How to effectively handle employee conflict

When you bring diverse personalities, high-pressure projects, and tight timelines together, you’re bound to get conflict. According to a survey of 5 000 employees across nine countries, 85% of them had to deal with conflict to some degree, and 29% had to deal with it frequently or on a daily basis. Not only does dealing with conflict take an emotional toll, but there are some serious costs to conflict that impact the bottom line, business stability, overall employee motivation and turnover.

In this same survey, the top three causes of conflict were cited as personality clashes and warring egos, followed by stress and heavy workloads. Managing these comes down to addressing the root cause. Are people clashing because of conflicting values or behaviours? Are you able to bridge these divides through one-on-one conversations that shed light on both sides, and find a mutually beneficial way forward? Where stress is involved, could more of your team be brought in to assist? What about outsourcing some non-essential functions to remove added stress on employees?

Workloads can be handled in much the same way. Remember, that setting out clear expectations for workplace deliverables and ensuring the clear delineation of roles and responsibilities is fundamental in preventing one employee from having more work than their colleagues. Sources of conflict can be numerous and pinpointing them is often difficult. What you can do is keep an eye out for the early warning signs of conflict and then intervene as soon as possible to find the cause. Here are some of those signs.

• Employees begin volunteering and contributing less.
• There is a noticeable dip in employee morale.
• There is a greater reluctance to share ideas or discuss opinions and feelings openly.
• There is overt dissatisfaction and the forming of tight-knit groups that exclude others.
• Increased absenteeism and overt avoidance of certain employees and managers.

How to resolve conflict

Despite the negative impact conflict can have on a business, it’s not all doom and gloom. In the first instance, conflict is often resolvable, either formally or informally, and can be easily put to bed. Making sure conflict resolution is built into employees’ core job competencies is an essential step in effectively managing conflict, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. By setting this out in black and white, and using benchmarking exercises during the interview process, you’ll be able to both gauge and consistently monitor conflict-resolution capability.

Whether you’re an employee, in HR, or in a management position, resolving conflict is about finding the root cause and understanding its severity according to Western Governors University’s business blog. Is the conflict “miscommunication, misinterpreted details, mismatched personalities, or competition”? Once you know what you’re dealing with, it’s much easier to implement corrective action. This may be something employees can resolve with some light mediation, or it may need to be escalated to HR or even third parties to resolve.

Preventing conflicts from escalating should be your priority. An important reminder from the UK’s National Health Service is that “conflicts are more about people than problems, so understand and value the differences between the parties involved – which may include you”.

For management specifically, understanding the personalities and working habits of your team is fundamental in mitigating workplace conflict before it arises. If you know your employees inside and out, you’ll know who won’t work well together and who will. Conflict management isn’t about completely avoiding opposing personalities or opinions, but rather about understanding in what context they will lead to the best possible business outcomes. Remember, conflict (when handled effectively) can “prompt employees to think differently about issues, ultimately improving workflow and workplace practices” according to MasterClass.

Research suggests that, on average, the most conflict is experienced by entry-level staff who are still learning where they fit in. Aside from embedding conflict resolution into an employees’ core job competency, this is where conflict training presents an ideal solution. Training means new employees can learn the essentials of successful conflict resolution. Providing guidance on business values and accepted behaviours is also important in setting new hires up for success. According to The Human Capital Hub, the benefits of conflict resolution training include:

• Enhanced employee engagement through improved communication skills, which boosts trust and respect among co-workers.
• Reducing workplace friction to allow for collaborative problem-solving and teamwork.
• Improved workplace productivity. Imagine being dogged by conflict daily and trying to accomplish certain tasks? Knowing how to handle conflict effectively can eliminate this emotional and mental drag, improving productivity.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development also recommends following up on conflict after resolution. Just because the dust has settled, doesn’t mean it’s settled for good. High-stress projects, late nights, tight deadlines. These can all disrupt a conflict-free streak.

How we keep your remote project conflict free

After more than 12 years managing remote projects across the country with diverse teams and personalities, we’ve developed a three-step method for resolving conflict.

• Conflict in confidence

Our project managers are on the ground and assessing workforce interactions and progress regularly, while our 24/7 customer support line receives any workforce conflict communication directly. These are our two monitoring mediums, and we use them to understand where conflict is most prevalent. Where a conflict does arise, we believe in addressing if confidentially. This means away from the rest of your workforce and only bringing the relevant parties into the room. Ensuring confidentiality builds greater trust and gives those involved the confidence to air their grievances fully.

• Shift into neutral

 When we’re dealing with a conflict, we shift into a neutral, non-judgemental mindset and hear both sides of the story. We employ a technique called the third story which comes from the book Difficult Conversations: How to discuss what matters most. If you were personally involved in a conflict, this technique asks that you “initiate a difficult conversation by attempting to tell the story, not from your perspective, but from the perspective of an outside mediator – someone who sees the frustration and hurt, strengths and weakness of both parties.” As we are already acting as mediator, we use this technique to simply describe the conflict we’re handling to the parties involved without judgement or blame. By repeating it back to them in this way, solutions can often be found.

• Recommend, resolve, review

Our last step is to recommend a way forward which resolves the conflict. Once this has been implemented, we ensure we touch base with those involve frequently to determine whether the recommendation was successful or if anything has resurfaced that needs to be addressed. Our recommendations often involves managerial input and team meetings that set our clear expectations for the workforce involved.

No matter what conflict your business is facing, there are tools and interventions that can assist. Use some of the suggestions above as a starting point if you’re struggling.