Here is an excellent article that shows how “over the top stress” is in today’s workplace and how it can be tamed to create a better work force. At CEO we have experienced coaches who can help your employees learn to “practice safe stress”.  For more information visit Creative Energy Options or email MaryJane@ceoptions.com

How an organization handles conflict is the foundation for co-operation, creative input and having a collegial attitude especially during a rough patch that will show up from time to time.

Coaching can help reduce workplace confrontation

Conflict hinders recruitment, productivity; ‘If you have a good coach and a committed employee, you can work on anything’

By DEREK SANKEY, Postmedia News; Calgary Herald April 9, 2011

How an organization handles conflict in the workplace can have huge consequences, including on the ability to attract and retain top talent at a time when long-term labor shortages are being forecasted as baby boomers retire, say coaches and conflict mediators.

The Conference Board of Canada predicts a shortage of nearly one million workers by 2020. “How your organization handles conflict could be a major factor in your quest to seek out and retain quality new hires,” says Marjorie Munro, co-director of the Alberta branch of the Workplace Fairness Institute.

The American Institute of Stress cites reports that occupational pressures are “far and away the leading source of stress for American adults and that these have steadily increased over the past few decades.”

Blaine Donais of the Workplace Fairness Institute has developed a “fairness cost analysis tool” that can be used to put a price tag on conflict. It’s one way to put a price on low employee engagement and start building a foundation to better manage conflict through a variety of mechanisms, including coaching.

Sue Lyons, senior consultant and coach with Work Life Insight in Calgary, says coaching can help effectively manage and resolve workplace conflict.

“The transfer of learning is so high, and it hits the target every time,” says Lyons. “If you have a good coach and a committed employee, you can work on anything.”

Since conflict usually arises out of a difference of values, coaching can help opposing sides to remove heated emotion and examine the real issues at play in any given conflict. “Coaching helps employees deal with the conflict on the front line,” she says. “There’s no judgment and no politics in coaching.”

Facing the prospect of long-term labor shortages, experts advise companies to be aware of both the direct and indirect costs associated with conflict in the workplace and develop a comprehensive plan to improve the processes for managing it.

Direct costs include litigation, sick and stress leaves, sabotage, theft, hiring as employees leave and restructuring. Indirect costs include manager and human resources time, employee time, productivity costs and reputation costs.

“Costs are evident when managers spend increasing time resolving conflict with their employees; an employee shows a measurable drop in productivity, there is an increasing number of sick days or the water fountain gossip time becomes longer and longer,” says Munro.

A good conflict resolution system can include conflict coaching, training, peer mediation and even a conflict ombudsperson for the office. Donais’s fairness ranking can help companies identify where they need to improve and helps managers to see how deficiencies translate into recruitment challenges. “Your fairness ranking becomes a topic for discussion in the most compelling job interviews, and you are able to attract and retain employees because you know, and you can prove, that you treat them fairly,” says Munro.

While coaching is only one part of a good conflict management program, Lyons believes it will increasingly become ingrained into the corporate landscape.

“I see coaching shifting into an attraction and retention strategy that’s as big as health benefits.”

For more information on Executive Coaching visit Creative Energy Options or email maryjane@ceoptions.com