One of the easiest things for a supervisor to say is, “I treat everybody the same.”

I understand why that sounds fair. Nobody wants favoritism, special treatment, or a boss who changes the rules depending on who is standing in front of him. But I don’t think fair treatment requires pretending every employee and every situation arrived at the same place.

If one employee has been reliable for years, fixes mistakes when they’re pointed out, and rarely needs the same correction twice, I know that history. If another has been coached repeatedly and keeps coming back with the same problem, I know that history too. If they make a similar mistake today, I still look at today’s mistake. I just don’t erase everything that came before it.

Employees should know what’s expected before I hold them accountable for missing it, and the rule shouldn’t change because somebody is popular, related to the boss, difficult to deal with, or good at complaining.

But the response doesn’t always have to be identical. A first mistake after years of solid performance is different from the fifth occurrence of the same problem after coaching, warnings, and documentation. The EEOC uses a similar example, where one employee received a suspension after repeatedly missing deadlines while employees without that history received warnings.

That doesn’t mean past performance becomes a shield. A good employee can still make a serious mistake, and I still have to deal with what’s in front of me. History gives me context about whether something is an exception or part of a pattern. It doesn’t make the current problem disappear.

I see the same issue with workload.

Reliable employees often get the difficult assignments because I know they’ll handle them. They cover shifts, fix reports, train new people, answer the phone, and stay late when something still has to get done. Where leadership starts getting it wrong is when dependability earns more responsibility while poor performance quietly earns lower expectations.

If I keep handing more work to the employee who performs while expecting less from the one who doesn’t, I’ve turned competence into a penalty. High performers notice that. They figure out pretty quickly what the organization actually rewards. That’s part of what happens when organizations keep bad employees too long. Eventually leadership stops dealing with the poor performance and starts rearranging everybody else’s work around it.

Different treatment isn’t automatically fair just because I can point to different circumstances either. The reason still has to be tied to something that actually belongs in the decision: prior history, seriousness, intent, training, responsibility, repeated behavior, or some other relevant fact.

If I handle two employees differently, I should be able to explain what was different and why I cared about it. One test I use is whether the explanation still works after I mentally remove the names. If I need to know which employee I like, trust, socialize with, or have history with before the reasoning makes sense, then I probably don’t have a fairness argument.

In a small organization or a small town, personal history is hard to avoid. Sometimes that history gives me useful context. It can also distort my judgment if I let the relationship become part of the standard.

Experience and responsibility also count.

I don’t expect the same judgment from a veteran officer that I expect from somebody on his first week. I expect more from a supervisor than I do from somebody who has never carried that responsibility before. Training, experience, rank, and responsibility should mean something.

There is a limit to that too. I don’t want the experienced employee to become the permanent cleanup crew because leadership refuses to develop or correct everybody else. More responsibility can come with more experience, but being competent shouldn’t mean you’re the one who always pays for everybody else’s lack of it.

Fair treatment, to me, is being able to explain why two situations were handled differently without needing the answer to depend on who the people were.