We think of our workplace as a well-oiled machine on a good day. When everything is moving smoothly and in sync, there’s no other feeling like it.
The truth is that our workplaces are much more akin to a row of dominoes, or sometimes even a house of cards. It’s not that things are entirely unstable, and it’s not that the workplace cannot keep growing and changing, but it can be incredibly sensitive to disruption. One misplaced card, or one domino out of sync, and everything subsequent can feel as though it’s falling apart.
This is natural! Even a well-oiled machine needs that flow of oil to stay running so smoothly and avoid the sound of gears creaking. In your workplace, when something significant happens – such as a labour disruption, or a workplace investigation – it can definitely throw things off kilter.
So, how do you get a workplace back up and running when a stiff wind has blown things slightly off-course?
Begin with the end in mind
Odds are that you did not want a major workplace disruption, nor did you invite one. Nobody wants to deal with a walkout, or a major incident of harassment that has everybody talking. These are stressful situations for any employer, and ones that you may not welcome. Yet while you cannot control that they happen, you can certainly maintain control over how you handle them.
No matter what sort of workplace disruption you are facing, take every action with the greater picture in mind. A walkout will end, a dispute will eventually resolve, and an investigation will conclude and the dust will settle. Thus, craft your solutions from a forward-thinking perspective. How do you want your workplace to look when this is all over?
This approach will help make sure that any actions taken are deliberate and measured. Emotions can become heated when dealing with a frustrating situation, yet cooler heads must prevail. No matter how you proceed, consider not only how it will impact the moment, but how it will be remembered by the rest of your team for months and years to come.
Keep asking ‘why’
There are situations that you encounter in the workplace which may be beyond your control, but rarely do they happen without a reason. Whether a walkdown happened because of friction with management, or an employee committed significant misconduct and was caught, none of those things happen without root causes.
If those root causes are left unsolved, the resulting problems are likely to reoccur over and over again. As you focus on ‘righting the ship,’ take the time to ask why something happened. Was there conflict with a particular manager on a team that, ultimately, is poorly-suited to manage that team? Are the labour frustrations the result of a significant workplace culture problem that warrants remediation?
Taking corrective action may obviously be required, but taking preventative actions can help ensure that whatever happened before is unlikely to happen again.
Policies on point
It is immensely frustrating for any human resources team when a workplace incident is the result of a failure of, or lack of, good workplace policies. Attempting to discipline an employee for misconduct, only to discover that said misconduct was not covered off by any workplace policy, is the workplace equivalent of having egg on one’s face.
Yet for both large and small incidents, policies are key, and must be reviewed annually to ensure that they are both compliant with legislation and that they reflect the current workplace. COVID lockdowns were an immediate lesson in exactly this – hybrid workplace policies needed to be amended quickly to reflect the new reality, and recognize what was and was not appropriate conduct given the new circumstances.
Workplace policies do not only serve an employer’s benefit. They also provide employees with a clear set of expectations, and can teach them what success looks like in their given roles. Should incidents arise, employers can not only issue discipline, but can also simultaneously review those policies to ensure that they are working as they should.
Final Thoughts
A workplace disruption is never easy, and tensions may be palpable for weeks or even months to follow. However, by taking the right approach, and maintaining a positive outlook, it is usually possible to rebuild the workplace to something even better than it was before.
Read the original blog post here.
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