Toolkit: Navigate Workplace Conflict for a Better Work Environment
Conflict in the workplace can help teams grow, but when it detracts from the shared goals of the organization, leaders need a clear plan in place to navigate through tension and find resolution.
Conflict is a natural outcome of employees with diverse backgrounds and ways of thinking working together. Collisions are expected and can even help teams grow, but many instances of conflict can negatively impact business operations and should be resolved to avoid serious damage.
The world today creates many opportunities for tension, from political divides and related discussions at work, to generational differences that surface as five generations come together in the workplace. Incivility remains common in many workplaces, with 208 million acts of incivility occurring per day in workplaces across the country.
This toolkit guides employers to better understand the root causes of workplace conflict and why it's imperative to address them.
This toolkit also explores what roles employers play in managing workplace conflict, how to communicate an organization's conflict-resolution procedures, and how to measure the effectiveness of those procedures.
Civility in the Workplace
In this episode of the All Things Work podcast, host Anne Sparaco sits down with Jenn Graham, founder and CEO of the workplace culture consulting firm Inclusivv. Learn how to foster a respectful workplace culture through peer-to-peer dialogue, along with why psychological safety is essential for diverse teams to thrive.
Causes and Symptoms of Conflict
Conflict can show up as insults, bullying, noncooperation, or anger, often triggered by personality clashes, miscommunication, or poor management. If left unaddressed, the impacts can be damaging to workflow.
Not all conflict leads to negative outcomes, however. Constructive disagreement can foster innovation, new perspectives, and better decisions — if team members feel safe speaking up. But when conflict turns personal or emotional, it can damage relationships and cloud judgment.
Common Causes
At its core, conflict stems from differences such as:
- Conflicting priorities: Disputes over resources, goals, or organizational changes.
- Conflicting perspectives: Differences in age, culture, values, or personality.
- Conflicting assumptions: Misinterpretations due to personal biases or remote communication gaps.
- Conflicting tolerances: Varied comfort levels with addressing conflict (avoiding it can worsen the issue).
Signs of Conflict
Leaders should look out for these manifestations of conflict at work:
- Burnout: Employees may have frequent absences or complain about being overwhelmed.
- Complaints: Repeated grievances should be investigated and addressed promptly.
- Confusion: Resistance to change often stems from unclear communication, but transparency helps.
- Gossip: Employees may form cliques and disparage co-workers who are not part of those groups.
To manage conflict, leaders should focus on organizational culture. A strong culture prevents conflict where possible and deals promptly and equitably with discord that arises. To build toward this culture, employers should:
- Communicate policies clearly and consistently, while ensuring transparency for decision-making rationale.
- Ensure that all employees — not just managers — are accountable for resolving conflict.
- Do not ignore conflict, and do not avoid taking steps to prevent it.
- Seek to understand the underlying emotions of the employees in conflict.
- Keep in mind that approaches to resolving conflict may depend on the circumstances of the conflict.
Investing in a strong culture through clear policies and accountability organization-wide underpins a more harmonious work environment while supporting the bottom line.
Business Case
An organization that is set up to intercept conflict before it begins or resolve it early can enjoy increased employee productivity, greater motivation and loyalty, lower medical costs, fewer workers' compensation claims, and reduced litigation costs.
In contrast, unresolved issues of tension and conflict can create emotional stress for employees, diverting attention from the organization's mission and impacting the bottom line. These impacts can include:
Absenteeism. Unscheduled absences drive up employers' costs through benefits outlays, the use of replacement workers, higher stress levels among employees, and a decrease in overall employee performance.
Turnover. When employees mistrust management or perceive the organization as acting unfairly, turnover may increase. This can lead to recruiting and training expenses for new hires and the costs attributable to a slippage of performance until new employees are fully onboarded.
Unionization. When employees perceive their employers as unfair, they are more inclined to seek outside resources such as a union to help protect them and to negotiate on their behalf on matters such as employment, compensation, and benefits.
Litigation. An employee who cannot find a resolution to conflict may seek outside legal help, which can cause an organization to mount a costly defense or agree to a settlement. Lawsuits resolved in an employee's favor can result in significant financial penalties for the employer and can even produce criminal or civil sanctions — not to mention bad publicity.
With the potential impact on the bottom line, employers should utilize policies and procedures to sustain a work environment where top-down interventions mesh with empowered employees who speak up for their needs.
Employee Relations as the Foundation
The employer has a responsibility to develop and implement workplace conflict policies and procedures and to create and manage conflict resolution programs. This contributes to a strong culture that supports employee relations, and more specifically, fairness, trust, and mutual respect at all levels.
Resolving conflict does not always require top-down interventions. Employees should feel empowered to handle day-to-day issues on their own, think independently, analyze problems, define solutions, and implement those steps. This includes both task-related and people-related problems.
To build up a strong culture — whether in-person, hybrid, or remote — and support empowered employees, employers should implement key practices:
- Survey employees: Conduct annual engagement surveys and talk with employees in the interim. Ask how employees handle conflict to help identify departments that need intervention and training.
- Catch people doing things right: Support managers who seek opportunities to acknowledge and praise employees who reflect the organization's culture. This creates an environment where employees feel comfortable speaking up.
- Welcome dissent: Managers should encourage dissent that's focused on tasks, strategies, and mission — rather than other people. Disagreeing better is a skill to build up, not an inherent trait.
- Create diverse teams: Create work teams whose members have diverse expertise and ways of thinking. Encouraging employees to utilize their unique expertise to problem-solve can help stir up productive conflict.
- Create accountability: This is a preventive measure, since many fights arise from a lack of clarity over who has the final authority to make a decision. Make sure roles are well-established and communicated to prevent problems.
- Encourage people to manage their own conflicts: Tell employees to work out conflict at the level it happens, instead of pushing it up the organizational chain. Doing so will give people confidence that they are capable of handling these issues on their own.
- Provide training: Employers can help people learn the skills they need to handle conflict by utilizing online training for ongoing support. Training can help employees better focus on the issue at hand, rather than questioning another person's competency, autonomy, or integrity.
These practices can take time, but they offer opportunities for employees to educate and empower themselves to confront conflict in the workplace while supporting a positive culture.
Pro Tip
Small actions in the form of rituals can have a large impact on employee relations. Setting aside time to celebrate employee birthdays or establishing a routine of managers checking in with team members at the start of meetings can help employees feel more engaged with their work and their workplace.
Crisis Management and Resolving Contentious Conversations
In this episode of the Honest HR podcast, host Monique Akanbi sits down with Scott Tillema, a global keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and retired SWAT hostage negotiator. Learn how to take command of emotionally charged situations with tools designed to confront the issue at hand, restore order, and deliver strong outcomes for all.
Fair Grievance Processes
Along with effective management and careful hiring practices, fair grievance processes support a strong culture. A clear policy states the scope and limitations of each mechanism and spells out each method's terms, such as eligibility, frequency, decision process, and required sign-off and approvals for settling a matter.
Policies, as part of a system for conflict resolution, can incentivize employees to avoid engaging in costly and time-consuming external litigation. Employees can feel they have options when a system is in place, which can help boost morale.
Grievance Resolution
Here are four steps to resolve workplace disputes:
- Open-door policy. As a first step, encourage employees to meet with their immediate supervisor to discuss and resolve work-related issues. Employees should know that there will be no negative repercussions for voicing a complaint. In addition to immediate supervisors, there should be multiple ways to report work-related issues. With options that allow employees to skip supervisors in the case of their involvement, as well as tools such as digital reporting systems or channels for anonymous reporting systems, employees face fewer barriers to reporting legitimate issues.
- Management review. If the open-door approach does not resolve the conflict, the next-higher level of management should review the issue.
- HR review. As a next step, HR can review the details of the dispute and offer advice to overcome the issue.
- Appeal process. A decision from HR regarding a conflict is typically final, but employers could consider fitting an appeal process into their approach to conflict resolution.
Pro Tip
Provide multiple reporting options to better accommodate different issue types and comfort levels. For example, there should be an option to bypass reporting to a direct supervisor when the manager in question is involved.
Seeking Outside Help
While it's better to address workplace conflicts as soon as possible and at a local level, sometimes you need outside help from a mediator, arbitrator, or attorney.
- Mediation. A mediator is a neutral third party who helps the conflicting parties explore innovative solutions to their dispute. Mediators can be internal employees trained in conflict management and resolution, or they can be trained external professionals who have no perceived conflict of interest with the employer. Resolving a dispute through mediation should be voluntary.
- Arbitration. This is typically more costly and time-consuming than mediation when resolving disputes. Witnesses may be presented and cross-examined, and an arbitrator issues a binding decision.
- Attorney: In certain situations, employers may need to consult legal counsel. This typically arises when serious legal matters — such as harassment, embezzlement, or other incidents requiring law enforcement intervention (e.g., assault) — are uncovered during conflict resolution. Legal support is also advisable when conflicts involve senior leadership, including C-suite executives or board members. Furthermore, engaging an attorney may be required if an HR professional reports to “leadership” implicated in the conflict, or if an employee retains personal legal representation.
How do you know if it's time to involve an intermediary? These situations can include:
- When potential legal issues are involved, such as allegations of discrimination or harassment.
- When the HR department doesn't have the time or training to provide the conflict resolution assistance needed.
- When there are patterns of recurring issues.
- When the flare-ups are becoming abusive or resemble bullying.
- When a manager needs retraining that can't be done in-house.
- When the environment is so toxic that it's time to get everyone offsite so the office doesn't trigger continuing negative responses.
Pro Tip
Supporting an employee relations position, if possible, can send a positive message to the workforce about the value the employer places on maintaining positive employee relationships. These specialists can focus on employees experiencing conflict, catching issues before they escalate to HR professionals.
Avoiding Conflicts with Terminations
Creating a fair process for resolving grievances extends to creating a fair termination process. If terminated individuals feel they were not taken seriously or given a fair hearing, they may choose to bring litigation against the organization.
HR should review disciplinary policies and procedures to ensure a fair process that protects employees from impulsive or ill-considered reactions by management. Additionally, policies should allow employees to correct problematic behavior before termination is put forth. This can help minimize emotions and disruptions by other employees when a co-worker must be terminated.
Pro Tip
A decision to terminate should be met with a thorough review of the situation to identify potential hidden bias or unlawful discrimination, including documentation of the circumstances.
Training for Managers
Conflict resolution is a key component of manager training and can be supported through credentials such as SHRM's People Manager Qualification (PMQ). One key aspect of conflict resolution training for managers should be communication. This training should entail:
What to know: Supervisors and managers should be well-informed about all of the organization's dispute resolution systems. They should know the rationale for each system and be able to explain how each works in practice. This is key, as managers and supervisors should know when to report disputes to HR to ensure conflict does not escalate to unmanageable proportions or present potential legal violations.
How to share information: Managers should be made aware of their employer's preference on how to communicate details of its dispute resolution systems. Options include:
- Training
- Staff meetings
- Policy and procedure manuals
- Organization intranet
- Email or internal messenger apps
- Newsletters or fliers
- New-employee orientation training materials
- Individual letters to employees
Reinforcement: HR should regularly remind managers and supervisors about the importance of dealing with conflict early, as well as the options available to them to resolve such matters.
Pro Tip
Managers are on the front lines of supporting an organization's culture. Empowering managers to include team-building activities and rituals into their work can help support employee engagement while mitigating conflicts through team connection.
Prepare for Workplace Investigations
Take charge when issues arise with the SHRM Workplace Investigations Specialty Credential. This credential helps HR professionals navigate the complexities of various situations, including when and how to engage external counsel, what justifies a formal investigation, effective interviewing and data gathering, and more.
Tracking Progress
To ensure continued progress and support of a strong culture of conflict resolution, there are five employee relations metrics that employers should consider monitoring:
- Number of grievances per given period: Be it per month, quarter, or year, use a constant measure, such as the number of grievances per 100 or 1,000 employees. This information can then be viewed according to manager, department, region, or facility.
- Cost of grievances: This can be calculated in time spent by managers, HR professionals, and legal counsel in the investigation and resolution of complaints, the cost of lost productivity, and legal expenses.
- Root causes of grievances: These include supervisor errors, unclear policies and procedures, lack of management training, and poor hiring decisions.
- Average close time: Similar to the time-to-fill measure used in recruiting, this is a measure of the efficiency of the grievance resolution process. It is based on how many days it takes to resolve an issue from the day it is identified as a problem.
- Return on investment (ROI): It's helpful to determine how much money the employee relations program has saved the organization. For example, revenue per employee and profit per employee can be monitored to see if the implementation of an effective grievance resolution process has made any impact.
Measuring the impact of policies that support a strong workplace culture provides feedback for organizations to make improvements where needed and double down on effective procedures. Keeping these metrics top of mind, whether in the HR dashboard or elevated to senior leadership, can demonstrate the impact of conflict resolution on culture, engagement, and retention. Conflict is inevitable, but strong organizations meet the challenge with clarity, support, and accountability that enable employees to perform their best.
Have a question about workplace conflict best practices?
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