By John Daniel
Why fairness is the most critical variable in employee relationships Alexis was a fantastic employee. She had been at the bank for over a decade, had received several promotions, and was flourishing in her role. Her manager gave her the highest performance rating and recommended her as a high potential during the talent assessment process. Alexis seemed to love her job and the people she worked with. She seemed to trust and respect her manager. Her manager reported she was happy with her pay and opportunities at the company. I had met with Alexis on multiple occasions as she participated in many employee activities. She always seemed happy and upbeat and, on several occasions, talked about how much she loved the company.
Then one day I received a call from her with an urgent request to see me. I could tell by the tone of her voice that something was wrong, so I invited her to visit my office at the end of the day. When she arrived for our meeting, she was visibly distraught. Before I could ask, she launched into her story while holding back tears. It seems earlier that day, she came upon a document at the copier that detailed the pay of all the members of her department. She apologized for looking at the document but said she couldn’t help herself. One number that caught her immediate attention was an 8 in the salary of one of her peers. That single number flooded her with emotions and put her in an apoplectic state.
She laid out her story but started with a question: How could Matt, one of her peers in the same job, be earning $78,000 per year when her salary was only $76,000? Alexis pointed out that she had been at the company longer, had been in the role longer, and had received excellent reviews and feedback from her boss. The latter detail was evidence to her that the pay difference was not because Matt was a better performer. In fact, she pointed out that on many occasions she had provided coaching and assistance to Matt as he was learning his job. Her voice quivered as she talked, and I could tell she was holding back tears. At last, she summed it all up. “This is just not fair!”
Alexis’s story is one I have seen multiple times. A happy, productive employee suddenly becomes unhappy and less productive. And the change is usually not incremental. This contrasts with other events in the workplace that can have an impact on an employee. A poor performance review, a high volume of work,
and conflicts with colleagues all generate some level of emotion, though usually with much less fervor. But when an issue comes up related to an employee’s sense of fairness, the level of emotional intensity can be extremely high. Our human sense of fairness is deeply embedded in our psychological machinery and has evolutionary roots.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors thrived on cooperation. The propensity and capacity to cooperate has clear adaptive advantages. Wolves working together can bring down big prey. One large elk for all to share is better than one rabbit captured by a lone hunter. In fact, species from lions to army ants cooperate, and cooperators do better than noncooperators. With most species, cooperation is mutually beneficial, but transactional and short-term in nature. With humans, cooperation is a more complex and long-term phenomenon. It involves giving something of value to someone today with the belief that you will receive something of similar value in the future. This behavior is called reciprocal altruism.
Reciprocal altruism was a fascinating puzzle to the first evolutionary biologists. Evolutionary theory explains why members of a species help family members: family members share genes, so if you help family members thrive you are indirectly passing on your shared genes to the next generation. But human cooperation evolved so that individuals engaged in exchanges that involved a cost to the giver in the short term in return for benefit in the long term. Natural selection favored reciprocal altruism and built its behavioral dispositions into our brains.
The theory was first proposed by evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers and is considered one of the most significant insights in evolutionary theory. Trivers and others that followed proposed that several conditions occurring together led to the development of reciprocal altruism. Individuals must 1) have an opportunity to interact often, 2) be able to keep track of the support given, and 3) provide support to only those that help them. Our ancestors’ hunter-gatherer lifestyle created the perfect setting for reciprocal altruism. Generosity today meant costs in the short term but benefits later. Trivers described it as cooperation smeared across time.
But there is a fly in the ointment when it comes to reciprocal altruism in practice—the free rider problem. In cooperative exchange, both parties negotiate and come to an agreement about the
fair value of what is exchanged. Cheating is limited. Unless some kind of force or deception is used, the parties come to some mutually beneficial exchange in real time. With reciprocal altruism, the beneficiary
of generosity can fail to live up to his responsibly to share down the road. Free riders will do better than reciprocators. Too many free riders and groups don’t thrive. Natural selection had a solution for that problem, a repertoire of preferences and emotions like the one experienced by Alexis in our opening story.
Evolution by natural selection has embedded in our nature a fairness/cheating module that protected us for thousands of generations from cheaters and free riders. If we are trying to positively influence others, we should know that the perception of a lack of fairness will generate a powerful and long-lasting emotional response. The mechanism of that response is wired deeply in our psyche. Consider fairness the most critical variable in maintain positive relationships and use transparency as a main lever. As Supreme Court Justice William Douglas once said about transparency, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant”.
This is an excerpt from the recently released book, Ancestral Mindset, by former HR executive and thought leader, John Daniel (See ad on page 19)