Copyright (c) 2012 Alison Withers
Conflicts sometimes arise even in the best-run of offices and they are never easy to deal with especially for a newly-appointed employee, who has not yet had time to get to grips with the culture and is understandably anxious to make a good impression.
It often happens that a PA or EA finds themselves in the position of having to mediate or resolve conflicts between colleagues or even between their boss and a client or customer.
Conflicts in the workplace can arise for a wide variety of reasons including poor management, unfair treatment, unclear job roles, inadequate training, poor communication, a poor working environment, lack of equal opportunities or bullying and harassment.
It may take the form of rivalry between teams or it may be apparent by the lack of trust and cooperation between large groups of employees and management.
In the worst situations both conflict and confrontation occur together, and while neither is very pleasant, the best option is to try to take a calm approach and not react in a challenging or defensive way.
It is equally important not to ignore the problem as it needs to be dealt with before it escalates into something worse. Handling such situations requires a clearly prepared plan of action and if necessary ensuring that there is an impartial witness to any interactions if the conflict is between two individuals.
To ensure that negotiations are fair and impartial and to help diffuse tensions it can also be useful to have a representative from HR present. This is because the typical reactions to conflict or confrontation are fight, flight or freezing. In the first people will react in a challenging/defensive way, which may mean shouting or losing your temper.
In the flight response the person turns their back on what's going on in the hope it will go away and in the freeze situation the person can become passive or introverted because they do not know how to react. This can allow things to drift or become drawn out through indecision.
It is much better to face the problem using a calm and rational approach with a that has been planned in advance, but which can be formal or informal or can include mediation.
In the informal approach talking and listening aims to give people the time to express their feelings and concerns. This can often help to clear the air. It can turn out that one of the people involved does not realise that their actions or style of speech are making a colleague uncomfortable and this can be particularly the case if it involves individuals' sense of humour.
It may happen that an aggrieved person feels their line manager is overlooking them for promotion and treating a colleague more favourably. Sometimes raising these issues in an informal way makes the problem go away much quicker.
If the informal approach fails it may become necessary to raise a grievance and take it to a more formal stage and in this case the employee should use the company's grievance procedures, which usually means raising a complaint to your line manager or with HR.
The most common form of dispute resolution that an employer may use if the above stages don't work is mediation. It involves an independent, impartial person helping two individuals or groups to reach a solution that is acceptable to everyone.
----------------------------------------------------
Workplace conflicts can be difficult for the newly-appointed candidate to deal with when they have not yet got to know the culture of their new employer. By Ali Withers. http://www.rmsrecruitment.com
EasyPublish this article: http://submityourarticle.com/articles/easypublish.php?art_id=270894
No comments:
Post a Comment