Improving Retention - By addressing Work-Family and Interpersonal conflict

Work conflict mainly interpersonal relationship between managers and employees, employees to co-workers is one of the top issue that has impacted employee retention in the engineering manufacturing sector. The high turnover rate negatively affects employee morale, customer satisfaction and company performance. With the need to constantly hire new employees, companies now are spending millions in training cost, not to mention significant impact on profitability caused my Poor Workmanship leading to Quality Issues. Additionally, low morale is caused by overworked employees and new employees faced similar challenges, as they struggle in learning the new duties and responsibilities. As this problem continues, the company could carry a long-term risk of having difficulty in attracting and retaining high-quality workforce. Interpersonal conflict at work can also be attributed and/ or magnified with the contribution of work-family conflict. It affects employee motivation, engagement and job satisfaction. Work-family conflict can be defined as a form of role conflict which happens when there is an excessive pressure from work and family making it difficult for an individual to fulfill his/ her duties satisfactorily (Mache et al 2015). An article from Wiley, “Why do women engineers leave engineering profession?” indicated that the turn-over rate for women over a long-period time increases significantly. Surveys by Society of Women Engineers report indicated that women engineers were leaving engineering career four times higher than men (Singh et al 2018). Faced with talent shortages, the issue on interpersonal conflict at work and work-family conflict needs to be resolved immediately. 

Interpersonal conflict is an interaction among individuals who are interdependent and perceive incompatibility with one another (Folger et al 2018). It is important to recognize that conflict can be driven by individual perception, and the sustained behaviors of parties involved including their reaction to each other. This is particularly influenced during their verbal and non-verbal communication. Interpersonal conflict can be more threatening with a superior, it is because the superior has legitimate authority and power, and disruption to an amicable relationship could confer threat to the employee (Eatough & Chang 2018). Beebe and Mottet provides several insights in addressing issues as it relates to interpersonal conflict especially superior and subordinate relationship. Leading employees begins with understanding them. In order for leaders to understand their employees better they must start by listening. To develop an effective listening skills managers need to follow the 3- step process of Stop, Look and Listen. It is important for leaders to regularly schedule one-on-one meeting with the employees. During the meeting, all competing messages needs to be turn-off (Beebe & Mottet 2013). When listening, the manager needs to understand major and minor ideas while responding to verbal and non-verbal cues. Through effective listening the manager should be able to detect relational conflict that the employee may have while also developing better interpersonal relationship with his/ her subordinate. This process will allow the leader to be able to support the employee in resolving work related conflict, at the same time continuing to build trust and mutual respect. Successful managers understand that relationship is critical. Managers who cultivate high quality and trusting relationships with their employees have satisfied and committed employees who see to it that the manager and employees succeed together (Beebe & Mottet 2013).

Work-family conflict can trigger various pressures which could lead to stress. Stress in the workplace maybe a natural occurrence but is perceived as disturbing (Riana et al 2018). Combined stress from home and work pressure, can cause work relationship to be less harmonious and creates a feeling of agitation when provoked. The employee’s inability to cope with the behavioral and psychological symptoms may incapacitate the employee’s ability to finish a task, thus affecting the individual’s performance. The end result, employee quits or gets fired. Management needs to think of the employee’s welfare, and apply family friendly policies ensuring work and life balance is promoted. There are several ways to reduce work-family conflict. Few examples are providing assistance and work flexibility to women caring for children, employee’s taking care of senior parents and other family de-stressors that affects the employee’s mental state. Mache et all article on “work-family conflict in its relation to perceived working situation and work engagement” indicated that clinical medicine has develop models for integrating physicians with lifestyle needs. To improve the attractiveness of hospital’s job and recruit young doctors, they have recommended employers to provide mentoring, flexible time and child-care facilities. These offers contributes to retaining clinicians in their career paths and to increasing their job and life satisfaction (Mache et all 2016). Many companies nowadays are providing employees with the opportunity to work from home. This allows employees to take care of personal errands, at the same time provide them an opportunity to escape from day to day traffic rush driving to work. In the age of digital technologies, there are already available software applications that connects employees to their work station without being at work. Given these benefits employees can have a quite reflection time to assist them in resolving their workplace conflicts

Work and family life is becoming to be a balancing act for employed individuals. According to Bakar and Salleh in their article “Role demands, work-family conflict and motivation: a proposed framework,” that employees who are married have to offer their time, energy and commitment to perform their job and family obligation. The situation requires them to multi-task switching family- employee hats simultaneously. The inability for leaders to address work-family and interpersonal conflict then leads to reduced organizational commitment, lower productivity, poor job attitude and ineffective work performance (Bakar & Salleh 2015). That’s why Effective Communication, Conflict Management, Emotional Intelligence, and Understanding/ Respecting Differences are most important tools in improving employee retention, hence decreasing turnover rate. As cost is trending upwards managing a demanding work-force, with an increasing competition for companies to remain profitable and productive, the need for a more stable and effective workforce is becoming to be a necessity for future survival. What then separates "Good to Great leadership" is Communication and having a solid Interpersonal Relationship between the Manager- Employee & Employee- Manager. I personally believe there is no substitute for that.

Mike Balbuena, Coach & Mentor - Student for Life

References:

Beebe, S. A., & Mottet, T. P. (2016). Business and Professional Communication: Principles and Skills for Leadership (2nd Ed). Boston: Pearson

Folger, J., Poole, M.S., Stutman, R. (2018). Working Through Conflict: Strategies and relationships, groups, and organizations (8th ed) . Newyork and London: Routledge. 

Corts, M. I., Bakker, A., Demerouti, E., Boz, M. (2015). Spillover of Interpersonal Conflicts from work into Non-work: A Daily Diary Study. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol. 20 (No. 3, 326-337).

Eatough, M.E., & Chang, H. (2018). Effective Coping With Supervisor Conflict Depends on Control: Implication for Work Strains. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol. 23 (No. 4, 537-552).

Bakar, A., & Salleh, R. (2015). Role Demands, Work- Family Conflict and Motivation: A Proposed Framework. Global Business and Management Research. An International Journal, Vol. 7 (No. 2).

 Khorakian, A., Nosrati, S., Eslami, G. (2017). Conflict at work, job embeddedness, and their effects on intention to quit among women employed in travel agencies: Evidence from a religious city in a developing country. Wiley online library, 20, 215-224.

Mache, S., Bernburg, M., Groneberg, D., Klapp, B. (2015). Work family conflict in its relations to perceived working situation and work engagement. IOS Press 53, 859-869.

Singh, R., Zhang, Y., Wan, M., Fouad, N. (2018). Why do women engineers leave the engineering profession? The roles of work-family conflict, occupational commitment, and perceived organizational support. Wiley on library, 57, 901-914.

Rianna, G., Wiagustini, P., Dwijayanti, L., Rihayana, G. (2018). Managing Work-Family Conflict and Work Stress through Job Satisfaction and Its Impact on Employee Performance. Jurnal Teknik Industri, Vol. 20, 127-134.