There are so many factors that can keep your small business from succeeding. We’re all at the mercy of the economy, the availability of the resources required to produce the products that we sell, the hiring market and so much more. Internally, small business owners fight a number of other battles as well. Whether you realize it or not, employee morale is a huge factor in your success.You can have the best products at the best prices but if your staff is surly and your customers are uncomfortable when visiting your establishment, you may find yourself going out of business in no time.
In several past posts we’ve offered some hiring tips. If you missed them you can read the tips here and here. Once you’ve hired the right people, the job isn’t done. Next you need to worry about employee retention. You want to hold on to the great people that you’ve found and trained. Aside from the threat of other job opportunities stealing away your employees you really need to worry about interpersonal dynamics among your staff. Most people don’t like conflict and will do anything to avoid it. If they are experiencing conflict with a co-worker you may notice employees calling in sick more often and before long they may be looking for another job just to avoid the uncomfortable situation. In a previous post we recommended treating your employees like family. Creating that kind of atmosphere can help in this situation but keep in mind that you can’t get too “parental” with your employees when you’re trying to negotiate a truce. It would be nice if you could just send the culprits to their rooms without dinner until they straightened up, but that is unlikely to go over well with employees. Keep reading for some suggestions (including our simple inventory solution) to help you manage conflict and keep it from derailing your business success.
- Check in frequently with employees. You need to be aware of what’s going on with your staff. They are unlikely to come to you complaining about other staff members so you will need to be on the look out for these situations.
- Don’t jump in until you have all the facts. It’s natural to want to resolve an uncomfortable situation as quickly as possible but you need to have all the facts before you get involved. Especially if the conflict has been brewing for awhile what you see may be just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. You would do well to determine what started the disagreement and try to resolve that issue before addressing any of the later behaviors.
- Give both employees an opportunity to share their side individually. While it can be tempting to get them both in a room and order them to work things out, that can be detrimental to your goals. Taking the time to talk to each person one on one allows them to share without interruption and without fear. Once you’ve heard both sides you can bring them together and try to mediate the situation.
- Address the underlying cause, not the personalities of the individuals involved. Often issues will be twofold. The conflict probably began with a business issue and then escalated because of the opposing opinions and attitudes of the employees involved. If you can resolve the business issue, the differences in opinions and attitudes may become less significant.
- Avoid taking sides. In any conflict you may find yourself relating more to one person’s position than the others. Be careful not to make that solidarity obvious. The employee you disagreed with could easily end up feeling worse than they already did - a surefire reason to start looking for another job.
Avoid Conflict | Use Stockpile Simple Inventory Solution
Of course, the best way to manage conflict at work is to avoid it all together. The easiest way to do that is to hire employees with compatible personalities and provide the tools they need to do their jobs easily. Stockpile simple inventory solution can alleviate a number of potential workplace conflicts. When you can quickly and easily access inventory data, anytime from anywhere, you’ll always know what you have on hand. This reduces the need for employees to guess at stock levels and fail to reorder or over order items. When you can track items within a single location or across multiple locations you’ll always know where your inventory is. No pawning the problem off on someone else, “I thought it was with so and so.” Nope! Thanks to Stockpile simple inventory solution it’s easy to tell where the item was last stored and who moved it. Need a clear picture of how sales are going? No problem. Stockpile allows you to run the reports you need to accurately track and forecast sales. So keep your employees happy. Start using Stockpile today!
