Continuing our recycled post from Earth Day, here’s part 2 of the fairness exercise:

In our last post, we gave you a scenario in which you had to fire someone – fairly. And like many of life’s tough questions, there is no correct answer.

They key to fairness is to set pre-established rules and apply them consistently.

In our example, the first step is to determine the criteria you will use to fire the employee. Will you base it on seniority? What about merit? Or need? There is no wrong answer – but whatever you decide – you have to be consistent with it.

If your entire company knows that all staffing decisions are always based upon seniority, not only will the decision will be easier if the situation comes up, but hopefully you’ll have few people saying “that’s not fair”.

To celebrate Earth Day, we’re recycling a blog post (or two). Here’s one from last fall that sparked some good conversation.

Real Life Fairness Exercise

As we begin a conversation on fairness, lets look a real life situation where we are asked to be fair.

You are a manager, who for budget reasons, must let go one employee. Here are your employees:

Employee 1: Your newest employee, is young and unmarried; your best producer who gets more work done effectively than any other employee.

Employee 2: A competent worker of four years, a single parent with three small children; needs the job the most.

Employee 3: A good worker and has worked for the company the longest (18 years) and is 2 years away from retirement.

Employee 4: A good producer with a terrific attitude; the hardest worker you have.

Employee 5: A competent employee, is the sibling of one of the owners of the company.

Who do you let go and why? Did you make a fair decision?

Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring & Citizenship. The Six Pillars of Character seem pretty self-explanatory and easy to understand. But the Pillars may not be what you think. Here are a few examples:

Trustworthiness is about promise-keeping, honesty, integrity and loyalty. It is being trustworthy. What it is not: trusting others.

Respect is showing solemn regard to others by recognizing their worth as a human being, and treating others the way you want to be treated. You can show respect to anyone – no matter how much you disagree with their opinions, lifestyle or decision. Thomas Jefferson said it best, “I will treat you like a gentleman, not because you are one, but because I am one.”

Fairness deals with concepts like equity, equality, openness, impartiality and consistency. Fairness doesn’t always mean that everyone gets equal.

The key to fairness is having pre-established rules, applied consistently. For example, pretend that you are a business manager, and you must let one of your employees go. Decide in advance what the standard will be for choosing someone. Maybe it will be based on seniority, or maybe on performance. If you set the standard and then be consistent with it, there will far fewer “that’s not fair” responses.

The Six Pillars are definitely not easy concepts. Its okay to not always know the right answer – and its okay to struggle visibly. However, the Six Pillars can help you make the right choice in tough decisions.

Until next time…