Workplace mediation
21/03/2018
Today's workplace is increasingly complicated and diverse with many challenges for organisations, leaders and employees. Technological breakthroughs, demographic shift and the age profile of the world's population will soon result in seeing 3 to 4 generations in the workplace as people work longer. The working environment and culture is becoming increasingly important with the focus turning more and more towards the workplace environment and colleague experience. Having the internal capability to deal with conflicts at the root cause will prove essential.
Most companies will have, or develop one soon I believe, a benchmark of sensing the workplace climate by how many formal grievances have been raised.
Generally speaking, most people do not enjoy dealing with conflicts. Having those difficult conversations very often feels extremely uncomfortable. Unfortunately, the longer it goes on, the worse it becomes. Once the point where an individual feels they need to escalate their complaint to raising a formal grievance has been reached, the relationship is then very difficult to restore and is usually damaged.
Leaders and managers need to be able to spot conflict signs fast. Raising their emotional intelligence, taking time to get to know their teams, having sincere conversations with employees and really listening to what is being said is important in order to solve issues quickly and effectively.