It's all Relative

What makes a good, strong relationship? I’ve been having a lot of these conversations lately with friends and colleagues. There was one common theme; in any solid relationship, someone has to take a step back and both partners cannot be uber ambitious go-getters.

Some believe that once you have kids, mum needs to stay home and make her life ‘all about the children’. Others thought it was good for mum and dad to work to make the kids more independent. Ofcourse this only needs to be thought about once you have kids. What about before you had them? Were both partners highly career oriented? Or, was one of you already starting to gear up for the ‘pause’. And who made the decision on which one of you was going to take a step back? Was it your partner? Was it you? Was it the extended family? Or was it your employer?

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Nepotism. It’s that 8-letter word that makes any human resources person sit up and take notice. Quite often, employing husband and wife into the same company is to the company’s advantage. It’s like getting two for the price of one! Single recruitment fee, single relocation package etc. But what do you do when both husband and wife have the same qualifications and the company has two vacant positions in the same department? Should the company hire them both or hire best of the two citing ‘Nepotism’?

Let’s say they hire both parties and some months down the line, they say, “Oops! Sorry. We’ll keep one and have to move the other to a different department. Not because of your performance, but because of ‘Nepotism’ ”. Even though the couple works as team in most aspects of life, in the workplace, they are competitors. That’s the harsh reality.

Ofcourse, you are happy for your partner. But how do you then feel? How do you not feel like one of you has won and the other… has lost? And carry that feeling back home?

This got me thinking, “Where did the term nepotism originate? A quick search in the Merriam Webster dictionary led me to the explanation, “the unfair practice by a powerful person of giving jobs and other favors to relatives”. This is ofcourse something to be avoided. But to what degree? It makes sense in politics and business. But what about low level jobs? How do you then quantify the risk of nepotism?

According to a study by the anti-poverty charity Oxfam, the wealthiest 1% will soon own more than the rest of the world's population. Is nepotism something that really only applies to the wealthy and the top performers or is it something that every individual has to think about; no matter their position in the workforce? Where do you draw the line? Does this extend to good friends? What about the partner you’ve been with for a few years but haven’t yet taken the step of getting that piece of paper signed? Does one single 8½ in × 11 in piece of paper really have so much power that it makes the world sit up and take notice? And are you really trying to tell me that the wealthiest 1% are not good friends? Almost ‘like family’?

In this day and age where couples meet in university, either employers are going to have to start getting more intelligent about how they define nepotism and less selfish about how they practice the policy or risk looking very foolish later on down the line.

What about rejecting somebody because they remind you of that nasty bully in high school? Isn’t there a rule against holding a grudge somewhere too?

Thoughts?

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