Working with the same people in a workplace setting can be both joyful and challenging. Colleagues don’t always get along well in some cases. Certain attitudes and behaviors might gel well with some co-workers, while others might view it as disruptive in nature. Therefore, conflicts and clashes are unavoidable.
Some leaders opt to avoid tension with a quick solution to maintain the overall harmony in the workplace. As they have a lot of things to execute, leaders often underestimate tiny issues, and allow them to grow instead of resolving them seriously at one go.
Their lack of time and availability in the office commonly, results in lack of their active involvement in the workplace to understand relations between employees and reasons for conflicts.
See also: 5 Terrific Ways to Increase Employee Engagement
Some other reasons like maintaining the reputation of a company, building a good brand image, and maintaining peace among employees, make leaders to create an artificial collaborative culture, fake well-being condition that is engulfed with series of issues and conflicts, never discussed or talked about openly.
HR managers and employers should be aware of any emerging conflicts and clashes between employees, no matter how tiny they are. Here are some ways to manage conflicts among employees:
Right Time
The perfect time to solve conflicts is when you have all the hard evidence and proofs that support your statements. This would involve no time-consuming exercise for leaders to resolve conflicts.
Therefore, it is important to support your claims at work based on strong evidence and facts. If an employee does a mistake or is disrupting others to work effectively, then such issues should be addressed timely by the senior managers.
HR managers and employers should take immediate actions in solving the core issues. Procrastination will only lead to backlog of unresolved issues. This would create a toxic working environment that impacts employee productivity at work.
Respect the Differences
While leaders generally pacify someone to tackle conflicts with people (regardless of the gender, age, behaviours, attitudes and personalities). Colleagues’ clashes are not always caused by something big and important. Different perspective towards a situation or task on hand, and different response towards an issue can always lead people to confront each other at work.
HR managers and employers should be objective in finding out a solution. Respect the differences fairly without humiliating each other is crucial to prevent other potential issues from springing up.
Find Out the Real Problem and Come Up with Clear Solutions
The best way to tackle the conflict is by inviting the persons to a private chamber and clarify the matter, to allow each to express their views on a particular issue. Allow each person to talk, argue and be a silent listener to come up with an objective solution that doesn’t impact morale of the employees.
Ask the involved employees to come up with solutions to the problem. To create a harmonious workplace culture, make employees understand and realise their mistakes, allow them time to repair and rework on their relationship with the coworkers.
Managing conflicts among employees can be quite tricky. However, effective leaders understand that conflicts and clashes is a common occurrence in productive workplaces.
Harmony in a workplace can never be achieved through fake means, and ignorance isn’t the way to lead either.
Maintain your calm, listen, understand employee concerns and resolve the situations timely for a peaceful workplace, wherein employee relations and bondings exemplify the strength and tenacity of a company to withstand the pressures of competitive times.
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