101XP: Personal relationships as a motivation tool

There are a huge number of approaches to personnel management in the field of personal relationships.

I know an Asian company where it is forbidden to smile and laugh during the working day until dismissal. There are companies in which friendship is prohibited, because the management is afraid of the same favoritism based on interpersonal relationships: they noticed that two girls became best friends, go to each other’s houses and drink coffee together at work, they are fired.

These are, of course, examples of extreme intolerance, but we also have companies on the market where it is strictly forbidden to hire spouses, children, relatives, where personal relationships between colleagues are not welcome: they see this as a threat to the workflow.

Indeed, personal relationships at work can bring both positive and negative results. I want to tell you what employers are usually afraid of when it comes to romantic relationships in the workplace, and how this can be avoided.

Favoritism

It is clear that one can be afraid of a situation when one employee (for example, a boss) pays special attention or gives privileges to another person based on personal preferences, and not objective indicators. Here you can immediately throw several situations:

1. An additional bonus to the salary of “your half”.But this is solved quite simply: by accruing bonuses based on the implementation of KPIs.

2. Vacation in the same period of time.And why not give married couples a vacation at the same time?

It is quite logical to meet your own employees halfway.

3. Setting a higher priority to the tasks of a loved oneIf the company employs professionals who promptly perform all tasks, there is nothing to worry about.

Moreover, in this way we get a situation in which some of the tasks are performed with increased motivation.

Conflicts

All people are different. Someone calmly works in a bundle of “supervisor-subordinate”, someone only in a bundle of “supervisor-supervisor”, someone – “subordinate-subordinate”. From a professional point of view, healthy competition is only beneficial. The employee needs to prove not only his professional competence, but also his personal one. In addition, conflicts often arise on a professional basis. In the case of personal relationships, such conflicts are resolved much faster when it is important for a person to achieve peace not only in connection with production, but also with personal necessity. Personal relationships are being tested, and we again get increased motivation.

Rumors and gossip within the team

A lot depends on the management’s position here.

The level of tact and respect for personal space is set from above. And positive examples create an atmosphere of comfort. You can use personal relationships to benefit the workflow. Positive emotions are extrapolated to the surrounding employees due to the atmosphere of support and mutual assistance, due to the internal state of comfort. There are relatives, friends and colleagues around who will not let you down, on whom you can rely. It all comes from the family. Well, we are now talking about examples of happy and prosperous families, of course, and not those where dad is an alcoholic and mom is a tortured vixen.

The departure of one employee after another

Of course, when a husband leaves the company and pulls his wife after him, this is a problem. But in fact, working as a family is also a plus here. After all, if a loyal policy is formed in the company for couples to work (joint vacations, joint trips, work on one project), when switching to another job, an employee will think twice about whether his half, which you have already accepted, which you cherish and cherish, will be waiting for him at another place with him.

By the way, working together is also economically beneficial. Travel expenses, lunches, travel expenses.

On the other hand, the opposite situation may arise. When the other half comes along with the star. But here it is: when a relative of an already working employee comes to you for an interview, then you already know what kind of person he is from the point of view of the human factor. I’m talking about the fact that a good husband rarely has a completely bad wife and vice versa, because usually there are common values and moral attitudes in the family. Of course, we need to focus more on the professional qualities of such candidates in order to avoid a situation where one employee is a star, and his significant other or relative is a ballast. But the statistics of our company show that there are much more positive results. We now have five married couples working, there is even a parent-child bond, there are other relatives. And I’m more comfortable if couples work inside our organization than if one specialist works for us and the other for competitors.

Production drama

I saw how couples formed within the collective, and then some dispersed. At the stage of informal relations, such breaks pass quietly. There are a lot of young people in the company, they are in a state of search, looking at the opposite sex, trying, looking. But if there was a divorce when the family breaks up, it would certainly harm the production process. An employee going through a personal drama in life usually drops out of the process. And if you have a married couple working for you, two will fall out. It’s not easy. And this is a serious risk, which, it seems to me, is neutralized by the positive aspects of the joint work of couples, because instead of one person who is passionate about his business, you get two, whose workflow goes non-stop day and night: highly qualified specialists cannot but live their business.

So, in my opinion, the task of the HR service of any high-tech company is to integrate personal life into the production process. It sounds somewhat cynical, but it benefits everyone. And this position is shared with us by other companies in the industry. For example, Wargaming will definitely find a job for the second half if a specialist is really needed. There are many examples of nepotism in the IT industry: Game Insight, ABBYY, Google. If you want an employee to give the company the lion’s share of his time, generate ideas and implement them, make the company his family.

And finally, in my opinion, when a family works, people show maximum confidence in their company.