Michael VanDervort (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Left To Boom podcast. We’re doing another episode of our next 52 Weeks show. I’m host Michael Van Der Vort and I’m here with my cohost Phil Wilson. Phil, welcome back. How are you doing today?

Phil Wilson (00:10)
Good. Thanks, Michael. How are you?

Michael VanDervort (00:12)
I’m good. We’re going to talk about a topic that’s absolutely critical to long-term workplace stability today. We’re going to talk about resolving workplace conflict. If you’re a leader, you know that employee disputes are inevitable, but how you handle them determines whether they escalate into big events or even lead into union conflict. So let’s go ahead and start out with why performance management and dispute resolution processes are criticalleverage points for a proactive workplace?

Phil Wilson (00:39)
Well, if you don’t feel like your dispute with either your boss or with a coworker or, you know, anybody, if you don’t feel like that, either you have a place to go have that resolved or that you don’t feel like that resolution is either listened to or is handled fairly, then that becomes an immediate point of, need somebody either to represent me or I need somebody that I can trust has kind of got my back.

that is going to resolve things fairly and give me a fair shake. And if you don’t feel that way, then the argument for a union becomes much, stronger. So employees and then companies that are in this kind of post-election next 52 weeks period need to really think carefully about how good of a job did we do that before? This very often is an issue in a campaign, like the way that we handle

Michael VanDervort (01:17)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Wilson (01:33)
assigning shifts or assigning overtime or, handling promotions or the way that we get disciplined for attendance infractions or the list goes on and on, that’s not handled fairly. So whatever those complaints were during the course of your campaign, what can you do to help make sure that a year from now you are in a place where people feel like that kind of stuff gets dealt withfairly consistently, even if it’s not always resolved in my favor, I feel like I had a fair shake.

Michael VanDervort (02:05)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, Phil in the book of Left to Boom, you talk about the victim-perpetrator-savior triad in conflict resolution and why it might make problems worse. Seems like trying to solve a problem is a good thing, but this apparently has some issues. So talk to us about that.

Phil Wilson (04:04)
Yeah, the, the victim perpetrator savior triad. It’s this simple idea that’s actually extremely powerful. And a lot of times people think they have solved a conflict and they’ve actually just created another conflict. And so the, way that the triad works is you think about any argument between two people. And this could be, this doesn’t even have to be a work argument. This could be, you know, you and your brother are having a fight but in any kind of power dynamic, you have two people that are having this conflict.

And one of them seeks to have the conflict resolved from somebody else in a higher power situation. That’s that creates the triad. There’s these three components of the triad. So whoever goes to try to get the problem solved, that’s the victim. Right. And that victim has been victimized by this other person who’s the perpetrator and the victim goes to the savior and says, please help me resolve this issue with this person who’s perpetrating on me. Okay.

And then what happens is and it doesn’t matter which side the Savior picks The conflict never gets resolved and here’s why let’s just say the Savior goes. Yep perpetrator I agree with the victim you are messing up and stop doing that Now what you’ve done is you created a new victim the new the perpetrator is now a victim The Savior is now a perpetrator and and the new victim is now going to go look for another Savior it just creates this cycle of conflict. So what’s the solution to that? the solution is Saviors so like bosses should not try to fix Situations where it is like a conflict between two people they should facilitate an opportunity for those two people to fix their own Issue and the reason why that’s powerful and the reason why it works is like this conflict between these two people, the only two people who can fix it are them, right? You’re not, you are not going to like wave a magic wand and like solve this issue between two people. They have to fix it themselves. So what you can do though, is you can facilitate a conversation where those two figure out a path to resolve whatever it is that they’re going through. And then you facilitate a follow-up.

And maybe it’s multiple followups to make sure that, that the solution they came up with is working. Right. And if it’s not, then you facilitate another discussion to try to come up with a ⁓ different way to that. They come up with themselves to try to fix that problem. That is what you are doing if you’re in this facilitation mode. And I will just say from my own experience and I was in house HR, even, even some legal disputes.

Michael VanDervort (06:29)
Thank

Phil Wilson (06:46)
Your, your goal should not be to, you know, I’m going to tell you how to fix this. Your goal should be to facilitate an agreement between the two people that have the issue, how they’re going to fix it. gives them power. Um, it, you know, the victim that’s seeking the savior is basically saying, they may not say it out loud, but like I’m powerless in this situation. It’s like, no, you actually have power to solve this.

What you really need is an opportunity to sort of make your point known, let the perpetrator make their position known. Normally what happens is you can identify through that conversation. Well, here’s, here’s the way that we can make this, you know, better. And, uh, and then the facilitators job is just like, okay, like let’s get clear on what we’ve agreed to do and then let’s get back together in a week or two or whatever, and make sure that that solution that you guys came up with is still working.

it’s a, it’s a much, better way to resolve, you know, people issues, even disputes around policy. there, there’s a lot of different issues that you can resolve using that model. And in the other model, you just are pretending that you fixed it. You have your, you have not fixed any.

Michael VanDervort (07:57)
So this wasn’t specifically in the pre-work that we looked at. So obviously, first-line supervisor fills that role a lot of times, but it could be other people, right? So how do you instill this idea and give people the skills? Because not everybody is a facilitator at heart. So how do you do that?

Phil Wilson (08:06)
Mm-hmm.

I mean, couple of things. So first of all, don’t put yourself in the box that like, have to be the one that does it right there. You you, you can, even if it’s a dispute between two people in your department, you can, and if this isn’t like the thing that you’re the best at, you should be trying to get better at it. Okay. So like, I would, I would say if you are going to be a leader of people, you need to get good at this skillset. and so like one way to do that is to practice it.

Right? You can, you could role play the same conversation with two people that aren’t the actual two people that have the issue to where you can kind of work your way through that. So that’s number one. There’s probably other people, know, HR folks are usually pretty good at this or should be. you might, there might be a peer leader that you’re like, you know, I’m too close to this. I think you guys should talk with somebody else that can help you facilitate this discussion. there you, there’s probably other alternatives. The key, the,

The key first step is just make sure you get into that mindset of I am not here to fix something, right? The only two that can fix it are these two. And then I just need to help them fix it. And in the book, I actually give a really, there’s a very simple, you know, you’re, you don’t even really have to be that, that like a skilled facilitator, right? Like in the book, I, I, I draw a picture, but it’s, know, you have two chairs and you’re sitting in a third chair.

And then you explain there’s just some ground rules that we’re going to go through here. Each person is going to get a chance to explain sort of their perspective. there we’re not going to call each other names and make accusations. we’re, not going to make judgments. You’re supposed, you’re only supposed to explain observations, but some really simple ground rules that then your job is really just to make sure they’re playing by the rules and then to maybe call out. that’s, that sounds, you you, said they’re a liar.

Michael VanDervort (09:56)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Wilson (10:00)
⁓ that’s kind of, that’s a judgment. What, what did they say that you think is not true? Right? What, what, what could another person observe that was said, but you, you then are making sure just that they’re following those rules. They will figure it out. One other magic thing about this model though, Michael, a lot, you’ll, you’ll probably get fewer of these sort of like people disputes because once people figure out.

that you’re going to make them figure it out themselves. There’s a lot of these issues that they’ll just figure out themselves, right? Like the, you know, once they know you’re not going to actually just intervene and, and, and fix it, they’ll fix it themselves. I, I, I’ve seen this before where, uh, you just, you know, you don’t, you don’t get as much of that sort of drama because you’re not creating this additional conflict by, by

Michael VanDervort (10:43)
Yeah.

Phil Wilson (10:54)
solving it and now you’ve created another victim and now everyone’s like run to the the you know water cooler and now they’re mad at you like you you get out of all

Michael VanDervort (11:03)
Yeah. It just occurred to me that there are some situations, like I would say like a harassment complaint. This, this particular format, style, model, whatever you want to call it, may not be the perfect venue for that. Right. So you want to touch on that for just a second?

Phil Wilson (11:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. yeah, obviously if it is a, you if it’s a legal issue, if it’s something that’s going to require an investigation, I will say a lot of times if you do this part, right. Early, it doesn’t turn into something that requires an investigation, but, but you’re right. Like you don’t, you don’t ask someone who is being harassed or believes that they’re being harassed.

Michael VanDervort (11:33)
Right.

Phil Wilson (11:43)
to sit down with the harasser and like, let’s just work this out like that, you know, that you, would, you would not do, you would not do that. So this is a lot more around, you know, I like there, you know, they’re supposed to do this before they leave their shift and they’re not doing it. And it’s creating a conflict that like, would be issues like that, but these are much more kind of, these are the issues that happen almost every day in companies. And most people can like work through them, but it’s,

Michael VanDervort (12:07)
Yeah.

Phil Wilson (12:09)
Some people are not good at that or they, or, you they’re, they’re conflict diverse. They don’t want to address it with the person. They’d rather go talk to their boss and have the boss address it. And that this is a way to sort of get out of that cycle.

Michael VanDervort (12:20)
Yeah. Well, let’s talk about maybe some more formal processes or systems, because there’s all kinds of different alternative dispute resolution systems. And some are formal, some are informal, but things like mediation, peer pressure arbitration, obviously unions have a grievance procedure, union contracts have a grievance procedure followed by binding arbitration, which is one of the things unions try to sell. Companies can create alternative formats for that, that I think are often highly more effective.

Phil Wilson (12:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Michael VanDervort (12:47)
So you want to touch on some of those models?

Phil Wilson (12:47)
Yeah.

Well, let’s start with the last one. You know, a company can adopt a grievance procedure without having a union. Like you can have a stepped grievance process. You can have it go to arbitration. there’s lots and lots of companies that don’t have unions that have a alternative dispute resolution process that ends up in front of a arbitrator. And that company agrees they will be bound by whatever decision the arbitrator makes, which is really one of the only things that union.

can safely promise during a union election is that they will get a grievance procedure. That is a very common feature in almost every labor contract. And that, you know, like why wouldn’t companies just agree to do that? Right. Or and they’ll say you can’t be fired for anything but just cause. And most companies that are non-union are at will that you could take that argument away completely.

Michael VanDervort (13:32)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Wilson (13:42)
Non-union companies can also have you’re only fired for just cause. They can have a grievance procedure that grievances procedure can end with an arbitrator. That is a ⁓ proven way to resolve, you know, employment disputes where like, I am going to be fired or I am going to have some major disciplinary action happen and I don’t agree with it. Okay. Now a lot of companies don’t want to agree to that. I will just say, you know, I’ve,

I’ve never talked to anyone into this, but I really believe if you are a, if you’re a non-union company, especially if you’re a non-union company that has like gone through an election where your employees have gotten extremely close to voting in representation, partially because they want something like this. Even if you don’t do a grievance procedure with just cause, like that’s what they’re being promised is going to change. And you can take that away by doing it yourself. And if you don’t want to agree,

to just cause and you don’t want to do a full blown grievance procedure. There’s other things that you can do, which we’ll talk about, but, but that is open to you. You can do it. And, ⁓ I, so that’s like one option. And I know non-union companies that have that exact same type of process. so that would be a starting point. one I have personal experience with that I’ve also seen work in a lot of other

clients is something called peer review. So peer review is where you allow employees that disagree with a policy interpretation or that they think that, or if they’re going to be disciplined and you can outline kind of what categories of things they can dispute. But they are, have a, have a choice. They can decide, do they want this to be resolved sort of through the normal HR? We’ll take a look at whatever my issue is. And then maybe the general manager will make

the final decision or whatever. Instead of that, I want to go in front of a jury of my peers. I want co-workers of mine to hear what my issue is with the disciplinary action, let’s say, and then I want them to decide whether or not this policy was applied fairly in this situation. And that is a really effective way to make sure that people feel like they got a fair shot. And that’s not like binding arbitration.

but it is a powerful way for me to have like, I don’t just have to go to management because a lot of times people go like, well, look, HR is just going to say whatever the GM says. I don’t really feel like that’s a fair way to resolve my dispute. This is a way that you sort of take all of that out and are like, if you really believe strongly that you’ve not been treated fairly, go to your teammates and let them decide.

Michael VanDervort (16:22)
Yeah, so one thing that in the years that I spent working in formalized union settings, one thing that I found about the grievance arbitration procedure is once you’re into that system, because you can still talk to individuals, they don’t have to write a grievance, you can still problem solve, and that’s entirely possible and probably the optimal way to do it. Once you get into that formalized procedure, a lot of times I found positions became both political

and entrenched. And so it takes a lot longer to solve a problem than you would like. sometimes, you know, so there’s, there’s some inherent issues with that. And then there’s a lot of inefficiency because you’ve got people sitting in rooms talking about this over and over and over again for weeks. So I was never a huge fan of that process. But the other side of that is the open door, which a lot of non-union companies want to use. Go to go talk to your manager. The peer review piece kind of splits that down the middle.

in my mind. Open door is like almost more based completely on company discretion. Arbitration outside party that’s supposed to be totally neutral but often isn’t. Peer review maybe somewhere in the middle. So I don’t know what are your thoughts kind of around that whole entanglement? What’s the

Phil Wilson (17:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think that that’s right. mean, yeah. Open door is, ⁓ not really, I mean, that is a way to resolve disputes, but that’s, that’s very kind of, it’s basically just like your manager will decide the dispute. and you know that, I mean, depending on the company, I mean, there’s lots of times where managers can go, yeah, you know what? We blew that and we’re going to undo it. So if, if people feel like that,

Michael VanDervort (17:45)
Ew.

Phil Wilson (17:58)
resolves their concerns, then that’s great. Right. But what we’re really talking about here is, is where you’re in a situation that you’re, you don’t feel like just going to management is fair. what I really like about peer review, and again, there’s a lot of different ways to implement it, but one of the things that I really like about peer review is you give people the choice, right? It’s like, if you want to do the kind of open door, I’m going to go,

through HR and then up to the general manager. but there’s not going to be this kind of, you know, hearing that’s one path and that’s your choice. And if that is the way you think is the going to be the fairest for you, then you can go that way, but you can always, if you want, go this other route, which, which takes you to your peer group. That’s going to decide the issue. So

I really like that formulation. Then people have a choice on how they want to get things resolved. you have to make good, you know, you have to make decisions about what are you going to allow to be, to go to peer review. Most people remove sex harassment and harassment cases out of, out of the peer review path. a lot of times they’ll remove safety. Yeah. Like if you

you know, wreck a forklift or whatever. A lot of times they’ll remove that out of peer review. So you you, you can pick what can be reviewed, but you know, what you’re trying to do is just make sure that employees feel like if they don’t agree with a decision management is made, that they have a, a way that they perceive as fair to resolve that.

Michael VanDervort (19:27)
That’s really the most important thing here, right? Is the perception of fairness, the actual treatment of people and how their issues are resolved. So how do these processes serve as both a union preemption tool and a cost saving measure for employers?

Phil Wilson (19:31)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm. Well, yeah, if you think about, again, like you said at the beginning, almost every union contract has one of these, right? So, if you don’t have something that replaces that, then that as part of the union’s pitch is a powerful, positive difference, right? Just cause that means you can’t be fired at will. well, the dirty secret, the reason why I think companies should just be just cause anyway.

Is that you don’t fire people at will anyway, there’s, there’s a reason. And if there’s not a reason you’re dumb, because, you know, all you have to do is they have to allege a reason and you have to prove, well, that wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t because of your race or your gender or whatever. It was because of this other reason. Well, if you have to prove that reason anyway, then why not just say we will only fire you if we have a reason, right? Like that. So I don’t think you’d lose anything by.

saying that because you’re already really following that anyway. You’re just taking away maybe like one defense that’s not a very good defense. that that’s so anyway, I’ll, I’ll get off that soapbox. But so just cause an agreements procedure. Well, if that’s what your, you know, if that’s what a union is going to be promising, then what is your replacement for that? And you can say, well, we have a three step discipline process and we have, uh,

And you can appeal that to the general manager. Like, you know, if that’s your replacement, if you put those two next to each other, your replacement doesn’t sound that great. So it’s like, what replacement could we have that people would say, yeah, that’s a fair replacement to a grievance process. And I don’t really want to pay money for a grievance process and just cause, because I already basically have the same thing now without paying any extra for it. That’s what you’re wanting to create. Right. And

That’s the very transactional, you we talk about, you know, the sort of, you know, pluses and minuses version of this argument. What you really want at the end of the day is for people to feel like if I don’t agree with a decision, I have a fair way to have that resolved. That’s what you’re trying to replace because that’s what the union is selling.

Michael VanDervort (21:44)
you

Yeah, at one place I worked, know, wine garden, wine garden rights come and go, right? We just renamed it, wrote a little like two paragraph policy on it said, this is available to associates upon upon request. And then that didn’t necessarily remove wine garden from the discussion forevermore, but pretty much you already got that point to it in the book. And there you go. Which sounds. Yeah.

Phil Wilson (21:51)
Mm.

Yeah, let, let just for listeners, let’s click, quick,

clarify that. But yeah, that’s a great example of one. Right? So if you are represented, then you have what’s called wine garden rights. What wine garden rights means is that if you are involved in like an investigatory interview, with your company, you have a right to have a steward in that conversation with you. All right. So why not do that? Even whether you’re represented or not.

Right? Like you can bring a coworker into this investigation interview. If you, if you want to have a witness there, a lot of times HR will have a manager like the, like there’ll be two management people to one, you know, non-management person. Why not go ahead and just do that. And, that, and that would be, that’s another great example of something that you could do as a non-union company that is not required to do.

But again, it makes people feel like, okay, well, I like a union isn’t going to make that better because I already have that.

Michael VanDervort (23:07)
And the amount of times it was exercised was infinitesimal compared to the amount of things that were discussed, right? Not that many people wanted to do it anyway. ⁓ We talked a little bit about this, like you mentioned, safety and harassment investigations. What are some of the risks or legal guardrails companies should consider when they’re looking at putting in whatever form of ADR that they might think would work best in their culture?

Phil Wilson (23:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you want to avoid like, well, like going back to harassment. You can’t, it’s not going to be a good defense to go like, well, you know, they thought they were being harassed, but the peer review panel didn’t agree with it. And so we’re good with whatever they say. Like that’s, you know, that’s not going to be a defense. Like you have an obligation to create a workplace that’s free from harassment.

All right, so that’s why a lot of companies will remove that from the purview of a peer review panel. So that’s one of the potential legal issues. I think the big picture here is whatever resolution process you want to put into place, obviously talk to your labor attorney about it. There’s different, even if you do an arbitration provision.

There’s a lot of nuance to kind of how like, is everything arbitrable? Uh, you know, union contracts are very clear. There’s certain things that are, you know, an arbitrator is not allowed to do. So when you set up your process, you would want to set up something that’s similar to that. And again, that can also become a, you know, a legal concern, right? You don’t want to create a situation where even like an arbitrator could rule on something that’s actually illegal for you to do, but they could, if they don’t know any better or don’t care, like they could.

force you to do that. you want to make sure that you are looking for those sort of legal guardrails. But I think anybody that’s going to implement anything like this is going to seek legal advice. And if you’re thinking about just winging it, don’t do that.

Michael VanDervort (24:58)
Yeah. Well, and like some companies, I don’t know if I want to, well, some companies go off the rails with some of the decisions they make. So having a formalized process, kinds of, that brings a value to the, it kind of keeps you maybe off the six o’clock news or out of John Hyman’s worst employers of the year articles or whatever, right? Our buddy. ⁓ So there’s, there’s some other value here, I think too. kind of, right.

Phil Wilson (25:14)
Mm-hmm.

Right? Uh-huh.

Yeah. So like my personal experience I had, so I was working, I was a director of HR at a casino. We actually did make the six o’clock news, but in a good way, I was in a complete, I tell the story of the book, but I was in a complete panic. we’d implemented this process and the PR lady was like, this is, this is like newsworthy stuff. And she was right. As soon as she like floated the idea, the, the, you know, the cameras were there on site and

We were doing a, you know, an employee had asked for a peer review session. and they were, there was a termination case and the peer review panel upheld the termination. And so the cameras were rolling and they were interviewing people about the process. And I’m like, my gosh, this is going to be horrible. and the employee actually was like, I, I agreed with the panel. Like I, and I’m glad I got a chance to state my case. but they,

Said I should be terminated and I, I agreed that they were right. So that it was, I was like, um, but, still like it, it was a, you know, it is a really, if you do it well, um, it does, it gives people kind of confidence in the, in the system. The other thing that I’ll say about it, this is the same employer, but I had, there was a manager of a department that, and she was great. She had great relationships with her team.

but she just was the worst at enforcing the attendance policy. So she, if she liked you, you could come and go as you please basically. And if she didn’t like you, or at some point, if she got fed up enough about your attendance, then she was like, Nope, you’re out of here because you don’t come to work. And, and, and she was super inconsistent. And a lot of those cases were coming to me in HR and I would start digging into it’s like, look, you’re not enforcing the

Attendance policy and going back to the whole victim perpetrator, you know, save your triad. So now I’m the power person telling the supervisor you’re not enforcing the attendance policy properly and I’m going to bring this person back. And she was then mad at me and she did. She went and talked to my boss about it. And okay. So she was one of the first cases that went in front of the peer review panel was one of her employees that got disciplined for attendance and, and, and they were.

asking the peer review panel to undo it. And so they go in and they’re asking all the same questions that I was asking and they were getting all the same information I was getting. And of course they make the exact same decision I had been making because they, you know, she wasn’t consistent. Well, it didn’t matter what I said. Once that peer review panel came back and was like, Nope, this person gets reinstated. She became the best, most consistent.

on the attendance policy of anyone else on the property. and that’s another, feel like really great benefit where, you know, now the peers are observing who’s following the rules and who’s not, and they’re ruling on who’s following the rules and who’s not. And I think it raises the game of the leaders as well.

Michael VanDervort (28:20)
So we’ve been talking a lot about more uphill, upstream systems, know, once something goes awry, let’s get it in the process, whatever it is, formal or informal. What about going back to like that basic frontline supervisor role where that first, probably this gets discussed in the very first place, right? What should leaders watch about their own behavior when managing conflict? You know, you can think about listening skills, body language, you know.

Phil Wilson (28:27)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Michael VanDervort (28:45)
What should frontline leaders be working on here?

Phil Wilson (28:48)
Um, I think first of all is just, you know, like a lot of times people that they almost get like fight or flight. Right. So it’s like, uh, as soon as this person disagrees with a decision that I’ve made, they go like totally into the defensive crouch and are like, you know, they’re, ready to attack. Right. It’s like, you are, you’re questioning my integrity. You’re questioning my judgment. Um, how dare you? Right. That’s that, you know, if you, and if you’re

If you’re kind of a weaker supervisor, that’s sort of where you go. And now you’re in defense mode. That’s just going to create a conflict. So, so to me, the biggest thing for supervisors, especially newer supervisors that maybe don’t have as much confidence is don’t look like, like this is an opportunity, right? However, this gets resolved is an opportunity either you’re going to learn and you’re going to do better.

next situation, or you’re going to help this employee resolve this concern that they have in a, in a healthy way that sort of shows that, that we’re a fair place to work. Right. So, so if you come in looking at that as like, this is an opportunity, then you’re not going to be in, in defense mode. You’re, you’re probably immediately like what you should be thinking about is look, I can see you don’t agree with this and I could be wrong.

I feel like I’ve made the right decision. This is how I’ve resolved this. But look, I might be wrong about this. Here are the ways that if you disagree with something that I’ve done, like I’m not like, I’m not telling you here’s the different paths. I’m encouraging you, please go talk to my boss or whatever the next step in the processes, please make sure that you get the answer that you, you know,

They may agree with me. They might agree with you. don’t know, but like, make sure you feel like you had a chance to really get your voice heard here. So here’s who to go talk to next. And then if that doesn’t work, you can go here. And if that doesn’t work, you can go here. That by itself means you’re, you you are, you are acting as a leader. You’re not taking it personally. You’re, you’re, you’re not creating a situation where now this person isn’t going to come to you.

in the future or that, they’re going to avoid you because they think you got an ax to grind with them or whatever. the, that right there is how you, know, if you’re, especially a newer supervisor, but all supervisors, you know, you want people to feel like they were treated fairly. And if they don’t feel like it, you’re doing what you think is the right thing. But if they don’t feel like that, you want them to feel like that. So where else can they go to make sure that.

someone else has looked at it and they either have decided yet what you did was correct and they explain, explain it. And it’s better if someone else is explaining it than like you defending what you just did. that so, so that’s how you should respond.

Michael VanDervort (31:37)
Yeah. So I want to, we just got a couple of minutes left. So I have two things I want to close on. The first one is, we’re assuming we’re in the right of boom, the next 52 weeks slot here. If you don’t have a, if you don’t have a system like this in place, how important is it to look at and it? Cause this is, this is not, I mean, it’s not super simple to set up like a peer review process and stuff. So there’s a lot of work. How do we, do you jump aboard there? I guess.

Phil Wilson (31:47)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with you. there’s, we’ve talked about other kinds of components of the 52 week program. This, this is definitely a lot more complicated. There’s legal, you know, issues involved. You’re, probably drafting some new policies, depending on the sophistication of your, your management team, this, this, you know, it’s like when, when we implemented peer review, a huge part of that, of my job.

Was to explain to the managers, like here’s how this works and here’s why this is a good idea. And here’s what you should be on the lookout for. Like all of, all of that. it’s, it’s definitely a bigger deal than some of the other stuff that we’ve been talking about that that’s, and, so I think what that means then is this would be something you would want to, first of all, just figure out, you, what are you going to do around dispute resolution in the following year after the election?

Figure that out early in the year, not as one of the last things that you do. All right. If you are going to implement something like peer review, that gives you a lot of runway to do it for you to do. And you really, when you think about dispute resolution, like you don’t want to have just changed the rule, like at the right, the, the month before you might have another union election because you need to have

enough track record of it working for people to feel like, okay, like, yes, I see how this works. So it’s something that you would want to do earlier rather than later. and then you want to give yourself time to implement it in a measured way where you can communicate it well and people understand it. If you’re going to do peer review, part of that process is you need to train the coworkers that are going to hear these cases like

Michael VanDervort (33:24)
This was a good change.

Phil Wilson (33:44)
You have to figure out how you’re going to pick them. You need to train them. So there’s, there’s a lot more kind of moving parts with something like peer review than there would be with a arbitration process. But no matter what you do, you’re going to have to communicate that really well.

Michael VanDervort (33:56)
And to wrap up, thinking about workplace conflict in the next 52 weeks situation or setting, if leaders took one step tomorrow related to that idea, what do you think would make the biggest impact out of the game?

Phil Wilson (34:09)
I mean, the easy thing is that that triad idea, right? Like get, get out of trying to fix things that really you can’t fix and, and look at your role as more of a way to like facilitate solutions between people that have conflict, versus your job is to go in and like fix it. And, and I think that would be my number one recommendation and whether, you know,

Michael VanDervort (34:12)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Wilson (34:34)
That doesn’t require a change in policy. That doesn’t require training people. That’s just really almost just a mindset shift. that’s something anyone who’s watching this can do to.

Michael VanDervort (34:42)
Mm-hmm.

And to wrap up, any final thoughts?

Phil Wilson (34:46)
This is, this is a really important one, an important topic that doesn’t get talked about like a lot of the other stuff does. People talk, you know, a lot about communication and what do we do to increase engagement and things like that. But, but this is often at the core, even though people aren’t just like clamoring, ⁓ I want a grievance procedure, but this is where this feeling of, don’t think this place is fair. Like

This is where it starts and the decisions that that happen around us are the big decisions, right? Is this person going to get fired? Is this person going to get disciplined and do they and do this? Not just as that person feel like they were treated fairly because look if you get fired, you’re not going to be happy about that. But like does everybody else around them feel like I know that they were treated fairly right? If they got fired, there was a reason.

and it was definitely investigated and the company gave them a fair shot to kind of get their side of the story. If people feel that way, they’re not going to feel like they need protection from the big bad company. And that is why even though this one doesn’t get talked about a lot, it’s probably one of the most important things that a company can do if they want to not just have a no union election.

a year from now, but if you want to have a great workplace, people need to feel like they’re treated fairly.

Michael VanDervort (36:09)
Right, and from the union side, when they start messaging on this, they talk about a voice in the workplace, we’ll be your voice in the workplace, we’ll guarantee that you get dignity and respect. lot of these processes and lot of these techniques are exactly how employers can provide that without having to have it entrenched in a union contract. So it’s super important work in my mind.

Phil Wilson (36:28)
Yeah,

right, for sure.

Michael VanDervort (36:29)
Hold that mirror up again. Anyway, all right. Well, thanks for doing this, Phil. This is actually episode 13 of the 14 episodes that we plan to drop. So we’ll be back with our final episode where we kind of try to wrap this all up sometime in the next couple of weeks. So it’s great to chat today. Thanks.

Phil Wilson (36:31)
Exactly.

Yeah, it’s been fun. Yup.

Thanks, Michael.