Nepotism at Work: Does Your Job Pick Favorites?

Your boss promotes his incompetent nephew, even though he’s clearly not management material. The company owner’s 20-something daughter gets a private office, but almost every other employee works in a cube. Your co-workers who are chummy with management always get the plum assignments, while others are stuck with busywork. Favoritism rears its ugly head in many offices, and as an employee, there’s not a lot you can do about it. Nepotism at work may be unfair, but it’s not exactly illegal.

Do whatever you can to make your boss’s job easier. Find out what’s important to her (or her boss) and do whatever you can to help her achieve her goals. “If you can better understand your boss’s top three agenda items and help them achieve one of those, they will tend to nudge you toward the favorites category,” Karl Moore, a professor at McGill University, told the BBC. You can also try to make friends with your boss’s favorite employees. Praise from them may be enough to get you into the office clique.

Read full article: CheatSheet, August 19, 2016