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While you always strive for harmony in the workplace, every once in a while as MN certified food manager you will have to deal with employee conflict. This week we’d like to take a look at how to prevent dissension in the work place, and deal with issues as they arise.
How a MN Certified Food Manager Deals with Conflict
It’s impossible to completely eliminate employee conflict, especially in stressful environments such as the food industry, but with the right approach you can build a staff that not only gets along but enjoys working together. Talking with human resource managers and food service supervisors, we’ve come up with a few common themes concerning conflict resolution.
- Prevent conflict before it starts
- Don’t let conflict fester
- Involve your HR representative
Our first tip may be hard to do sometimes, but there are ways to prevent many conflicts from occurring. Many conflicts in the workplace stem from an individual not being satisfied with their role. Sometimes if an employee isn’t satisfied with their role, they may turn their frustrations towards their fellow employees. If you can identify individuals who are unhappy with their role, you may be able to give them an opportunity express their frustrations to you before they take it out on their coworkers.
The food industry is a stressful place by nature. Another way to keep conflict at a minimum is to keep morale high. This can vary from facility to facility, but there are ways to keep morale high under stressful circumstances. Some ways include social interactions such as company events that don’t involve job duties and making sure that breaks are always taken at regular intervals.
Even with the highest morale, it is inevitable that conflict will arise. These are times when you must decide whether to address the issue or let your employees work things out for themselves. It’s not necessary to intervene in every circumstance, but you must use your best discretion. If there is a conflict that you feel will be detrimental to your operation, you need to address it. Sometimes, letting your staff work things out for themselves will lead to further problems. If there are situations which you feel that you’re unable to handle, it may be necessary to bring in a representative from human resources that has been trained to resolve employee conflict.
We know that there is no cut and dry solution to resolving conflicts among your staff, so we’d like you to leave us a comment as to how you deal with these situations.
