A family business holds, as its two core corporate values, “compassion” and “fairness.” The CEO, who is the founder of the family business, has had his only brother on a payroll for about 5 years.
The brother has had major financial and family difficulties. Four years ago, he lost all of his savings after investing with a Floridian wealth manager who stole the money and left the country. And his wife just gave birth to a baby with severe developmental problems.
The brother is a terrible employee. He has a very bad attitude, arriving late for work, leaving early, skipping meetings, not making deadlines, and turning in incomplete work.
Over the years, the CEO and his management team tried everything they could possibly think of to get the brother to improve his behavior – all to no avail. They even hired a life coach and a professional coach for him. But that, too, failed to produce any positive palpable results.
The brother’s lackluster performance has been having a negative effect on other company employees, who feel that he is being treated preferentially in a way that is unfair to them. Some of these employees have become bitter and have started arriving late and leaving early, as the CEO’s brother does. The moral problem seems to be getting worse.
The managing director has repeatedly requested the CEO to fire his brother. The CEO’s was always evasive in response to this request. In the meantime, he has done has nothing to remove his brother.
You are a consultant hired to advise the CEO on the matter. Drawing on the concepts covered in our “aligning values and practices class,” please advise the CEO. Make sure you discuss each of the following in your advice to the CEO:
The values of compassion and fairness are in conflict in this case. Compassion makes the CEO forget the overall well being of the company and his duty to ensure fairness for all while helping his brother. Compassion is good only if it does not affect other values and employee satisfaction. Here other employees feel discriminated and unfairly treated when only the CEO’s brother is exempted from rules and regulations. The CEO’s compassion towards his brother’s misfortune affected the employee perception of fairness.
The corporate values picked by CEO do not mean anything here because if he meant to hold the values of compassion and fairness, he would have shown the same to all the employees who are suffering from physical or mental pain. Here the compassion is shown only towards his brother who was a terrible employee which led to unfairness for others.
I would advise the CEO to avoid favoritism and consider all the employees in the same way. None of them should be given special treatment based on personal relationships because it will affect the employee morale. The employees who show disobedience and not performing the job responsibilities adequately should be punished after executing enough warnings and performance improvement plans. The company cannot prosper without the support from the employees and the management should not involve in any activities that makes the employees frustrated and unsatisfied. The company culture would be badly affected if the management actions are not aligned with the company values.
I would advise the CEO to pick the values of honesty and integrity going forward. It would help the CEO to ensure that the CEO to develop trust among the employees and ensure fairness to all. In order to follow these values genuinely, the company should develop the code of conduct based on these values and ensure that every employees are following the same. The CEO should ensure zero tolerance to issues that violate honesty and integrity and punish the violators impartially.
A family business holds, as its two core corporate values, “compassion” and “fairness.” The CEO, who...
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