Managing Inequity (#20)

One of the challenges that leaders are encountering during the coronavirus is managing inequities. Most of the examples revolve around a perception that people working from the office or the factory are working harder and contributing more to the success of the business than those that are working from home.

Managing inequities is not new. But in the current crisis there is an inequity in risk to yourself and your employees from exposure to the virus that wasn’t there before. The Army has dealt with this risk inequity for centuries. In Afghanistan, the unit I was part of had its own inequity problems. The infantry soldiers in the small platoon outposts which were in regular firefights with the Taliban thought that they were putting more effort into the performance of the unit than the cooks back at the camps, the intelligence analysts in the headquarters, or the helicopter pilots who flew overhead. The picture is from one of those small outposts, Bande Sardeh, a small outpost in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan. The soldiers at the small outposts were right — their risk was greater. Yet their effort couldn’t have happened without the collective effort of the entire team. The cook, the intelligence analyst, and the pilot contributed to our unit’s successes and failures in different ways, but just as important as the front-line infantry soldier.

When dealing with risk inequities, make sure your message to the team, as a leader, always focuses on the bigger picture — the success of the team, the division, or the company. Look for opportunities to highlight the contributions of those working remotely to your team’s success, not just the part of the team that is at the office or the factory. And it is okay to recognize the risk of the team on the front-line, but tie it to the greater success of the team or company. Finally, in this crisis, some groups have established a rotation so that most of the team spends part of the week working from home and part of the week in the office.

What are you doing to manage inequity in your team or company?