The danger of office rivalry

By Roderick Ahimbazwe

AS she walks by the reception she jeers. This shocks all the visitors around because of her unbecoming behaviour. But she doesn’t mind them and continues mocking the beautiful receptionist, who ignores her.
Rumour in the office has it that the man she has hopes in, is instead interested in the new beautiful receptionist.

This is just one of the few cases of office rivalry. Instances where workmates don’t see eye to eye because of rivalry over girls or men, are many in workplaces. Some become sworn-enemies even when they might be occupying the same office.
So, why do workmates, who would have otherwise been close, develop such a deep-rooted hatred for each other?

Jimmy Kiberu, a communications expert, says one of the major cases of office rivalry is lack of proper job description. “In organisations that don’t have proper structures outlining roles, rivalry can arise as every employee would want to catch the eye of the boss,” Kiberu asserts.
He notes that poor internal communication in a firm can also cause rivalry between employees.

“Mistrust and suspicion can arise among employees if communication from management is given in a biased and secretive manner,” Kiberu says, adding that whenever employees feel that one of them is favoured in getting communication from the bosses, enmity can arise.

He also says the lack of leadership skills in an organisation can lead to office rivalries.

“An effective leader should create harmony and team-spirit among subordinates to avoid employee rivalry,” Kiberu argues.

He says a poor leader will fail to draw boundaries as far as role differentiation is concerned. This leads to overlapping of the roles, which can cause rivalry, he says. “Any administrator must ensure that each person under him/her has a proper job description to avoid clashes,” Kiberu says. He notes that lack of teamwork can also lead to employee rivalry.

“If employees don’t have team-spirit and only work to satisfy themselves and their bosses, then expect competition as they will try to out challenge each other.”
He stresses the need to nurture team-spirit among employees to avoid enmities.

However, Rukia Lwanyaga, operations manager of Elegant Occasions, says the major cause of office rivalry in any office is envy.

“Employees will always be envious of their colleague, who has a good relationship with the boss. It becomes worse if the employee gets all the good assignments.”

Lwanyaga says envy can arise even when the employee gets the assignment on merit. “The others will always take it as favouritism,” Lwanyaga says, adding that any employee considered the boss’ favourite risks being hated by other colleagues. “They will always have cause to comment negatively about them irrespective of whether they do roles on their own initiative,” she stresses.

Lwanyaga also points out that appreciation of hardwork can also cause office rivalry. “At times an employee might be hard working, winning all the internal awards and promotions each year, but other employees will take this with bad faith.”
Denis Kahindi, the Hua Wei Technologies key accounts manager, says companies try to avoid favouritism. “If the bosses favour some employees, expect enmity.”

Kahindi adds that disparity in earnings also cause this problem in many firms.
“Some employees might feel that they are working harder than others, yet earning less. This creates rivalries and hatred,” Kahindi notes.

He says rivalry arising from income disparities is the worst and in most cases can lead to sabotage.

“If one of the employees feels that he is under-paid, they can try to sabotage the other’s work to get that person fired.”
For Chris Otim, a Vision Voice radio news anchor, there are three causes of office beef. “Office relationships is the main, especially as guys try to compete for the attention of a particular lady,” Otim says.

Otim notes that it becomes worse if it is the ladies competing for a guy.
“Ladies can go as far as gossiping and bad-mouthing each other to win over that cool guy,” he argues.