Conflict is a common occurrence in businesses all over the world. A business or organizational conflict is defined as a disagreement between groups or employees over work related issues. Business management scholars claim that conflict in businesses arises when there are collisions of personalities, opinions, world views in business management environment. In a broad classification conflict can occur in three levels; tasks, relationships and processes.
Conflict in an organization is a presence of a discord and is mainly observed to occur when goals, interests or values of the organizations sections- employees, management or employers seem to interfere with other peoples chances of having their objectives or success in the company. According to Raines (2012) dealing with conflicts is challenge for modern businesses. If not solved amicably the conflicts have been reported to impact organizations negatively.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Being Socially Responsible To Reduce Conflict of Employees Turnover
According to Raines (2012) one of the major sources in a business is the employee’s turnover. High turnover occurs in a business when employees feel they are losing the connection the mission and purpose of the organization. In this case the workers might feel their contribution is no longer important to the organization. In this case the employees get frustrated and disappointed because they are recognized. Raines (2012) reports that this conflict can be solved by being socially responsible; this can be achieved by making the employees understand the mission, goals and objectives of the company. This would help to the employee’s daily tasks to the mission. Reminding the employees how their work is contributing to the achievement of the company’s mission would be essential in retaining the employees. This is a great way of the company to how it is socially responsible (Raines, 2012). From this concept people would help the employees their efforts and labor is being recognized and is used in improving the company and achieving suitable results.
Being socially responsible would also be a motivation for the workers to continue working for the company. They will feel their health and safety is well cared for as the company would work towards reducing pollution, participating in charity, improving the community welfare and being committed to diversity. In this regard the employees would tend to have higher morale and job satisfaction. Being socially responsible would mean the company is working to improve community lives. Employees would know that their work is used to make a difference in the community and the world around them (Franks, et al 2014).
The company can establish the reasons why is having employee turnout by having employment exit interviews or surveys. It is not safe for the managers to assume that people leave because they are going to seek better paying jobs, sometimes people leave because of personal reasons. In other occasions employees quit because they can’t find a connection to the mission of purpose of the company. Reminding people frequently of what the community stands for and how it will make the community better would serve to motivate employees to work hard.
Working On Hiring Process and Looking For Candidates with Favorable Behaviors
Other means to avoid conflict in an organization would be done if the hiring process is above par. If the hiring process is according to law and is used to discover and absorb the best candidates in to the company, then the chosen employs will be beneficial to the company. On the other hand if the hiring process is biased and having interests the company will miss a chance to absorb the best employees. It has been observed that some managers higher people who are almost like them. For example, a manager might settle on a person who comes from his or her ethnicity, they share the same ideologies, views and beliefs (Raines, 2012). If such a manager uses the hiring process to employee people with such characters, then the company will lack in various types of diversity. These include intellectual, educational, experiential, personality, racial gender and ethnic diversity (Kazimoto, 2013). When the company lack on such diversity it will fail in being all inclusive and might lose out on business.
The issue of lack of diversity and biasness can be solved by improving on the hiring process. One popular way of improving the hiring process is having a panel or a committee to oversee the hiring a process and make the decision on the candidates that can be used in improving the company. Candidates who get majority votes by the committee will be the potential employees who will help push the pups and mission of the company. The committee will have an opportunity to analyze the technical capabilities of the candidates (Franks, et al 2014). Other characters that can be examined during the hiring process include collaboration styles, capabilities to follow work schedules, personal and professional characteristics and capability to adapt to workplace schedule. The candidates with bad behaviors can also be spotted through a good hiding process. Taking in such employees with bad characters and behaviors might be detrimental to the company and will ultimately lead to conflicts (Franks, et al 2014).
Building On Teams and Trust
Teams in a business thrive if there is trust among the employees and the management. The organization leadership should work at ensuring there is an atmosphere of trust. Trust promotes team work and organizational groups (Franks, et al 2014). Better methods to promote team work and trust can be learned through trainings and seminars. The management also needs to be analytical and creative in using this concept.
Individual characteristics of the employees need to be evaluated to establish who would work closely with whom. Some people cannot naturally work together because of trust issues. It wouldn’t be wise to put them in the same time. This would be a way of creating a conflict. When individuals trust each other in a team, there will be improved performance, productivity and good results (Kazimoto, 2013).
Additional elements that can be used to solve building teams and trust are choosing the team members through a critical evaluation, working on team communication. Team scan either improve relationships among employees or ruin it when members feel disadvantaged and vulnerable. The management should work to establish teams that improves relationships and unites the employees in bid to promote performance.
Performance Reviews and Employee Recognition
Performance reviews are an important conflict management strategy because it involves sitting down with the employees and having a one on one review on what they think about the company. It will provide an opportunity to learn about the details of the conflict. The management will learn about the employee’s perspective about a particular conflict. In this context the organization will be able to make plans and come up with solutions to the conflict (Franks, et al 2014). Setting performance indicators would help in achieving fairness and aspect of being objective in an organization. The management would also need to gather data relating to individual and group performance to establish how conflicts can be eliminated in an organization. Setting timelines, on tasks and expectations would also help to boost performance. Those who achieve the goals should be recognized and awarded in bid to motivate them
Application of conflict management strategies
The strategies can be used if a company is having conflicts relating to tasks, performances and processes. For instance, if there have been a go slow in a company and there is reduced productivity, the concept of performance reviews would be utilized in establishing the basis of the conflict. People usually engage in demonstrations and go slow if they are not having job satisfaction or their labor not recognized. For instance if people feel the management are only focused on their interests rather than improving the workers career and personal progress they may fail to perform. If I was in such a management I would utilize performance reviews and surveys to get to the root of the conflict. I would also gather feedback and suggestions from the workers on how to solve the conflict. Coming up with better reward and appraisal systems would also be useful in motivating employees.
Conclusion
It was surprising to learn that building on teamwork would be an effective way of resolving internal conflict in an organization. Team work was acclaimed for providing an opportunity to establish relationships among employees and the management. I also discovered that the management can improve trust by creating well designed teams and setting targets. Facilitating teams has been described by researchers as an effective way of solving conflict and creating bonds among workers.
References
Franks, D. M., Davis, R., Bebbington, A. J., Ali, S. H., Kemp, D., & Scurrah, M. (2014). Conflict translates environmental and social risk into business costs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 111 (21), 7576-7581.
Kazimoto, P. (2013). Analysis of conflict management and leadership for organizational change. International journal of research in social sciences , 3 (1), 2307-2327.
Raines, S. S. (2012). Conflict management for managers: Resolving workplace, client, and policy disputes . John Wiley & Sons.
