As a business owner, it’s your job to make sure that your team is running smoothly and relations between employees are healthy. It can be incredibly difficult when employees clash in the office and you need to make sure that you deal with disputes quickly and fairly.
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Many employers struggle to stay impartial in these situations because they have their own relationships with employees. Even though you shouldn’t, it’s difficult to avoid taking sides sometimes. But this only makes the situation worse because it can make employees feel that you don’t have their back and you are siding with the other person. This results in a lot of resentment and can cause productivity issues because employees will check-out when they feel that their boss is working against them. Learning how to be impartial during employee disputes is an essential part of managing your team. If you find it hard, here are some simple tips to help you.
Outsource To A Third-Party
Sometimes, you are too close to a problem and you find it almost impossible to remain impartial. If you are having a lot of trouble managing disputes, you should consider outsourcing to a third-party. There are some great outsourced HR services like Employer Advantage that can help you mediate employee disputes. They are completely impartial and unknown to the employees, so they will just look at the facts and then determine an outcome, which can then be discussed with you. This is the easiest way to make sure that everything is handled fairly. Outsourced HR services can help you manage a whole range of tasks, so you could hire them to be your entire HR department or just to manage employee disputes.
Focus On The Cause Of The Dispute
It’s easy to focus on working out who was in the wrong and whether anybody should face any kind of consequences as a result. But the important thing is that you avoid more conflicts in the future so your team can work effectively. So, focus on the cause of the dispute rather than the individuals involved in the situation. For example, if one person is upset because the other has been gossiping about them in the office, call a meeting with everybody and set out a zero-tolerance policy on office gossip. The situation between the two parties is resolved, but in a way that improves the overall office environment rather than laying blame at the feet of a single employee.
Don’t Be Antagonistic
Understandably, these situations can be frustrating, especially if you think that one of your employees is being dishonest or you are upset that their behavior caused a dispute in the first place. But if you are antagonistic, this will only make the situation worse. It causes resentment towards you and the divide between the two employees will only get wider because one of them feels that they’ve been made to look bad by the other. Approach the situation calmly and even if you do feel frustrated with your employees, focus on finding a resolution without bringing your own feelings into it.
Don’t Try To Change The Past
In these situations, it can be tempting to try to change the past. Employers will often say things like, ‘maybe you should have handled it this way instead.’ The thing is, they can’t do that because it’s already happened, so this really isn’t helpful. In fact, if you tell one employee that they should have done things differently, it immediately feels like you are siding with the other, and that leads to more problems. It also feels as though you are putting all of the blame on them when, in reality, you hold some of the responsibility.
As an employer, it is your job to create an environment where everybody can work well together. If there are disputes, you are partly to blame for that and you should recognize that when dealing with problems. Instead of telling other people what they could have done differently, think about what you can do differently in the future to stop disputes like this from happening again.
Dealing with employee disputes is one of the biggest challenges you will face as an employer and it is crucial that you get it right because your employees are your biggest asset. You must always remain impartial or you will only make the situation worse. Follow these tips when you approach any difficult situation between employees and you can get it all smoothed over without any more problems.
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