If you’ve ever had employees that don’t get along, you know how heavy the toll can be in the workplace. Snide comments, bickering, and unwillingness to help - toxic relationships can drain morale across an entire team. In a small trades business, the problem is exacerbated, because if people don’t work well together, productivity goes out the window. As a manager, you can’t afford to ignore it, so how do you address it?
This article walks you through six strategic steps to effectively address employee conflicts and maintain productivity and morale in your trades business. You will also learn how the use of job management software designed specifically to enhance communication and efficiency, such as ServiceM8, can help avoid conflict altogether.
Six Strategic Steps To Manage Employee Conflicts
Step 1: Identify the Root Cause
- Conduct Individual Meetings: Speak with each employee individually to understand their perspective and the root cause of the conflict.
- Listen Actively: Ensure both parties feel heard and respected. This can help diffuse tension, and provide insight into the real issues.
Tip: If you're not sure how to address the subject in a meeting, here is a sample script you can use to help guide your conversation.
Step 2: Set Clear Expectations
- Define Professional Behavior: Clearly outline what constitutes professional behavior and the importance of maintaining it despite personal differences.
- Establish Ground Rules: Set specific guidelines for communication and collaboration during projects. Some ground rules could include:
- The need for respectful language at all times
- Feedback must be constructive and focused on the issue, not the person
- Expected timeframes for responses to internal messages and questions
- Take concerns to management, and don't badmouth each other to other team members
- Take accountability for your tasks and be accountable for your work
- Offer support to each other when needed and be willing to collaborate on tasks and projects
Step 3: Facilitate Communication
- Centralize Information: Keep all project-related information, including schedules, updates, and task assignments, centralized. This ensures that everyone has access to the same information and reduces the need for direct communication.
- Streamline Messaging: Use technology to allow team members to communicate efficiently about tasks and project updates without needing to engage in personal discussions.
- Automate Notifications: Set up automated notifications and reminders for task deadlines and project milestones to keep everyone on track and accountable.
Step 4: Assign Roles and Responsibilities Clearly
- Define Roles: Clearly define each person's responsibilities to avoid overlap and to reduce friction.
- Segregate Tasks: Whenever possible, assign tasks that require minimal interaction between the conflicting parties.
Example: Let's say you manage a painting business. You have a residential job where the home owner needs the entire house painted as quickly as possible. You want to send a crew of two painters, and a quick look at your job scheduling software shows you that two painters have availability. However, you know they dislike working together. You can assign them both to the job, but divide the rooms while maintaining collaborative responsibilities.
- Painter A will paint rooms on the upper floor.
- Painter B will paint rooms on the main floor.
- If one finishes before the other, they should work together to complete what's left. They will also share the responsibility for cleaning up the work area, and for conducting a final walkthrough with the homeowner.
Step 5: Promote a Positive Work Environment
- Recognize Improvement: Recognize and reward positive behavior and teamwork.
- Have an Open Door Policy: Encourage an open door policy where employees feel comfortable discussing issues before they escalate.
Step 6: Monitor and Support
- Conduct Regular Check-Ins: Keep track of the situation with regular check-ins to ensure the conflict is being managed and not affecting work.
- Track Progress: Use technology to monitor task completion and project progress, ensuring accountability.
How ServiceM8 Helps Remove Common Causes of Conflict
According to the Harvard Business Review, these are the main causes of employee conflicts in the workplace:
- Poor communication,
- Unclear performance expectations / employee roles, and
- Time management issues.
While they're probably not the only reasons your employees may not get along, they're definitely triggers that can escalate mild annoyances into actual conflict. Using a job management system such as ServiceM8 can remove these triggers altogether.
ServiceM8 resolves poor communication.
- In-App Messaging: Enables efficient and clear communication between team members. Keeping communications limited to within the job software, where it's visible to all, helps to keep things professional.
- Job Notes and Photo Documentation: Team members can add detailed notes to jobs, including capturing and attaching photos and documents, to ensure all relevant information is accessible and available to everyone involved.
- Knowledge Sharing: Allows the recording and saving of tips and procedures as videos or text. Staff can then search knowledge from the app in the field to troubleshoot jobs, and knowledge content will be automatically suggested in new jobs if relevant.
- On-The-Go Management: All team members can access job details, schedules, and communication tools from their mobile devices, ensuring they have the information they need at all times.
ServiceM8 lets you set clear performance expectations by individual and by job.
- Clear Job Assignments: Lets you assign specific jobs to individual team members, ensuring that everyone knows their responsibilities for the day.
- Task Checklists: Detailed task checklists can be created within jobs, outlining specific tasks that need to be completed, which helps clarify who is responsible for what if more than one person is assigned to a job.
- Job Templates: Allows the implementation of job templates to ensure consistent processes and standardized procedures across similar jobs.
ServiceM8 helps everyone stay on time and on track.
- Scheduling: Streamlines job scheduling to avoid conflicts and overlaps.
- Automated Reminders: Sends reminders for upcoming tasks and deadlines to keep everyone on track.
- Real-Time Updates: Provides real-time updates and notifications to keep everyone informed about job progress and any changes to the schedule.
- Time Tracking: Allows employees to clock in and out of jobs directly within the app, providing accurate tracking of time spent on each task.
By addressing conflicts proactively and leveraging ServiceM8 to enhance communication, task assignment, and accountability, you can manage employees effectively even when they don't get along, ensuring that the quality of work remains high.
And while ServiceM8 may not be able to stop an employee from driving another employee nuts with their whistling, it can certainly help remove job-related triggers and make your work environment a happier, more productive place.
Ready to get started with ServiceM8? Start your 14-day free trial today, no credit card required.
