Conflict in the workplace is a great source of employee turn-over. Employee turn-over also produces a huge cost: monetarily, reputation, and in terms of time management. Most business’s, company’s or organization’s attempt to avoid turn-over. Sometimes it is just unavoidable.

Many places attempt to create an atmosphere to avoid such a situation. They attempt to create a positive culture within the organization or even more intimately within teams. There are reward systems (when there is budget for such) that help to keep a team on track. Sometimes this works, sometimes this does not.

What about when there is a conflict and the conflict is so large that it is fueling a negative culture? What to do then? Most places have set up a grievance process that takes weeks to work through… there is the filing of a EEOC… there is leaving and taking others along with them. If unions are involved, there is a whole separate process, again taking weeks to sort through.

What if there was a process that would put everyone at the table to work things out, to decide which positive direction each party was going to take, to have ownership of such, and take approx. two days? Would this be something worthwhile to build into an organization’s system to deter employee motivation? You tell me.

– Dionne