Employees who love the working environment and want to constantly offer their own benefits, naturally become ‘loyal’ to the company. Although this situation in employees is for the benefit of the company, according to a new study, it may not be very beneficial for the employee himself.
Scientists from Duke, West Virginia and Arizona State Universities pointed out that loyalty to the company can be abused by managers. It has been revealed that managers often turn to loyal employees in situations such as unpaid work or extra work.
How was this conclusion reached?
Three scientists put nearly 1,400 administrators on the internet to a test. Each manager was thrown into a script starring a 29-year-old employee named ‘John’. John is said to be working for a company that is “trying to cut costs.”
Knowing this information, managers initially chose John for the unpaid assignments and overtime. Moreover, no matter how the script was shaped, more burdens were placed upon him as long as John’s reputation for loyalty was still in the open.
In different scenarios, managers were also informed about other positive traits, such as honesty or fairness, in the recommendation letter they received about John. But the managers were giving John additional work, especially in the scenario where the letters featured ‘loyalty’.
Accepting jobs means ‘loyalty’:
The study also showed that John’s acceptance of jobs affected how managers viewed him. Managers rated John as a loyalist in letters stating that John accepted additional work.
According to scientists, this situation is not only due to the bad intentions of the administrators:
The extra jobs given to loyal employees don’t mean managers are completely malicious, according to the scientists. Instead, attention is drawn to the ‘ethical blindness’ of managers. In other words, although the manager has good intentions and assigns a ‘loyal’ employee because he trusts the abilities and loyalty of that employee, he may not be aware of the effect of the burden he puts on, and he sees this as normal.
The research was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
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