Helpful strategies to use in workplace conflict resolution

We conclude our three-part series on internal disciplinary inquiries by focusing on a few strategies that can be used by and in support of the personnel involved in these workplace conflicts:

● Train selected senior management and/or teams to understand workplace conflict and how it causes and influences workplace discipline and performance;

● Identify and, where necessary, appoint suitable existing staff members to guide and run these processes, especially the internal disciplinary inquiry process, so as to give full effect to the understanding reached in the strategy above;

● Make small but important adjustments to your internal disciplinary processes so as to give effect to this modernisation, such as an internal mediation level and option, increased communication skills in conflict assessment and management, earlier detection and so on;

● Ensure that one or two designated individuals or teams are coached sufficiently (to your industry and business standards) so as to be a conflict expert, so that traditional workplace offences, policies and processes can primarily be dealt with as conflict management and resolution, not as the recurring symptoms of these conflicts. Ensure sufficient skills transfer internally, and expect a measure of internal resentment, insecurity and objections initially;

● Once in place, ensure that these designated individuals or teams do an internal conflict audit so as to assess and identify the true causes of workplace conflict as relevant to your specific industry and your specific business, and design and implement suitable internal procedures and remedies, such as improved communication opportunities, skills transfer and conflict competence among staff members. If necessary, let this initial assessment and action plan be done by an external expert;

● Ensure that your internal disciplinary processes and the involved staff members receive annual updates and sufficient training to remain competent in this important discipline. Outsourcing some of those functions, such as chairing these disciplinary inquiries to external experts, is a healthy and sensible practice, but the cases still need a certain level of skill and knowledge to be adequately collected and presented; and

● Ensure at some practical level that these disciplinary inquiries are monitored and managed by at least one senior management member or team so as to ensure that the overall conflict understanding and goals discussed here are understood, maintained and reached on an ongoing, live level, not as an end-of-year boardroom statistic.