Loyalty to work during work hours tends to be a positive characteristic of any employee around the world. Always being available for any activity is considered a strength of a company's human resources.
However, a recent study found that employers, supervisors and managers are not taking advantage of this. This type of employee, vital to the development of an economic activity, is the most likely to be a victim of exploitation at work.
That is, according to the study, they are the first to be entrusted with the greatest number of activities without receiving additional compensation. The research points out that managers take advantage of this to impose a heavier workload on these employees without rewarding them for their loyalty or faithfulness.
Are managers who engage in such practices bad guys? Not at all. According to the study by Matthew Stanley, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in the United States, bosses unconsciously fall into this situation.
Because the employee is always available, the supervisor or manager gives him more work without realizing that he is overloading him.
“Companies want loyal workers, and a lot of research shows that loyal workers bring all sorts of benefits to companies. But it seems that managers tend to target them for exploitation.” reads the study cited by Science Alert.
“It's a vicious cycle. Loyal workers tend to be targeted for exploitation. Then, when they do something that exploits them, they end up reinforcing their reputation as loyal workers, which makes them more likely to be chosen in the future,” they added.
For the study, the experts recruited 1,400 managers and asked them to delegate tasks to different types of worker profiles. Loyal employees were unconsciously given more activities.
According to the study, the managers never showed that they wanted to be bad. “Yet they transgress with surprising frequency in their daily lives. This is due in large part to ethical blindness, in which people do not see how what they are doing is inconsistent with the principles or values they tend to profess,” they explain.
