Human Resourcefulness

Rising unemployment is leading to growing levels of stress and conflict in the workplace. Employees who might once have passively accepted a poor work performance evaluation are now more likely to challenge that evaluation, fearing it might later be used to justify their firing.

Those challenges are a growing concern in employee-employer relations. I call it the pre-emptive strike, says Lawton Humphrey, an employment lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine.

And employees are more liable to legally challenge a layoff when they fear they wont be able to find a new job, Lawton adds. Although Washington is an at will state, which means employers dont need a reason to fire a worker, there are laws that protect employees against discrimination on the basis of age, for example. If an employee chooses to challenge a dismissal, a tussle that might have been resolved with $30,000 in severance pay can turn into a $300,000-legal battle, says Lawton. The loser typically pays the legal costs.

How do you manage in that kind of environment? The first lesson, notes Humphrey, is to make sure that you follow strict procedures and do all the necessary paperwork for evaluations and other routine communications, but also ultimately for terminations. And to avoid conflict in the first place, experts say companies need to communicate clearly and honestly with their workers. Melanie Dressel, CEO of Tacoma-based Columbia Bank, travels to branches across the region for town hall-style meetings and makes herself available to employees with informal Breakfast with Melanie sessions.

Richard Law, CEO of staffing and workplace consulting company Allyis, also holds town hall meetings. But, in addition, he has created an internal social networking site that allows employees to write questions anonymously. He also bends over backward to make sure any pain is spread evenly throughout the company. Law says that when employees were told that top executives were taking sharp pay cuts to lower costs, the employees became more amenable to accepting modest cuts in their own salaries.

Kevin Cipoletti, executive vice president at Gallagher Benefit Services, says effective communications can make a sharp difference in how employees respond to changes in benefits. Recent surveys suggest that a great benefits plan that is poorly communicated might get support from just a third of all employees, while a poor plan that is well communicated can gain the support of more than two-thirds of employees. Cipoletti says it is particularly important for employers to make sure that any cost cuts dont result in the loss of employees most important to the competitiveness of an organization.