How to Prevent and Resolve Employee Disputes

Almost every company must deal with employee disputes at some point. Whether it’s between senior management and their teams or amongst employees themselves, it’s virtually impossible to avoid conflict when people are working that closely together.

Bigger companies are sometimes able to absorb the intangible cost of those disputes. But at the startup and expansion stage, employee disputes are much more magnified.

In 2008, CPP Inc. published a study revealing that U.S. employees spent, on average, 2.8 hours per week dealing with workplace conflict. And while employee disputes are sometimes hard to quantify, the study suggested that those disputes amounted to $359 billion in paid hours or the equivalent of 358 million working days. More specifically, 10 percent of employees surveyed said that a conflict had led to project failure, while a third of employees said they’ve left a company or been fired because of a workplace dispute.

So what does that mean for your smaller start-up or expansion stage business? For company’s with limited resources and a smaller employee pool, the impact of lost production and employee in-fighting can be crippling.

I recently came across an article on Workforce.com that offered some great conflict resolution insight. It’s essential that start-up and expansion stage managers keep their teams working together effectively and I think these positive changes will help do that and result in improved employee retention.

Explain Why

If you’re asking your employees to perform an action, explain why you need them to do it. If you can’t, you shouldn’t be asking them to complete the task in the first place. Running through this process forces managers to think, plan, and communicate more effectively. As an added bonus, you’ll ensure that your employees are working efficiently, focusing only on the tasks that you need completed the most.

Show That You Care

Managers should create a more trusting and respectful environment in the office by showing their employees that they care about their success and professional development. In a lot of startup and expansion stage companies, employees are the business’s biggest asset. Businessweek’s Marshal Goldsmith suggests listening to their ideas and suggestions, making sure they know you value their perspective.

Listen Before You Speak

If employees are involved in a dispute, ask for their thoughts before you interject with your own. As you’re listening, ask follow-up questions and listen carefully for truths or inconsistencies within their answers. Once you’ve found the answers that work, thank and praise the employees that were productively involved in the dialogue.

Say What You Mean… And Mean What You Say

Companies need to consistently preach accuracy, honesty, openness, and transparency. Those principles raise the bar on the management team’s behaviors and the employees’ expectations. Ultimately, that will change everyone’s behavior. Trust is grown from employees believing that everyone else around them is acting honestly. People who trust each other will have far fewer disputes.

Be Fair

If you’re trying to resolve a dispute, listen and assess the relative value of things and seek to find a consensus. Your employees will be more open and willing to discuss the issues and consider the options for resolution.

Engage and Encourage Solutions

Employees may be willing to come up with their own ways to improve communication, decision making and interactions. If that’s the case, encourage them to devise their own solutions and you will face fewer disputes requiring your input. Try to start this dialogue during the interview stage, continue it during an employee’s onboarding, and follow it up by providing conflict resolution classes for managers and employees. The better your managers are at facilitating open communication, the better your company will operate.

Disagreement is OK, Being Disagreeable Is Not

Companies should promote the concept that employees have the right to disagree, but should never be disagreeable. That will provide a safety valve to release the pressure of pent-up concern and confusion. If people have the chance to voice their complaints, listen to others’ views, and process both sides of an issue, they may be more accepting of decisions that are made. But once that decision is made, everyone must be encouraged to support it.

Employee conflict and dispute resolution is centered on communication and trust. If a manager creates an open environment that promotes honest communication, disputes will be less frequent. And when they do happen, employees will be much more willing to discuss them, rather than harboring the kind of ill will that ultimately leads to lost productivity. No company benefits from that, especially at the startup and expansion stage.