Favoritism In The Workplace

This post is not going to be about favoritism on a personal level, based on whether the boss likes your character or not. Instead, I intend to focus on a general tendency for employers to show favoritism towards sales and marketing staff. The reason is obvious, since Salesmen and Marketers are tasked with the honorable role of bringing in the money. Sometimes, other employees in the company feel very unmotivated because the sales people keep on closing sales and earning large commissions, while the other employees get more work as sales increase without any extra pay. Working in an office has exposed me to the world of office politics and I find it extremely interesting to observe my colleagues’ behavior.

I noticed a recent increase in dissatisfaction in my workplace among administration staff and decided that for the project I’m working on, I want to help the company minimize such problems. Therefore, I spoke up regarding the possible awarding of commissions to people helping these sales people or perhaps some form of performance appraisal to reward them. The sales manager I spoke to was insistent that commissions should only be given to sales staff and that pay should not be an issue for admin staff. His logic was that regardless of the pay, each staff can only do that much. If the staff cannot handle the work, we should hire another admin staff, instead of rewarding the staff, since he/she is overworked and having more money won’t help. If the admin staff isn’t overworked, then he/she shouldn’t demand more money, since he expects all staff to be self-motivated in order to work in this company.

I found his explanation very idealistic, but I could tell that his values were strongly ingrained that only sales people deserves rewards pegged to performance, therefore I stopped further discussion. However, is it even possible that all employees that you hire are self-motivated? Even if it is possible, is it possible that your employees will stay motivated when their rewards are not pegged to performance? Apparently, I can use his logic and tell him that sales people do not deserve commissions too, because they are expected to be self-motivated regardless of compensation. However, I’m well aware that the expectancy theory of motivation plays a big part in workplace behavior. Basically, the expectancy theory says that the higher the rewards and the more rewards are pegged to performance, the harder a person would work. It’s basic common sense and explains why insurance agents and property agents are willing to work much longer hours and more days than others. Aside from willingness to work longer hours, I believe that motivated staffs work more efficiently and faster too.

Of course, there is another argument that he could have thrown that he didn’t. Salespeople bring in the money and that’s a pretty big deal, isn’t it? We can liken that to why investment bankers are paid so much, because they help to grow the money. To employers, it is very obvious when salesmen are creating value, since the money comes in. Unlike other staff where it is extremely difficult to track the value they are creating for their company, the contributions of salesmen are so obvious. However, I beg to differ when I consider the whole big picture of a company. Maybe if you work in a hit-&-run company where you go for short-term profits, then salespeople create the most value. However, most companies want to thrive in the long run and I think that sales people may not be creating the most value for companies than other staff.

First off, it is possible for a sale made to devalue a company, when the salesman tries to market a product unethically or provide bad service. Sure, the sale may be made, but the implication is that it has given the company a bad name, which may last for years. Using this same logic, we must understand that the whole company is really involved with marketing like what I learnt in University. Any screw-ups in a company will cause some dissatisfaction in consumers ultimately and that’s why every staff is important. If they are not important, why hire them in the first place? While sales people get the sale, customer service officers delight the customers after the sale is made. Delivery staff ensures that products arrive timely and in good condition. Human resource personnel take charge of staff needs so that everyone can perform at their best. Each department and every staff has their own use and should not be underestimated.

Now that we have highlighted the importance of all employees, it’s also worthwhile to mention that high staff turnovers can add up to be a great cost for companies. To sum up everything, I feel that close-minded managers that treasure good sales people and do not appreciate other good staff will help the company to land many short term sales, but long-run profitability will definitely be affected. All good performing staff should be appreciated and rewarded appropriately.