Roughly one in four survey respondents also believe that company leadership is shielding a “toxic top-performing employee” at the expense of other team members.
“Our data confirms that workplace favoritism is a very real, ongoing issue, and it is almost certainly more common than most organizations would be comfortable admitting,” says Keith Spencer, career expert at Resume Now. That said, Spencer emphasizes that he believes most cases of preferential treatment are not deliberate on managers’ parts.
“The principle of ‘assume mistake, not malice’ applies perfectly here,” he explains. “A large share of this unequal treatment comes from unconscious bias: managers do not realize they are playing favorites when they offer more flexibility, extra leeway, or additional support to employees who remind them of themselves or feel more familiar to them.”
Whether favoritism is intentional or accidental, workplaces where most staff feel they receive worse treatment than their colleagues are almost guaranteed to face major operational and cultural problems.
“It should be a major red flag for companies to learn that their managers may be showing favoritism, which erodes team trust and stokes widespread resentment,” Spencer notes. “All of these outcomes hurt employee morale, drag down engagement levels, and even increase staff turnover, so favoritism creates far-reaching ripple effects that harm the entire business — regardless of whether it was done on purpose.”
