How to resolve Employee conflicts

 Guest Post by Patrick Del Rosario

It can be tempting to turn a blind eye to pesky employee squabbles and hope they simply work themselves out. Unfortunately, though, workplace disputes rarely work themselves out on their own, and even the smallest disagreements can escalate into more serious problems if left to fester for too long.

According to recent research, between 24 and 60% of management time is spent on dealing with conflicts and anger in the work place.

While it may seem like all this time would be better spent on some other aspect of running a business, it is important to keep in mind that employees are the very thing that keep a company going, and in order to keep your workforce productive, happy and stress-free, interventions are often necessary.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when settling conflicts in the workplace.

1. Stay neutral and listen to both sides of the story

When dealing with conflicts amongst your employees, it is important that you stay neutral and don’t pick sides. Picking sides will only worsen the problem and prevent you from coming up with a workable solution that sits well with both parties involved.

In a small business setting this may be more difficult, because you work so closely with people that the line between your professional relationship and your friendship can become blurred.

Before you even attempt to mediate a conflict, ask yourself whether or not you will be able to stay neutral and keep an open mind. If you don’t feel that you will be able to do this, for whatever reason, you should seriously consider bringing in a third party mediator, who can leave their personal opinions and feelings out of the matter.

One good way to help keep things neutral is to take the mediating outside the office. This will prevent other employees from feeling caught in the middle of it, and being away from the office during the discussion can help everyone feel more at ease.

During your meeting, try to give both parties a chance to speak their part without being interrupted by anyone. Then, once everyone has had their say and gotten the grievances off their chest, they will be more willing to listen to what others have to say and see the situation from another perspective.

 2. Stick with the facts

Most employee squabbles are very emotionally charged, so it is important that you as the mediator are able to keep the emotions out of the picture and listen only to the facts that are being presented.

You will probably hear lots of feelings and assumptions, but while these may be very valid concerns to the person in question, what he or she assumes or perceives may not necessarily be correct. For example, you may be told things like “I feel like he doesn’t respect me…” or “I know that he doesn’t like me…” While these are certainly real concerns, you cannot do anything with assumptions and emotions.

So, in order to get to the bottom of it, ask questions like “why do you feel that way?” or “what makes you think that?” In this way, you can learn more about specific actions and behavior that might have caused the problem.

You will also have concrete facts to go on, rather than vague assumptions about what another person may be doing or thinking. Once you are aware of any problems (whether real or perceived) you can go about helping your employees to see areas in which they need to improve or change.

Keep in mind that while you do want to get the straight facts, you will probably have to wade through a lot of emotions to get to them, which will take time and patience. Always try to be understanding of your employee’s predicament, and don’t downplay their issues by telling them to get over it or move on.

3. Ask your employees what they would like to do to resolve the conflict 

Even once you have heard both sides of the story, you may still be at a loss as to where you should begin. Sometimes, asking the employees themselves what they would like to do to resolve the issue is a good way to come up with a workable solution that both parties are in agreement with.

Also, you should always consider the possibility that the company’s practices or management methods may have played a part in the dispute. If this is the case, try to get feedback from your employees about how you could improve the team’s morale and encourage better collaboration in the future.

Try to help your employees become part of the solution rather than looking at them as the problem. If you are able to approach conflicts in this way and stay open to suggestions and feedback from others in the company, your mediating will be a whole lot easier in the future.

Guest Post - About the Author: Patrick Del Rosario is a Filipino business and career ninja. He works at Open Colleges, one of the pioneers of Online education in Australia and one of the leading providers of human resources courses and cert iv training and assessment

What really motivates us

Adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace. Interesting research work showing how higher rewards not always leads to higher or better performance for knowledge workers. 

Makes you wonder if we need to review and redesign performance management philosophy and Organizations reward approach. Higher performance need not always be driven by higher rewards, economic behavior is also a function of purpose of work and inherent satisfaction which a job provides.

I am reminded of Herbert Simon's Satisficing approach where he pointed out that human beings lack the cognitive resources to maximize: we usually do not know the relevant probabilities of outcomes, we can rarely evaluate all outcomes with sufficient precision, and our memories are weak and unreliable. A more realistic approach to rationality takes into account these limitations: This is called bounded rationality. 

These observations & studies are good indicator why our approach towards human behaviour model continue to be a limiting approach due to perceptual / cognitive behaviour which is more heuristic, unique and situational.

Future of work 2.0

Tom Malone, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of the HBR article "The Age of Hyperspecialization," explains why breaking jobs into tiny pieces yields better, faster, cheaper work -- and greater flexibility for employees.

Employee Retention - Getting it right

Changing times needs different strategies to engage and retain key employees. Organizations adopt different approach towards managing talent and working towards improving deliverables for business profitability. 

Mckinsey study shows that too many companies approach the retention of key employees during disruptive periods of organizational change by throwing financial incentives at senior executives, star performers, or other “rainmakers.”The money is rarely well spent. Many of the recipients would have stayed put anyway; others have concerns that money alone can’t address. Moreover, by focusing exclusively on high fliers, companies often overlook those “normal” performers who are nonetheless critical for the success of any change effort.

Some of the key observations are:

Find the “hidden gems”

Once HR and line managers have generated a thoughtful and more inclusive list of key players (usually 30 to 45 percent of all employees), they can begin to prioritize groups and individuals for targeted retention measures— 5 to 10 percent of the workforce.

The key is to view each employee through two lenses: first, the impact his or her departure would have on the business, given the focus of the change effort and his or her role in it; and second, the probability that the employee in question might leave.

Mind set matters

One-size-fits-all retention packages are usually unsuccessful in persuading a diverse group of key employees to stay. Instead, companies should tailor retention approaches to the mind-sets and motivations of specific employees (as well as to the express nature of the changes involved).

Retention is about more than money

Executives mustn’t view employee retention as a one-off exercise where it’s sufficient to get the incentives packages right. Rather, best practice approaches build on continuous attention and timely communication every step of the way to help employees make sense of the uncertainty inherent in organizational change.

Ultimately, what many employees want most of all is clarity about their future with the company. Creating that clarity requires significant hands-on effort from managers, including the ongoing work of tracking progress so that companies can quickly intervene when problems arise.

Targeting retention measures at the right people using a tailored mix of financial and nonfinancial incentives is crucial for managing organizational transitions that achieve long term business success; it’s also likely to save money.

Culture as business Strategy

As organizations spread across globe and set operations in different parts of the world, organizational culture is acquiring a whole new meaning. Growing decentralization and growth in no of various units and function means each unit is given the scope to define its scope of operation within the broad organizational framework.Structural changes have been made to allow flexibility of approach and decision making has been decentralized to enable organization scale the challenge of growth and diverse business requirement. All this means organization culture becomes the critical enabler in facilitating a cohesive and well knit unit. Bain & Company’s recently released the Results of Bain & Company’s Management Tools & Trends 2007 study also suggests that Culture continues to be the most important strategy for business success.

The top 5 management trends as described in the report are:

91% agreedCulture is as important as strategy for business success

87% agreed that Information technology can create significant competitive advantages
79 % felt innovation is more important than cost reduction for long-term success.
73 % agreed that consolidating and sharing back office operations improves both cost and quality

66 % agreed that environmentally-friendly products and practices are an important part of our mission

The other two aspects are equally interesting as IT tools and innovative practices are also considered as crucial factors which have considerable impact on the way business will shape in the days to come.

It also suggests that the ten most used management tools included:

§ Strategic Planning
§ Customer Relationship Mgmt.
§ Customer Segmentation
§ Benchmarking