As said by David Allen,” much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do, it comes from not finishing what they’ve started”. Every workplace faces some of the other conflicts, you being an employee must know how to go through it.
Any conflict, be it big or small, becomes a reason for a setback in you or any organization’s work. Unresolved conflict becomes a reason for the negative impact on the leader-employee relationship. If seen at an individual point of view, any conflict may become a reason for his/her stress and low productivity at work. For institutions, departments and team, conflict becomes a reason for slow down at work. There are various instances of conflicts that occur. Reports show that there are 62% cases where people are willing to take legal action regarding employment discrimination. Conflicts and misunderstandings are an avoidable part of any organization, yet people are not having any permanent solution to resolve these issues. It is very evident that these conflicts affect the immune system of any organization, make it weak.
What causes workplace conflict?
- Poor management practices: Ineffective leadership, lack of direction, or inconsistent decision-making can lead to frustration and conflict among employees.
- Unfair treatment: When employees perceive favoritism, discrimination, or unequal opportunities within the workplace, it can breed resentment and conflict.
- Unclear job roles: Ambiguity or overlapping responsibilities can result in confusion and disputes over tasks, accountability, and authority.
- Inadequate training: Employees may feel ill-equipped to perform their duties effectively, leading to errors, frustration, and conflict with coworkers or supervisors.
- Poor communication: Miscommunication, lack of transparency, or ineffective channels for sharing information can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts.
- Negative work environment: Factors such as high stress, low morale, or a lack of support can create a toxic atmosphere that fuels interpersonal conflicts.
- Lack of equal opportunities: When employees perceive unfair treatment or barriers to advancement based on factors like gender, race, or ethnicity, it can lead to resentment and conflict.
- Bullying and harassment: Intimidation, verbal abuse, or other forms of mistreatment can create a hostile work environment and lead to conflicts among coworkers.
- Significant organizational changes: Major shifts in products, organizational structures, performance evaluations, or compensation systems can disrupt workflows and trigger conflicts as employees adjust to new roles or expectations.
Effect of conflicts on Employee and organization
When seen from an employee’s perspective, if any negative discussion or a hot talk remains unresolved, they face depression, dissatisfaction and general unhappiness. They face aggression, violence and end up resigning the job sometimes. Any hostile environment may lead to many psychological responses in an employee. Some of them are as follows-
- Low motivation: a conflict arises due to variation in ideas of the two parties. An employee often feels demotivated and stressful after an argument. They show low-quality work and devalue their work. Their level of commitment to work reduces.
- Job dissatisfaction: You get dissatisfied if things don’t work your way. You find your work to be disturbing you and reason to get you in the grievance.
- Frustration: an employee who is under continuous scolding is surely to go through frustration. Increased level of workload makes an employee tensed and piled up with pressure.
- Forceful resignation: the result of all these conflicts which don’t find any solution to deal with results in resignation by employees even when they don’t want to.
All these factors become a reason for low productivity exhibited by the workers of any organization. This brings a setback in the company’s growth. Cliques and rumours waste Time and resources. Employees try to avoid coming to offices as they find it negative and the reason that gives them tension. The organization faces high employee turnover as people leave the organization more often.
A closer look at conflicts
Increase In conflict whether emotional or task-related deteriorate the performance of any organization. The recent research has indicated that workplace conflicts have large negative impacts on the organization. Any conflict with dismissal damages a staff who can immediately seek legal and judicial aid. If it is proved that the decision is unlawful at the organization’s end, a huge amount of fund would be lost as a result of court fee. As a whole, the company’s value would and name would go down in the market. It brings disgrace to the organisation. Workers don’t join such organisations. Any unresolved conflict starts with stressing up the worker, making him/her show degeneration in performance; this, in turn, would affect the company and it may have to face an unimaginable amount of loss.
Shocking facts about workplace stress-
- 1000000 employees miss work each day because of stress. That’s a huge number if seen on a global level. How much amount of work gets late that otherwise would have been on time?
- Stressed employees spend 46% more on healthcare as compared to other health workers.
- According to a survey by Integra, nearly, 3 out of 10 workers are stressed due to reporting conflicts problems.
- A recent study by the American Psychological Association revealed that more than half of the workers feel as though their employers aren’t doing a good job of ensuring work-life balance. A report by Heath Advocate shows that stress has a profoundly negative impact on worker productivity to the tune of $300 billion each year
Oxford University’s study
Work-related stress is a complex phenomenon that affects both health of the worker and organizational productivity. That’s why considerable attention must be paid on the identification of work environment characteristics that may trigger psychological, physical or behavioural response, often termed as stressors. According to oxford university, workplace stress plays a huge role in the atmosphere of the family and home of an employee.
- An employee who had a hot talk at the office when returns back home are stressed and disturbed. At times, this becomes the main reason for conflicts arising between husband and wife. The overall environment of the house finds to be negative.
- The study shows that this family-related issue differs by gender differences too. Males and females are seen to have a different approach towards this work-related stress.
- Women are observed to face multiple-personality roles. They can’t carry out their household and professional work aptly. They are the ones to suffer from both the sides, the workload as well as the household load.
- Work to family conflict occurs when efforts to fulfil the demands of the employee role interfere with the ability to fulfil the demands of the roles as spouse, parent or care-taker.
- People usually find out measures to forget about these tensions for time being. Hence, at times they sought to means like alcohol or smoking which are highly injurious to health.
Following the words of Bruce Lee, “it is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the essentials”. Get back to work at the soonest and with your utmost credibility.