HR MAGAZINE
How to Resolve Workplace Conflicts
Conflict in the workplace is not always a bad thing. But ignoring it can be.
| By Tamara Lytle July 13, 2015 |
At a hospital, employee conflicts can happen amid life-or-death situations. No one benefits when these conflicts are ignored—not the staff, not the managers and certainly not the patients.
While it’s a natural human tendency to avoid uncomfortable conflict with others, that tactic won’t work in the long term.
“It’s like a crazy song you can’t get out of your head,” says Dan Bjerknes, director of HR operations at Catholic Health Initiatives/Mercy Medical Center in Williston, N.D., who has a master’s degree in counseling and previously worked as a conflict management consultant.
By the time a clash comes to HR’s attention, it’s often too late—such as when a valuable employee is quitting. Even seemingly small conflicts can be important because they’re often really about larger issues.
Workplace conflicts happen everywhere, and ignoring them can be costly. Every unaddressed conflict wastes about eight hours of company time in gossip and other unproductive activities, says Joseph Grenny, co-founder of
VitalSmarts, a training and organizational development company in Provo, Utah. Now multiply that by all the issues not being resolved.
“It’s an enormous drain on an organization,” says Grenny, co-author of
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High (McGraw-Hill, 2011).
Understanding the reasons behind workplace conflicts can help HR professionals tackle problems before—or after—a conflict turns into a face-off between departments that refuse to work together or a screaming match between colleagues.
A good place to start is by realizing that, even though people may shy away from it, conflict is actually normal and healthy. In fact, many believe it’s a vital ingredient to organizational success. Experts have found that the most effective teams are those in which members feel safe enough to disagree with one another. A culture where dissent is allowed, or even encouraged, can spur innovation, diversity of thought and better decision-making.
“Conflict suggests the way you’ve been doing things is not the way it’s going to be forever,” says Casey Swartz, HR manager at
CTLGroup in Skokie, Ill. “You don’t want to hire a bunch of clones.”
According to Michael Woodward, an organizational psychologist in the New York City area, the challenge is in figuring out which conflicts are healthy and which ones are harmful. “Unhealthy conflict is when it becomes personal and emotional. Then your judgment gets clouded,” Woodward says. By contrast, good conflict can lead to higher levels of trust. If people see that it’s OK to challenge the boss, they can question the status quo, which is better for the company
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