Employee Wellness: This Is How to Settle Disputes

Employee conflict. It is never a good thing, and not only can it ruin the morale of employees, but it can also impact your business. 

Unfortunately, a large percentage of employees have to deal with some kind of employee disputes. About 85% of employees have a conflict on some level, and for 29% of employees, this happens regularly. 

If you are a business owner or a manager that wants to try to improve employee wellness and team chemistry, you may be trying to find out what the best methods of conflict resolution are. 

Well, this guide can help give you a few ideas. 

Identifying the Problem 

First, you need to find out exactly what the employee problems are. You can do this by asking both sides what the problem is in a calm and direct matter. 

Give both employees the chance to explain their side of the story and see if they are both talking about the same issue. If not, try to dig deeper and find out what the real problem is underneath what they are saying on the surface. 

This may take a little digging and asking the employees to go further with their explanations. However, only when you know what the real problem is can you take the next step to try and resolve that problem. 

Speaking Privately 

Next, you will want to speak to both employees involved in this conflict privately. You are going to want to do this in two stages. 

First, ask to speak to both employees in your office or in another room that is private and away from the other employees. If you can, try to have both of them in the same room first. 

This gives them a chance to explain the issue at hand and allow each other a chance to vent and communicate their issues with each other. If this does not start to progress right away, you may have to take the next step and speak to each employee individually. 

If you find this step necessary, this could be the step that allows each employee to be heard and that allows them to feel the most comfortable speaking freely. However, as a manager or owner, it is your responsibility to create that environment for your employee, which we will get to later. 

With this, just know that having an employee speak privately can allow them a more open opportunity to vent out frustration and get to the bottom of their real concerns. They can do all of this with much less concern about what anybody else in the office will have to say to their comments. 

Actively Listen and Do Not Judge 

Next, as a leader in the company, it is your responsibility to make sure all of the employees at your company feel heard. Not only do you want to be empathetic to their situation, but you also want to give each employee validation of their feelings and remind them that their presence here is appreciated and acknowledged. 

Doing this not only can make an employee feel appreciated, but it could also help your company increase its employee retention rate. Two of the biggest reasons why employees leave a company are because of poor communication and a lack of recognition for their work. 

Actively listening to your employees and providing them with a comfortable environment where they feel safe to air out their grievances can help a company with both of those issues. In other words, it pays to listen to what your employees have to say. 

Finding a Solution 

Once you listen to what both of your employees have to say, the next step is finding a solution to their conflict. Truthfully, there is not going to be one set of rules when it comes to this step. 

That is because each conflict is different. Sometimes, one employee is in the right. Other times, there may be no clear side, and you will have to do your best to come up with a compromise. As a good leader, it is up to you to determine when one employee is right and when a compromise is in order. 

Most of the time, it can be best to go with the compromise route because while neither side is fully satisfied, there is at least an improvement to the situation than before. However, if it is an issue like harassment or personal conduct, then you are going to have to know when to step in on one employee's side. 

Taking Preventative Measures

This last step involves learning from this conflict as a leader and determining if there is any way to prevent these employee disputes from happening again. Does there need to be a rule or a policy put in place to guarantee that this situation never happens again? Are there things around the office that you can easily change to prevent the same conflict from coming up again? 

These are things a good leader will review and adapt to before the same mistake repeats itself. 

Learn More About Employee Wellness 

These are some of the things that you can do to resolve employee conflict and improve employee wellness. You need to get to the root of issues to make sure that you are addressing a conflict correctly. 

Then, allow employees to talk to you in private to speak freely and have their voices heard. Finally, find a resolution for the issue and see what can be done to avoid the same conflict happening again. 

Do you want to learn more about caring for employees? Message us to seek our advice on the subject and learn how we can help you as a leader.