Coping with the new normal

Having just joined People Resolutions after 25 years running my own business I have been reminded how tricky it is to be joining a new group of people whose norms are unfamiliar and may be different from your own. I received an enthusiastic welcome full of curiosity and courtesy – so important for new joiners. I realised how useful my well-honed mediation skills were too, as I absorbed and reflected to make sure I got maximum information and suspended judgement to make sure I was building understanding of people, products and the new norms rather than assessing, accepting or rejecting. 

Download R.E.S.P.E.C.T

Humans like to judge – we cannot survive if we do not. We also overdo it somewhat, branding and labelling people, assessing their performance and worth based on assumptions or selective evidence. Suspending judgement is difficult. Impartiality is also a tough quality to enact. I soon discovered impartiality is one of the key qualities that runs through People Resolutions and links it with Responsible Trade Worldwide and Human Potential Accounting. I aim to ensure that we demonstrate active impartiality in all that we do whether in an investigation, mediation, facilitation or learning and development role.

I’m bringing some new tools, ideas and processes and some well proven solutions to the business and by way of a sampler take a look at our R.E.S.P.E.C.T model.  

As the world of work becomes ever more diverse and globally connected communicators will have to put their own norms to one side, build empathy and solve problems from a place of common ground. My main driver is to make ‘resolution’ the new normal. If you disagree with a colleague and cannot understand where they are coming from – talk it out don’t fight it out. If you have a difficult audit or evaluation conversation coming up make sure you that you frame it in a non-judgemental way, hear from as many perspectives as possible and create a problem-solving rather than a blaming atmosphere.

People Resolutions welcomes mediation pioneer John Crawley as General Manager

We are delighted to announce that John Crawley, prominent workplace mediator and conflict resolution thought leader, has recently joined the People Resolutions team.

John’s role as General Manager, alongside Directors Robert Purse and founder of People Resolutions, Linda Hoskinson, represents a powerful joining of forces. Against the backdrop of our growing case and account management and marketing teams, we look forward to passing on the advantages of additional experience and resource directly to our stakeholders and customers.

Over the past 25 years, John has played an outstanding role in the establishment of workplace mediation as an occupational discipline in the UK. He was also responsible for designing and delivering the first in-house mediation service and has published his expert knowledge in a definitive guide for managers.

Having trained more than 5,000 certified mediators, John is a competent practitioner himself, one who understands the mindsets and needs of both the mediation community and those of our customer organisations. His hands-on experience is balanced with a strategic outlook in all areas of conflict management; for example, he is currently advising the CFA on the new management and leadership national occupational standards and he recently contributed to the drafting and establishment of quality standards for workplace mediation.

We couldn't be more excited or proud to be working together with John Crawley in furthering conflict prevention and resolution in the UK. Rooted in the same philosophy of providing customers with sustainable value, John will no doubt settle in seamlessly.

Over the coming weeks and months, John will be sharing his valued expertise, so you may wish to follow us on Twitter to be kept abreast of news and updates. 

The Five A's of Resolving Workplace Conflict

For today’s post, we’ve summarised the five key elements of addressing workplace conflict in a handy visual (you can save, share and print the image above).

Let’s look at each step in more detail:

Step 1: Acknowledge that there is tension or conflict that needs addressing rather than let it fester any longer. As people, it’s natural for us to avoid and downplay conflict because dealing with it is hard, it takes effort and honesty, and it often brings things out that can make the situation more uncomfortable before it improves. So your first step is to take ownership of the problem.

Step 2: What is it actually that you want to achieve from putting yours and others’ time and energy (and organisational investment), into dealing with the conflict? That is, are you looking to address the underlying issues at the very heart of the conflict, or can you see other ways that the situation could be brought to some sort of closure – like moving someone to another department, reaching a compromise agreement, or conducting an investigation to tick a particular policy box? Your answer to this question fundamentally affects what you do and how the conflict may or may not be resolved. In our experience, if you can get to the root of the issue, it always yields the most positive, and cost effective, result for the business and individuals concerned.

Step 3: Addressing conflict early is always the best approach before it escalates to a point where it becomes increasingly costly to resolve. For example, reaching Employment Tribunal is a situation where nobody really wins. Your aim is to nip the conflict in the bud as soon as it is picked up.

Step 4: Try not to jump to solution mode before you’ve assessed some key factors. It’s important to fully understand first why the conflict occurred, and its seriousness. With groups, it could be helpful to roughly visualise the conflict on paper –representing the many lines of interaction and what each relationship is like, what incidents have occurred between people, so where the hot spots are, etc.

Step 5: Finally, it’s important to accept that some kinds of conflict are easier to resolve than others. A spat in a meeting can be diffused relatively quickly, but resolving the issues bubbling underneath could be a lengthier road. But it’s certainly possible, if there has been a commitment (Step 1) to support individuals during what can be a tough period of dealing with negative emotions, of self-reflection and changing their own behaviour.

We hope you found these steps useful when facing conflict in your organisation. You’ll find more information about our services here and free video recordings of our workplace conflict webcasts.

The Vicious Cycle of Labour Turnover

The average cost of recruiting an employee in the UK is around £5,300, but this figure in itself is not particularly helpful. The actual cost can be as low as £1,500, but for a middle, or senior manager, it can easily cost well in excess of £8,000.

High rates of labour turnover are clearly expensive in terms of the actual costs of recruitment, but there are other – very significant - issues that need to be considered:

·      Lost production,

·      Increased production costs, for example the use of overtime to cover staff shortages

·      Increased costs of training replacement employees,

·      Loss of know-how and customer goodwill,

·      Potential loss of sales (e.g. if there is high turnover amongst the sales force), and;

·      Damage that may be done to morale and productivity, which is an intangible but potentially significant cost.

Combined with the costs of recruitment, all of these can have a major impact on the ability of your organisation to succeed in a highly competitive market.

One of the key areas of labour turnover can often be poor morale and low levels of motivation within your workforce. Unhappy employees often leads to conflict situations within your organisation and this can also be a very expensive issue to resolve.

The labour turnover cycle can often go round and round in a vicious circle of conflict situations, poor morale levels and ultimately increased turnover of staff and huge costs of replacing your team member.

There are a couple of simple remedies we suggest to avoid this scenario and help break the cycle of labour turnover:

Mediation

A great solution to workplace conflict - mediation is an informal dispute resolution process, facilitated by a third party trained mediator, aimed at bringing two or more parties together to clear up a misunderstanding, explore concerns, and help reach an amicable resolution. Many employees can be unhappy about jealousy over a promotion, have incompatible working styles or personalities or even opposing targets. Mediation can be a cost effective solution to resolving an employee’s issues, and potentially losing them.

Coaching

Coaching is a targeted, individual-focused solution which helps with organisational performance or development as well help towards personal objectives and can help with issues from leadership team development, performance, interpersonal skills and much more. Coaching can really help enhance working relationships and tackle behavioural and performance issues. It also optimises costs, due to the one-to-one arrangement and personalised format.

Training

If you need any help or advice on learning how to resolve your labour turnover issues, speak to us about our range of courses that are aimed at really nipping conflict in the bud and ultimately retaining your team. All our training is action-oriented and tailored to the organisation - by creating relevant case studies and activities, the delegates are better able to absorb and retain the learning material in the longer term. We can also provide pre and post course options to inform the training design and support delegates in translating the newly learned material back into their daily working lives.