Project Synopsis Draft 1

1.Introduction

This report will address an interpersonal communication problem with the scope of study focused on the hotel industry. The team has decided to explore methods on how managers could professionally mitigate conflict between subordinates.

1.1 Workplace Context

As a service-oriented industry, the risk of communication breakdown in hotel environments are extremely high and volatile. Departments tend to work in silos hence increasing the risk of miscommunication.  

The nature of the industry provides high amount of services, where services are first sold and then produced and consumed simultaneously. For example, a hotel service cannot be provided until they have been sold, and the staying experience is essentially produced and consumed at the same time. With that in mind, it is vital for employees to work well together to provide the best service to its guests.

Employee conflicts happening in the guests’ presence are detrimental to the image of the organization. Managers that are effective in handling the relationship between their own subordinates and maintaining good manager-subordinates relationship are one of the reasons for staff retention (Kossivi, Xu & Kalgora, 2016 ), where employees work hard for good bosses.

1.2 Thematic Focus

The hospitality industry has one of the highest turnover rates, according to Ministry of Manpower (MOM) (Government of Singapore, 2018). It is widely known that this industry is human labor intensive and requires shift work. Therefore, workplace harmony and great teamwork is critical to employee retention leading to the success of the organization. Studies have shown that top few reasons why employees leave their jobs was due to relationships with their boss and their co-workers (Jasper, 2007). As the saying goes, “people leave managers, not companies” (Lipman, 2015), good communication and the relationship between a manager and employees are critical in building an organisation with employees feeling satisfied, engaged and are willing to work as productively as they can (Dewydar , 2015).

1.3 Nature of Project Professional Importance

Training programs such as conflict management are often mandatory only for human resource personnel. However, it is also important for other departmental managers to identify factors which contributes to interpersonal conflict and understanding the importance of conflict management. Therefore, resolving interpersonal conflict is a key focus in retaining and managing its employees. It is not just about knowing and managing its employee on an operational level. Instead, managers equipped with this skill would be able to handle and resolve conflict immediately.

1.4 Problem Identification
Discussions with collective inputs from members of the team was carried out and it was identified that there is a lack of pre-existing conflict resolution standard of procedures (SOPs) in workplaces. During a conflict, subordinates look up to the boss as a leader and he is expected to solve problems and mitigate conflicts from a neutral standpoint.

Poor conflict resolution can lower employee morale which can affect the workplace culture. Resulting in higher employee turnover which can cost the organization precious resource of time and money.

1.5 Purpose Statement

Purpose of this tutorial is to develop managers to have conflict resolution skills and equip them with techniques and methods to mitigate conflicts professionally. Importance of conflict resolution and how it contributes to the big picture of the organization will be emphasized. It explores styles and approaches that a manager can utilize with the least biasness, to perform conflict resolution and mitigate conflicts between subordinates with fairness and integrity, thus uniting the team.

1.6  Causes of Poor Conflict Management due to Evaluation Biases

Five types of evaluation biases will be identified and ways to avoid them will be addressed. It is essential that the manager do not fall into these tendencies and side any one employee when resolving conflicts between subordinates. Doing so, the team risks lowered employee morale and loss of confidence in the manager.  

The five tendencies are: 1) Contrast, 2) Halo, 3) Horn, 4) Leniency, and 5) Recency. These effects can be a potential catalyst worsening and intensifying the existing conflict between the co-workers.  

1.6.1 Contrast Effect is when the manager compares an employee’s performance or action to another employee instead of a company standard set by SOPs (Lauby, 2013).

The basis of judgement is subjective and impartial. The actions of the referenced employee may not be right even though the outcome may be good and correct. 

To address this effect is through equality such as standardizing evaluation and usage of consistent measures to evaluate people  (Sharen, 2010).

1.6.2 Halo Effect is when an employee is ranked highly in every area because of one thing that they did well. It is where one achievement or strength serves as a representation of the individual’s performance (Lauby, 2013).

This scenario is very potent. For example, the manager’s intervention and judgement on the matter may be favoured towards a particular employee due to their past credible record. Without a proper investigation and clarity, judgment on the matter can be quick to form. Halo effect influences how the manager treats employees but also impacts how employees perceive their managers. If the manager is viewed as professional, impartial and caring, employees will rate him more favourably (Cherry, 2017).

1.6.3 Horn Effect is when an employee is ranked poorly as a result of underperformance in an area (MBASkool.com, 2018).  The first impression is negative and there is a tendency to ignore positive characteristics and concentrate solely on the negatives of the employee.

The possibility of this happening is very high depending on the first statement given by the employee on the situation. If the statement given were negative or poorly explained, there is a higher chance that judgement would be against him due to horn effect.

1.6.4 Leniency is when the manager decides to give everyone an average rating or treatment as a result of not being able to bring themselves to give a low score to the lower performer or a directive action to the one at fault, fearing of damaging their confidence (Lauby, 2013).

It is very similar to the central tendency bias of lumping everyone together in the middle. Such action is counter effective and dysfunctional as the one who is at fault or a low performer may even be unaware on the fact that they need to improve or change. Thus, resulting in an absence of valuable information on where they can focus and improve on (Maier, 2016).

1.6.5 Recency is where the employee’s most recent behaviour becomes the principal focus. A poor performer did one fantastic job and their past performance is forgotten or an excellent performer makes a mistake and they are marked for life (Lauby, 2013).

It is almost impossible to accurately remember how each employee performs or his behaviour trait throughout the year. So an effective way is through periodic reviews to recall the performance and take this opportunity to evaluate holistically (Maier, 2016). When resolving conflicts on the spot, managers may not be able to recall or evaluate hard enough and go through each and every appraisal bias in a short time. Therefore, the framework designed below will provide an immediate and effective reminder to managers on how they should approach when resolving conflicts between subordinates with fairness.

1.7. Solution

Managers can adopt the “EPILAC Approach” as a guide to resolve conflict. 1) Engagement, 2) Professional, 3) Impartial, 4) Listen, 5) Accommodate and 6) Compromise.

Engagement is the first act as it acknowledges the problem that exist and research has proven that it reduces turnover, improve productivity and efficiency.There is a tendency in any conflict to avoid the issue with the fear of further escalation or uncertainty of the outcome. By engaging and bringing everyone together for an open discussion with a clear objective in mind, sets the example of leadership action.

Professional is define as a conduct, aims and qualities that characterise a profession (Mind Tools, 2018). The manager has to be professional in handling conflict between subordinates as failing to do so would result a bad image on the manager. As a manager and leader, certain traits such as competency to handle the conflict and accountability do come in.

Being impartial and neutral meant having a neutral standpoint and not be drawn into viewing any one side more “reasonable” or “right” than the other. As a conflict mediator, it is often challenging but crucial in conflict management. Another temptation is the tendency to think you know what is best and would want to impose a particular solution thus undermining the self-determination principle of mediation to allow the parties to resolve among themselves (Consensus Mediation , 2013).

To actively listen to both sides of the story to ensure a clear understanding of the problem. All the five biases as mention will appear at their strongest in this stage. The key is to withhold any form of judgement and allow the parties to share everything from how they feel and why they do it.

The final stage is the solution and often both parties have to either accommodate or compromise to see a closure in the matter. Accommodate occurs where one of the party is willing to take a step back to reduce the tension. In a more extreme scenario where ego is at play and none would budge, a compromise must establish. The compromise must be fair and mutually agreed upon by all parties. This mutuality is essential as it serves as a foundation to the closure.

1.8 Benefits

Advantages of educating managers on how to resolve conflict between subordinates would help to maintain workplace harmony. This would result in higher staff satisfaction which leads to

a. Open communication culture with employees that are more confident and comfortable with the manager

b.   Higher guest satisfaction as a result of high staff efficiency

c.    Politics within workplace are minimized

d.   Higher employee retention with engaged employees, leading to reduced absenteeism

e.    Employees are willing to work hard under managers they respect

f.      Instill the spirit of leadership in managers

g.     Nurture a highly motivated and efficient culture within the workplace

1.9 Proposed Data Collection  

Both primary and secondary sources of data collection will be considered for this project. Primary sources will be conducted with casual interviews that will be carried out with industry practitioners currently holding managerial positions, or have expertise in this area. Their perspectives and insights on workplace conflicts, unhappiness between subordinates and employee turnovers will be collected. Trends, similarities and differences in opinions will be identified along with the ways they personally deal with conflicts among subordinates.

Secondary sources will be obtained via extensive research on conflict resolution topics available on the internet, resources provided by credible sources and instructional units and resources provided to the class.

2.0 Concluding Thoughts

It is important to have a good leader in an organization as subordinates need a leader that would be able to guide, understand and mitigate conflicts between subordinates to create a good working environment. In addition, subordinates would also look up to a leader who cares and are able to take a fair stand during conflicts. However, many organisations fail to retain their employees due to having bad leaders. Thus through this project it aims to teach managers how to provide a healthy and open communication environment for their subordinates.

References

Cherry, K. (2017, October 31). What Is the Halo Effect? Retrieved from Very Well Mind: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-halo-effect-2795906

Consensus Mediation . (2013, October 23). Mediating Workplace Conflict – Staying Fair and Impartial. Retrieved from Consensus Mediation : http://www.consensusmediation.ie/mediating-workplace-conflict-staying-fair-and-impartial/

Dewydar, W.M. (2015). The optimum relationship between managers and employees. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 6(8), 135-141. http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol_6_No_8_August_2015/14.pdf

Forbes Media LLC. (2015, August 4). People leave managers, not companies. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2015/08/04/people-leave-managers-not-companies/#684c50ec47a9

Jasper,M. (2007). Editorial. The significance of the working environment to nurses’ job satisfaction and retention. Journal of Nursing Management, 15, 245-247. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2834.2007.00760.x/epdf

Kossivi,B., Xu,M., & Kalgora,B. (2016). Study on determining factors of employee retention. Open Journal of Social Science, 4, 261-268. https://file.scirp.org/pdf/JSS_2016053009190527.pdf

Ministry of Manpower. (2017, December 13). Time series table: Labour turnover. Retrieved from http://stats.mom.gov.sg/Pages/LabourTurnoverTimeSeries.aspx

Lauby, S. (2013, August 13). Overcoming 5 Common Performance Appraisal Biases. Retrieved from HR Bartender: https://www.hrbartender.com/2013/training/overcoming-5-common-performance-appraisal-biases/

Maier, S. (2016, September 22). 4 Unconscious Biases That Distort Performance Reviews. Retrieved from Entrepreneur: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/281919
MBASkool.com. (2018). Halo/ Horn Effect. Retrieved from MBASkool.com: https://www.mbaskool.com/business-concepts/human-resources-hr-terms/3895-halo-horn-effect.html

Mind Tools. (2018). Professionalism Developing This Vital Characteristic. Retrieved from Mind Tools: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/professionalism.htm

Sharen, C. (2010, December 20). Contrast Effect – Learning about our own biases. Retrieved from Thinking is Hard Work: https://colleensharen.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/contrast-effect-learning-about-our-own-biases/