Whenever there will be different personalities existing within the organization, there will always be conflicts. So, conflicts at workplace are common even when employees might be productive and maintaining cordial relationships among themselves. But, it is not necessary that conflicts happening at workplace are always bad. Conflicts may be for the good of the employees, if they are taken in a positive perspective.
Any kind of conflict is bad as a designed set of organizational goals gets affected either due to the unstructured norms or policies or due to the employees own repression and deviation from the job responsibilities. Conflicts do not occur or occur less in places where the traditional style of working is followed and where there is normally no change taking place in the form of innovations and the organizational system.
Conflict management and prevention requires remarkable changes and also tremendous amount of efforts to be put in by all employees. The conflict is for the good when the employees learn from their mistakes and try to improve by overcoming their weaknesses. This will lead to better output by an increase in the employee’s knowledge and skills. Also there are fair chances of organization gearing up for innovative methods to take up a new shape and be competitive in the market place. Conflicts often also assume an ugly shape when the conflict does not get resolved for a long time and employees too do not want to accept change. The employees complain about the organizational setup and system and about the conflicts taking place in the workplace. Hardly they are interested to overcome the problems by effectively managing and resolving them.
Conflicts if left unresolved will undermine the productivity and the credibility of the organization. Also, it is difficult to resolve conflicts, once they grow into a snowball. So, it is best to prevent conflicts from occurring in the workplace. The place where employees meet on a daily basis and where relationships do not go smooth, there can be various implications and to be more clear, conflicts affect the morale and self-esteem of the employees. They affect the teamwork, team spirit and often the respect for the superior is lost.
Now, what are the common reasons for these conflicts, it is necessary to know. Conflicts can happen at the workplace because of the disagreements over certain policy decisions and this kind of conflict takes place at the corporate level. Disagreements can take place between the middle level employees or even lower level employees on issues of job handling as to how the work should be taken up. Often the employees are delegated their superior’s or other employee’s responsibility and conflicts also happen on the handling of job assignments or portfolio. Often personality conflicts occur due to the difference in the individual behaviour and attitude of the employees.
Following are the conflict resolution techniques:
•Avoid talking: If there is continued conflict happening in the workplace between any two or groups of employees, then the employees must give space to each other. So, avoid talking for some time. Talking at this point of time will further aggravate the issue.
•Bring changes in your behaviour: If conflict is taking place because of you, it’s time you must change yourself. This you can make out if any kind of brawl is happening just due to you and there is no mistake of any other employee. You must also understand that even if it is the mistake of others, you can solve the problem by making certain adjustments. Control your temper if you often lose control over self.
•Talk other’s language: It has been observed that if you do the way others want you to do, then there can never be conflicts. But at the same time, make sure, never let others rule over you. You have your own dignity and self-respect.
•Be logical: Employees who talk sense and logic hardly face any problems in life as their logical mind enables them to find out newer ways and methods to tackle problems effectively.
•Bring clarity: If there are any hassles at work or in your actions, try to be precise and clear. The more clearer your actions or your speech, lesser will be the problems.
Apart from conflict resolution techniques, you must also be aware of the conflict prevention techniques.
•The organizational approach: The organization can play a vital role in this regard by making the system in order right from the beginning the organization starts working. The organization should have all the best practices in place and employees should be given proper cert 4 training and assessment on every aspect i.e. from work area to personality development.
•Be proactive: This means that you should know what issues are causing conflicts and how not to aggravate them. A mountain out of a mole comes out if a small problem is not solved in the initial stage itself.
•Arrange meetings: This can be extremely helpful as it will bring together all the employees under one single roof. Once all the employees are there, the issues can be discussed in the open and problems sorted out.
•Ensure discipline in the teams: The common cause of conflicts is lack of discipline at workplace. If the managers take care to control their teams by exercising proper discipline, conflicts can be prevented.
Above all, it must be ensured that conflicts do not happen in the workplace, so certificate iv training must take place. To some extent it can be tolerated as it gives rise to learning and innovation but as too many players spoil the sport, too much and too many conflicts give rise to ugly situations.