Written by Bev Jenkin Tuesday, 10 August 2010 06:00

One of the most difficult areas of human resources management always seems to be conflict resolution.  Long ago, conflicts in the medical entity were handed over to the manager who was told to “deal with it,” made a decision, and expected everyone to simply live with it or leave.  Today, in light of the new workplace culture and the empowering of employees, conflict resolution has taken on a whole new meaning.  Teams of people must learn to work together in close environments and amicably resolve their differences of opinion, before potential law suits come about. 

Even in the best of circumstances, conflict resolution makes people uncomfortable because someone may not get what they wanted, which means that someone else might.  This sense of being treated unfairly can cause hard feelings and unresolved anger that can fester and spill over into other aspects of the job. 

Most people do not have the necessary skills to handle conflict resolution(s) on their own.  This is where proper management comes into play.  An effective Human Resources Manager should mediate over the situation, and bring together all the parties involved in the conflict, with the following goals in mind:

• Manage the conflict constructively
• Teach the parties involved to learn how to seek alternatives
• Develop better listening skills, and
• Accept ownership of the meeting outcome(s).

In order to facilitate the meeting, the HR Manager must choose a quiet environment, undisturbed, and lay the groundwork rules ahead to time: 

• All parties involved must calmly discuss their differences of opinion
• Each party should be given a fair amount of time to ask questions of the other parties involved, without any offending remarks or angry words being used
• Possible solutions and alternatives should be discussed
• An agreed upon plan of action should then be set and followed.

The HR Manager should document the minutes of the meeting, with a copy to each participant and their personnel folders.  It is always a good idea for the HR Manager to follow up with each of the participants at set time intervals (i.e. 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months) to make sure that the plan of action is working effectively, or to make necessary changes, if need be.

Contented employees are productive employees.