Conflict-resolution business booming

So much for the dog days of summer.

The summer months are usually a slow time for workplace conflict-resolution firms like Facilitated Solutions because workers are on vacation. But that's not the case this year, according to Janet Schmidt, managing partner of the five-partner Winnipeg firm.

"The phone hasn't stopped ringing," Schmidt said Thursday.

"This week alone, we've had three or four calls from prospective new clients."

Schmidt said in an interview the recession has a lot to do with the surge in demand.

She said during economic downturns, many companies cut costs by cutting staff, particularly middle managers.

"But they haven't reduced the workloads," she said. "So you stress people like crazy and the more stressed people are, the worse they become at dealing with other people."

The managers who are left also have less time to deal with personnel problems and conflicts, she said, which further adds to the problem.

Other factors in the growing demand for workplace mediation are a lack of conflict-management training for managers and changing worker expectations, Schmidt said.

She said that many workers today are well-educated and expect to be involved in decision-making and to be kept informed -- and they resent it if they're not.

Facilitated Solutions has been in business for seven years, and Schmidt couldn't recall working on any cases where warring workers came to blows.

"But there have been cases where some pretty questionable emails were sent and there was a lot of anger and yelling -- that kind of stuff," she said. "And there have been a couple of times where there had been threats of violence."

Manitoba isn't the only place where workplace conflicts are heating up.

A Canwest News Service report out of Vancouver cited cases where stressed-out workers are eviscerating each other over everything from missed deadlines to messy office kitchens.

"When times get tough, people get tougher on one another. They start acting more as individuals looking out for their own skins," said Heather Mackenzie, a lawyer and president of the Integrity Group, a Vancouver consulting firm specializing in workplace conflict. "I use the analogy of Survivor all the time: It's outwit, outplay, outlast."

And a Canadian Press report Thursday out of Toronto said employees who are spared the axe during layoffs often end up shouldering added responsibilities and heavier workloads to compensate for ones who were let go. And that, too, can lead to longer hours and more stress -- or worse.

A labour arbitration case being heard in Winnipeg this week shows that even spiritual caregivers aren't immune after a nun and two other chaplains at St. Boniface General Hospital accused the hospital's spiritual care director, a priest, of bullying.

Schmidt said the two most common types of workplace conflicts Facilitated Solutions deals with are manager/employee and employee/employee disputes. The third most common is conflict among members of a group or team of workers.

The company also offers group conflict-assessment/intervention and coaching services.

Schmidt said to the best of her knowledge, Facilitated Solutions is the only workplace conflict-resolution firm in Canada that's set up as a partnership, similar to the way some law or accounting firms are structured. The other partners are Adrian Challis, David Dyck, David Falk and Louise Pelletier.

Schmidt said the firm has a standing-offer agreement with the federal government for mediation and conflict intervention, which means it's been pre-approved to do that kind of work for federal departments. It's also been called in to provide conflict-management training for some of Ottawa's own mediators.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca

Causes and effects

Psychometrics Canada recently surveyed 357 human resources specialists in Canada to identify the most common workplace conflicts, their causes and their effects. Here are some of the findings from its Warring Egos, Toxic Individuals, Feeble Leadership study:

The most common causes of conflict are warring ego and personality conflicts (86 per cent), poor leadership (73 per cent), lack of honesty (67 per cent), stress (64 per cent), and clashing values (59 per cent).

Three out of four HR specialists said they've seen workplace conflicts that resulted in personal insults and attacks.

Forty-three said they've seen a worker get fired because of such conflicts.

Eighty-one per cent said they've seen workers leave their organization because of workplace conflict.

Seventy-seven per cent said they've seen it lead to worker sicknesses and absences.

The three work sectors where they said workplace conflict is most common are government (42.7 per cent), education (41.8 per cent) and not-for-profit (41.3 per cent). It was less common in the business (36.7 per cent) and consulting sectors (27.6 per cent).

More than nine out of 10 said conflict-management skills are either "very" or "critically" important for leaders.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 17, 2009 B4