Why Effective Conflict Resolution is important in the workplace?
If you are a leader and managed people you might find yourself in the middle of employee conflict resolution, which was tough to handle. It is every leader’s dream to manage all his/her employee effectively, but it is hard to manage each employee because not every person is the same and some just don’t mesh with others.
Although the employees are the most important resource in an organization, but they can also have a negative impact on the environment and work culture of an organization. Good conflict management propels the productivity of employees and if a conflict is not managed properly, it can be converted into the worst crisis, which affects the image and turnover of any organization.
“Companies with a healthy corporate culture report, on average, a turnover rate of just 13.9 percent compared to 48.4 percent at companies with a poor culture. (Columbia University).”
Employee conflict management is an essential skill for leaders to run any company. If you are a leader, you need to understand all the underlying cause and resolve them on time because perfunctory efforts won’t help in such situations. A healthy tension among employees will take no time in becoming overly disruptive chaos. An issue converts into conflict and conflict will take no time in becoming a crisis if not handled with care. Therefore, a leader should analyze and try to resolve any emerging issues before it gets worse.
A research study ‘Workplace Conflict and How Businesses Can Harness It to Thrive’ found,
“70 percent of employees believe managing conflict is a critically important leadership skill.”
“54 percent of employees believe managers could handle disputes more effectively by addressing underlying tensions immediately when they surface.”
Many underlying factors such as lack of engagement among employees, poor communication, low team spirit, unclear job roles, lack of equal opportunities, inadequate training, etc. highly affect the behavior of employees with each other.
The majority of HR managers suggest using Knowledge Management Platforms to minimize such organizational conflicts. Those platforms help in team building and better engagement by providing many features such as group discussions, knowledge sharing, skill development, etc. Vneda.com is such a knowledge management platform with expertise assisting corporate in transformative employee engagement for better dispute resolution.
Every employee has a different set of mind and differences in behavior which doesn’t let them easily go along with others. The managers have to keep in mind such differences to resolve any employee issue, as a bad conflict resolution reverberates through the entire work culture of an organization and can affect it adversely.