Why the Boss can steal paper clips, but you shouldn’t!

It always seems as though your boss spends a lot of time on email, and you know it’s not all work-related. Instead, they’re planning the kids’ birthday parties or booking the next holiday. Maybe you should try to get more of that sort of stuff done during the day, too. After all, we’re all working longer hours, and we all need a break now and then. Right?

Well, whether or not you should book that flight from your desk depends upon how high up you are within your company, according to new research from Instead. They created a variety of hypothetical situations in which someone had behaved badly, and then asked people how strongly the wrongdoers should be punished.

The results? Unless you’re pretty high up the food chain at your company, wait until you get home to book your holiday. There is a little justice in the world, though: If your boss really screws up, there’s a good chance he or she will be judged a lot more harshly than someone at a lower level would be.

Dave versus DaveThe researchers presented the test subjects with two hypothetical people. One was David Rogers, “a well-regarded senior executive with a long track record of good performance.” He was “the head of the sales department and in charge of over 100 employees,” with “great authority to make independent decisions.”

The other hypothetical person, also named David Rogers, was more of a worker bee: “a not well-known staff assistant with little track record,” who “work[ed] in the sales department [and had] no formal authority over other employees.” He was described as having “very little authority to make independent decisions.”

The test subjects were then presented with a list of possible infractions, ranging in severity from using company stamps for personal mail to verbally abusing a co-worker, and then asked how strongly each “Dave” should be sanctioned. These are the highlights of the findings:

The lower-level employee is punished much more severely for minor infractions; such as a using company stamps to mail personal letters, making personal calls and doing personal email on company time, and accepting small gifts.

The big-shot was punished more severely for more serious infractions, such as withholding important work-related information from colleagues, verbally abusing a co-worker, or taking large kickbacks.

There is more likely to be a disparity in the punishment if the offence is against the corporation versus against an individual employee. The study found people were more likely to get similar punishments, regardless of status, if the offence primarily affected an individual, such as telling a racist joke or sexually harassing a co-worker. The bigger differences in punishment were seen when the offence was something more corporate in nature, such as repeatedly being late to meetings or taking large kickbacks.

Is it fair that execs get to take liberties while everyone else has to toe the line? Or that they get punished more severely when they make big mistakes?

It’s one of those us & them arguments that will be debated endlessly over the years and I’d hazard a guess that your, and my, perception might well change as we rise up (or possibly down!) the corporate ladder.

The things that make you go aaarrggghh!!

There are a thousand and one hurdles in business, most of which at one time or another make you want to retreat to a quiet (sound proofed) corner and scream in frustration!

I was approached earlier in the year by a client to recruit an important role for one of their global business streams which needed some specific difficult to find skills, without which the candidate would be out of their depth. The global Head Office in the States had been looking internally for a year for this person and given up, finally tasking EMEA to find this mystical candidate.

Which is where I come in!

Three weeks after being briefed I had a shortlist of five candidates from three countries, all of whom had proven track records and reputations in their field. My client and his boss started to put some diary dates together for the five candidates to be either interviewed in person or by video conference: at which point the States announced that they had transferred one of their spare Project Mangers across on a contract so that he could learn on the job!

Yup, it’s the things that make you go aaarrggghh!!