How chance remarks can be very dangerous – responsible resolution tips

Lord Feldman, the conservative party chairman has been quizzed recently over allegations that one of David Cameron’s inner circle described party members as ‘mad-swivel eyed loons’ (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-lord-feldman-to-face-questions-about-allegations-he-described-grassroots-activists-as-swiveleyed-loons-8622933.html )

Youth Crime Commissioner, Paris Brown, found her online social media comments caught up with her in the workplace (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/09/paris-brown-stands-down-twitter) 

These ill-considered derogatory remarks are all part of our attempt to establish a Social Identity[1] by identifying with a group. This gives people an important source of pride and self-esteem, a sense of belonging to the social world.

If we kept these opinions to ourselves they would not be so risky, but humans are by nature ‘leaky’ – texting, tweeting and talking with friends and colleagues in an emotionally charged, ill-considered way.

We have come across these situations time and time again when People Resolutions mediators are called in to restore working relationships, or investigators assigned to determine what happened and whether it is a disciplinary matter or not.  

Here are some tips to manage chance remarks at the workplace at source:

1) Encourage people to think before they speak, tweet, text of email.

2) Demonstrate respect at senior level – it’s easy to trash or ridicule someone, much harder to give colleagues that you disagree with constructive, non-blaming feedback.

3) Utilise mediation if all parties are willing as it can quickly create conversation about communication styles, stop the behavior and restore rapport.

4) Use ‘virtual mentors’ – a prison I worked in stemmed derogatory banter by inviting officers to create a virtual mentor panel of people who would cause them to check their language if they were in the room e.g. younger sister, grandfather, imam, priest, sport coach. They were encouraged to visualize their virtual mentor if in an emotive conversation.

5) Remind people that their remarks / tweets / texts and emails are traceable and subject to the codes of conduct of the workplace, not just their own personal moral code.

See also http://www.peopleresolutions.com/bullying-a-harassment-training 

John Crawley

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[1] http://www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html

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.

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.

To Coach or Not to Coach

To us at People Resolutions, it’s no surprise to discover that the use of business coaching is widespread in UK companies, with almost nine in ten respondents to a survey by the University of Bristol reporting that they now use coaching in their organisation.

We've directly observed a marked shift in HR over the last decade, from spending much of their time firefighting conflict, towards resolving it at an earlier stage and taking measures to preventing it occuring in the first place. One-to-one coaching for select individuals can play a huge part in both the prevention and resolution of workplace conflict, as well as helping staff adapt to the changing business climate. According to Lisa Berkovitz, “people are being forced to navigate the work world according to a new set of rules that no one has explained to them. The essential inner and outer skills needed today, aren’t being taught elsewhere.”

In a short series of two-hour sessions, coaching can explore attitudes, behaviours, communication styles, conflict resolution techniques and other gaps the individual may need to address – a personalised approach that no generic training course could ever match.  Lisa Berkowitz provides an interesting analogy: “There’s a reason why elite athletes and top performers in any field have coaches. A great coach can help reveal your blind spots so you can keep getting past your upper limit.”                 

Many of our customers are keenly aware that by not exploring coaching – for example as a way to resolve an issue or prevent it from escalating, or to help someone find their feet in a new role, the organisation leaves itself exposed to risk and costly outcomes, such as high turnover, grievances raised etc.

So while coaching may appear an expensive luxury, in actual fact for the right person (or group/team) at the right time, it can represent a sound financial investment on the part of the organisation in generating improved working relationships that pay dividends.

Why Most Conflict Training is Missing the Point

Most organisations spend a lot of time and money doing mediations, investigations and tribunals related to dispute resolution. They also invest heavily in training HR and management to resolve conflict at an informal stage, but the fact is, once a conflict situation has reached the point where it needs to be addressed, some damage has already been done. 

Equipping staff with mediation and investigation skills to bring such situations to a close is certainly a step in the right direction, but is this really anything more than a sticking-plaster approach? 

Conflict training, if it is to genuinely achieve prevention of conflict in the first place – and by this we mean avoiding and dissolving tensions before they fester and escalate – it should incorporate more than strategies to deal with established conflict. Training which broadens employees understanding of human behaviour.

If people at work are able to understand the different types of ‘social style’ that exist in relation to their own, it gives them the power to know how and when they should adapt their behaviours to encourage healthy working relationships. This can only help mitigate the risk of any friction developing and building, leading to fewer complaints and grievances to deal with and ultimately a more collaborative culture with better teamwork, cooperation, harmony and respect. 

Surely this kind of training is the better investment?