Justice is not measured by the metre: when equality on paper becomes injustice in practice

At the end of the shift, both had worked eight hours.

In the system they looked the same. On the attendance list they had the same mark. Each had arrived on time and left when the duty was done.

But their days had not been the same at all.

One had followed an ordinary process, without major interruptions, with defined tasks and problems that could be solved by the procedure.

The other had dealt with a colleague's absence, a difficult complaint, an operational error and several decisions that called for experience. He had also helped the new employee, who could not yet handle every situation alone.

At the end, the manager looked at the hours.

Eight and eight.

The equality was perfect.

Only the tiredness had not come out equal.

And so an injustice can begin that rarely causes a scandal. There is not necessarily an open violation, an insult or an arbitrary decision. Everything looks in order, because everyone has been treated by the same formula.

The problem is that the formula has not understood what it is measuring.

In management, equality is a necessary principle. Without it, decisions risk turning into favours, privileges and personal deals.

But there is a difference between equality and justice that managers cannot avoid.

Equality asks for a common standard.

Justice asks that the standard be applied with reasonable judgement, taking into account responsibility, conditions and consequences.

Two employees can have the same title but not the same experience. They can work in the same department but face completely different difficulties. They can carry similar responsibilities on paper, yet one is always the person entrusted with the most complicated situations.

To pretend that these differences do not exist just because the documents put people in the same category is a very comfortable way of avoiding the responsibility of judgement.

A metre can measure the length of a table. It cannot measure the moral weight of a decision.

Yet many organisations try to do exactly that.

One of the most common injustices at work is born of ability itself.

The most conscientious employee gets the hardest tasks, because the manager knows he will finish them. He is asked to help others, to cover absences and to correct mistakes, because he is the man you can lean on.

At first this looks like a sign of trust.

Then it becomes a habit.

And one day he discovers that the reward for doing the work well is more work.

Meanwhile, the colleague who avoids responsibility or keeps showing a lack of readiness may end up with a lighter load.

The manager may have had no bad intent. He may even believe he is acting logically, giving the tasks to the one most likely to finish them successfully.

But a decision can be practical and unjust at the same time.

If competence becomes a reason to load the same person with extra responsibility again and again, while lack of competence turns into protection from responsibility, the organisation begins to teach a dangerous lesson.

The more you give, the more will be asked of you.

The less you take on, the less you will be bothered.

In such an environment, people do not necessarily lose the ability to work well.

They lose the wish to show it.

But justice cannot be understood either as a promise that everyone must always carry the same load.

An employee who has just started cannot have the same speed and professional confidence as someone with years of experience. To ask the same result of him on the first day, without training and support, does not create equality. It creates conditions for failure.

On the other hand, experience must not become a permanent punishment for the one who has it.

The new employee needs the chance to learn. The experienced employee needs respect for what he knows, for his time and for the responsibility he carries.

Both deserve justice, but not necessarily the same intervention from the manager.

And this is exactly where the real work of management begins.

It is easy to divide a list of tasks mathematically.

It is far harder to understand who is developing, who is overloaded, who is avoiding responsibility and who needs support before more is asked of them.

That takes observation.

It takes knowing the work, not only reading the reports.

Above all, it takes the courage to admit that a division that looks equal in the documents may not be fair in practice.

There is, however, the opposite risk.

Justice can be used as a fine word to excuse personal preferences.

A manager may say he is taking circumstances into account, while in truth he is favouring the person he likes most. He can give one flexibility and the other only duties. He can demand sacrifices from the employee who does not complain, while granting exceptions to the one who knows how to apply pressure.

That is why justice cannot rest only on the manager's personal feeling that he is acting well.

It needs criteria.

Why was a task assigned to one person and not another? Is the extra load temporary, or has it become permanent practice? Is responsibility being shared reasonably? Are people being given real chances to gain the skills they lack?

And, perhaps, the most uncomfortable question:

Would I make the same decision if a different employee stood in front of me, in the same circumstances?

If the answer changes with the name, the sympathy or the personal relationship, then justice has begun to lose its meaning.

Of course, not every reason can be explained in public. Health, family or personal circumstances deserve confidentiality. But the principles on which decisions are made can and should be understandable.

A manager has no duty to please everyone.

He does have a duty not to confuse his authority with the right to act as he wishes.

In many organisations, the injustice lies not in what is given to one employee but in what is constantly asked of another.

One gets a more convenient schedule for a legitimate reason. That may be entirely fair.

But if the cost of that decision is passed on every week to the same colleague, without discussion, without planning and without any effort to spread the burden, then the manager has solved one problem by creating another.

This does not mean support should be taken away from the one who needs it.

It means the organisation must take responsibility for how that support is provided.

Because understanding for one person must not be financed automatically by the exhaustion of another.

And when this happens again and again, it is no longer a chance compromise.

It is an organisational decision, even if nobody has had the courage to call it that.

Managers who take justice seriously must accept an uncomfortable truth: not every just decision will be seen as such at once.

One employee may get angry because a colleague receives extra support. Another may consider a bigger responsibility unfair, even when it is a clear part of his role. Someone may ask for the exception given to another person, without knowing the circumstances that made it necessary.

That is why justice cannot be measured by the number of people who leave the manager's office satisfied.

It is not a popularity contest.

Some decisions need an explanation. There are times when you must say no. There are responsibilities that cannot be moved just because they are unpleasant.

But even the hardest decision must have a reasoning that can be defended.

And a serious manager must be ready to review a decision when the facts show he was wrong.

Because consistency of principle does not mean stubbornness towards reality.

People can accept many things at work.

They can accept a hard period, a heavier load or a decision that does not match their wishes. They can even accept that someone else, for objective reasons, needs different treatment.

What eats away at trust is the conviction that sacrifices do not weigh the same in the eyes of the one who decides.

When a person is constantly asked to understand others, but nobody tries to understand him, justice begins to sound like a word invented to ask him to keep quiet.

When his dedication is taken for granted, while every lack of dedication in others is met with endless understanding, the organisation is not rewarding responsibility.

It is exploiting it.

And when a manager answers every objection with the sentence “The rules are the same for everyone”, he may be defending an important principle.

But he may also be hiding behind it.

The difference lies in the readiness to look beyond the numbers.

Because management is not only the art of distributing tasks. It is the responsibility to understand what you are asking of people, what they are taking on and what the consequences of your decisions are.

At the end of the day, the attendance list will keep showing eight hours for each.

Perhaps everyone will have taken the breaks they are due, the set pay and the duties under the contract.

These are rights that must be respected without exception.

But they do not exhaust the whole meaning of justice.

Behind the numbers stand people who have carried different responsibilities, faced different difficulties and made contributions that cannot always be summed up in a column.

The manager who fails to see these differences will always find it easy to declare that he has treated everyone the same.

It is harder to prove that he has treated them justly.

Because injustice does not always begin when someone is given less than the others. Sometimes it begins when far more is asked of him, while the manager keeps insisting that nobody has been treated differently.

And at that moment, equality is no longer a principle.

It has become the alibi of injustice.