Almost 30 years ago my first supervising partner shared an observation with me – “Chris, if you keep doing this for as long as I have, you’ll learn that if you’re a model employee, if you do everything that is asked of you and more, then when the time comes for your employment to end you’ll more than likely get everything you’re entitled to.  On the other hand, if you’re a problem child, if you do what you want rather than what your employer wants, then when the time comes for your employment to end, you’ll get everything you’re entitled to and more.”

A lot has changed over the 30 years, but it’s worth asking – how closely does the observation still align with the lived experience in your organisation?  Kudos if you can honestly say you don’t recognise it.  If, as I expect, the observation is as relevant today as it was in the mid-to-late 90’s, then it’s also worth asking yourself a few extra questions.

How has this occurred?

Causes are often complex, but there are some predictable factors that are commonly in play.

• Are your incentive arrangements applied with integrity? How often do those who achieve (and overachieve) get what they’re entitled to, but those who have fallen short still get rewarded either because they slipstreamed with the team, or because the business would prefer to avoid the noise and management time that will be taken up by dealing with the disappointment of the employee who fell short?
• How often are truly discretionary payments or benefits provided to those who overachieve on the right behaviours?
• Employers almost never provide ex-gratia payments to exiting long-term or loyal employees (and I’m not suggesting they need to start), but how often do you offer a little (or a lot) extra to smooth a difficult exit, or to end an unmeritorious claim? How often do you need to resolve a claim due to a liability gap that could have been closed through better people management?
• When you review your remuneration arrangements, how often is a high-performer’s remuneration constrained to fit within an internal band, and how often is an underperformer rewarded disproportionately to their (lack of) effort and outcomes?

Is this really the message we’re looking for?

Clearly not.  In fact, within most organisations it’s the anathema of the high-performing culture we say that we ascribe to.  If that’s the case, why do we allow it to continue?  Is it a product of trading off tomorrow for the benefit of today?

What impact does this have?

The impacts can be as varied as the individuals it applies to, but there are some predictable effects.

• Underperformers don’t see themselves in that way, and if the time comes for them to exit, they see themselves more as victims of unfair management, than primary contributors to their own outcome.
• Incentive arrangements stop driving the behaviours they’re designed to encourage, and discretionary benefits become seen as entitlements.
• A culture of entitlement takes root, spreads, and grows.
• When individuals know the writing is on the wall, why would they make their own decision to leave? Based on observational data, if they hold out a little longer, they’ll get an extra payment when the time comes, and they’ll still get the ability to resign and control the narrative.
• Escalation becomes a strategic option. If an employee decides their future lies elsewhere (due to an already damaged persona within the organisation), their self-escalation to ‘problem child’ status can become a strategy to secure an enhanced exit.

How can we do things differently?

It would be naïve to suggest you could get to a permanent position where the observation never applies, but there are certainly actions we can all do to re-make our beds.  Perhaps obviously, those actions are to reverse the causes we identify within our own businesses and to focus our solutions on removing the impacts.  Importantly though, change is an endless journey.  Modifying or creating a new culture requires simple and clear messages, backed by fair, continuous and transparent accountability.  The observation maintains relevance because of learned behaviour on both sides of the equation.  The solution lies in changing our own behaviours first.