8 Ways To Solve Employee Conflicts With Online Collaboration

For a long time now, many employees have coveted the chance to work remotely and at their convenience. But, according to the 2019 State of Remote Work report published by Owl Labs, remote workers were happier, considered themselves more trustworthy, and balanced their life activities and work duties better.

The threat of the pandemic has reduced to a large extent. However, millions of employees and staff will keep working remotely, either full-time or part-time. This type of administrative responsibility can challenge experienced and inexperienced managers. Despite the remoteness, conflicts will still occur and be resolved quickly. Failure to attend to these issues will negatively impact performance and productivity.

Today, we’ll be looking at how managers and administrative officers can address conflicts between employees with teamwork collaboration as they work from the convenience of their homes.

Effective Tips to Solve Conflicts With Online Collaboration

The following tips will help you manage your remote staff and effectively resolve conflicts between them:

Don’t Ignore the Conflict

When there is a conflict between remote employees, it’s relatively to overlook it and focus on something else. You do so because you feel the lack of physical contact will automatically resolve the issues. You couldn’t be more wrong. Unresolved conflicts between remote employees will linger and go a long way to impact team communication and workplace performance.

Clear Communication

It’s impossible to overemphasize the importance of clear team communication in workplaces. Administrative officers and managers must communicate what is expected from each team member. This clear communication will serve as a foundation for workplace behavior, performance, and cooperation between staff. When your employees see that you communicate clearly with them, they will be encouraged to do so among themselves. It would also make a great reference point when addressing any conflicts.

Look for ways to engage your employee frequently. Too much communication is better than infrequent conversations. You can quickly identify what’s going on among employees through frequent clear communication. Remember that it’s easy for employees to fall out when they struggle.

Create Organisational Values

While there is no doubt that conflicts will occur between employees, there should be some limit on what is acceptable. For example, it’s uncalled for employees to send curses to each other through email. Therefore, create a list of values for all your remote employees. Please note that these values should also state how everyone is expected to act when aggrieved by their colleagues. Teamwork collaboration is very helpful for employees to communicate easily in the organization. This way, it’s easier to point out when anyone deviates from the norm.

Gather Your Facts

Before you go ahead to have a conflict resolution meeting, it’s a great idea to gather your facts from both parties involved. Listen to both sides of the story and try to find out as much as possible. The points you collect will help you paint a clear picture of the scenario and ease your conflict resolution efforts. You will also have time to investigate further and determine what went wrong.

Speak to Everyone

A common mistake made by many administrative officers during a conflict is speaking to only one party. While you would expect both parties to tell the truth, please don’t shy away from the fact that people would feel more inclined to protect themselves. Therefore, any party may tamper with facts. So, speak to everyone involved to get a clearer picture.

Outline the Issues

If you have established a clear collaboration tool channel with your employees, you can easily intervene during cases of conflict. First, let there be a discussion between all the parties involved. Here, you have to clearly outline the issues you have noticed to both parties - for instance, “you have missed two virtual meetings.” Let everyone know the problems at hand and what could have been done to rectify them. Then, you should set standards for improvement, including the changes you wish for both parties to make. Be clear about your expectations and avoid being one-sided. If anyone feels aggrieved about the issues you have outlined, let them speak their minds freely.

Set Ground Rules for Such Scenarios

When you have to manage employees, remote or not, you must understand that tempers and emotions can run hot and cause disagreements and conflicts. For example, two employees who work at different paces could have an issue reaching an agreement. It can be even more difficult to resolve such problems over a phone or video call. Therefore, you need to have ground rules set in place before these disputes occur.

Ground rules will help you remain consistent during conflict resolution and prevent any party from feeling cheated. These rules should state the order in which every party will speak during the resolution. It will also display some of the remedial actions that could be taken depending on the outcome of the events. Before conflict resolution, you can send a quick email reminder of these rules to both parties involved.

Identify a Solution

After both parties have spoken and you have been able to identify the cause of the conflict. You and your employees have to keep moving forward. Therefore, you need to place a solution that suits all parties. Your answer may come from the ground rules you have set before now, or you could think of something on the spot. The goal is to keep your keys fair and avoid mistreating anyone.

Conclusion

And that’s all on how to resolve conflicts between remote employees in team communication app. Remote employees can be somewhat harder to deal with because of the lack of physical contact. But remote workplace conflicts don’t have to derail your entire work or production process. So, what do you do when faced with such challenges? You can apply the tips explained above to resolve them quickly.