“High workload was associated with high strain only when perceived fairness was low.”

“Low levels of organizational justice may act as an occupational stressor and have detrimental effects on employee health and well-being.”

A large-scale longitudinal study in Finland found that a lack of organisational justice is associated with subsequent declines in self-rated health, absence due to sickness, and psychiatric disorders.

The ease with which I found convincing evidence for the positive effects of fairness made me conclude that it’s an important issue, both for individuals and for organisations.

Objections to fairness

Are there studies, theories, or ideas suggesting unfairness might sometimes be desirable — or that concern for workplace fairness might be pointless or unprofitable? Here’s what I found in the little time I gave myself:

• The world isn’t fair — reality isn’t fair, there’s no such thing as a genuinely fair system.
• There may be higher-priority issues in the workplace.
• Chasing absolute fairness may itself cost performance — there’s presumably a curve of diminishing returns relating gains in perceived fairness to the effort spent pursuing it.

One stimulating (if disagreeable) read put it this way: “Our idea of fairness isn’t actually obtainable. It’s really just a cloak for wishful thinking.”

My conclusion: it’s worth thinking carefully about whether investing in perceived fairness is worthwhile — i.e. whether the benefits are likely to outweigh the costs.

How to increase workplace fairness (should you wish to)

From Workplace Tribes: “Treating people fairly is important. Ensuring that they feel fairly treated is even more important.”

I ran out of time on this one, but hope to come back to it.

References

Cohen-Charash, Y., & Spector, P. E. (2001). The role of justice in organizations: A meta-analysis. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 86(2), 278–321.

Colquitt, J. A., Conlon, D. E., Wesson, M. J., Porter, C. O. L. H., & Ng, K. Y. (2001). Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 425–445.