Because of the high cost of litigation, most of todays top companies and corporations have elaborate systems in place to handle workplace conflict resolution. Most of these types of situations are handled by the Human Resources director or their department. The type of training that the HR person has will go a long way in being able to handle workplace conflict resolution that goes on daily. Work place conflicts between employees are much more common than they seem. At best they can be a slight annoyance, at worst it can lead to violent confrontations. Workplace conflict resolution needs to be handled quickly and internally before the problem grows into something completely unmanageable. How well the supervisor or HR person has been educated and trained will have a big say in how the situation resolves itself.
Work is the one place that people need to feel safe in. When one goes to work in the morning you do not expect to be cajoled, insulted, threatened, or abused in any way, be it verbally or physically. A reasonable expectation for most of us is that your co-workers will respect you and not be confrontational to the point of conflict or violence.
Unfortunately there have been many, many cases over the last twenty years or more of workers or ex-employees going postal and attacking their fellow co-workers, sometimes with disastrous and fatal results. All of the top companies are painfully aware of this disturbing trend and have gone to great lengths to educate employees and enforce zero tolerance rules about workplace behavior. Although never acceptable, erratic, disturbing, and downright dangerous workplace behavior was never fully confronted by employers as a whole until some terrible incidents occurred. Even then that might not have been enough to spur slow-to-react employers were it not for the ever present threat of lawsuits. Fear of having to pay out multi-million dollar settlements and spending years in court and all the associated costs have practically forced companies to make wholesale and much needed changes to the way they do business and the way in which employees and their supervisors interact with each other and with themselves.
The best deterrent to aberrant workplace behavior is through education and workplace conflict resolution by supervisors and fellow employees. Many times the owners or presidents themselves have no clue what is going on between employees on the front lines. Daily reports not withstanding, many weeks and months can go by before a conflict between employees or between employees and supervisors goes noticed. By then it is too late to execute workplace conflict resolutions and the worst may have already occurred. Too many times in the past frightened employees have kept quiet about workplace insults, homophobia, bigotry, racism, and/or sexual abuse. These types of behavior can no longer go unpunished and untreated. Workplace conflict resolution is just one means of ending these types of aberrant behavior patterns.
With continuing education and legislation regulating the workplace environment, employers and lawmakers can now work hand in hand to give the workplace back to the people that most deserve it, the workers.