Navigating Work From Home Conflicts: A Workplace Case Study in Hybrid Attendance Disputes

In this episode, Simon Goode analyzes a workplace conflict case study involving a dispute over strict in-office attendance requirements versus requests for flexible remote work. He breaks down the dynamics between team lead Marcus and high-performing analyst Priya, exploring structural, value, and interest-based sources of conflict and suggesting approaches for resolution. The episode also highlights practical conflict modes such as avoidance, accommodation, compromise, competition, and collaboration to manage similar workplace issues.

TIMESTAMPS: 
00:00 Addressing workplace conflict scenarios

03:59 Discussing attendance and value conflicts

10:24 Discussing flexibility in negotiations

12:28 Debate on company expectations

16:08 Outcomes of Workplace Conflict

18:58 Speculating on Priya's situation

22:37 Checking in on relationship dynamics

26:19 Resolving workplace role conflicts

27:53 Work from home conflicts advice

Transcript

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Hello, welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Goode. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful to you, please consider pressing subscribe. In the episode today, I'm going to be looking at another workplace conflict case study, this time involving a bit of a dispute that's erupted about around work from home issues, similar to previous case studies that I've analyzed. I'll talk about some of my initial thoughts that jump out at me, as well as some of the ways that I would begin to think about this if I was dealing with the situation as a workplace mediator. I find it very helpful to develop multiple understandings of the situation, because that helps us to develop additional options. So especially if you've been hitting your head against a brick wall and maybe you're dealing with a similar kind of conflict around work from home options, there could be some useful little tidbits for you along the way. But even if you're dealing with different workplace conflict situations, different issues, and of course you'll be in a different context than the one that I'm focusing on today, there might be still some of the different ideas or approaches that you can then transpose and use in your different context. So let's have a look at the situation that we're dealing with today, and then I'll talk about some of my initial thoughts. I'm using, by the way, if you're just listening, I've got my iPad set up as a little bit of a virtual like whiteboard or whatever you would say. So I find this very helpful when I'm doing professional development workshops and this stuff online, and I want to do a bit of brainstorming or collate feedback after a small group discussion or something similar. But let me know how do you find it having the text on the screen as we go through the different case study today. And if you're just listening and you're finding that it's difficult to follow along, let me know that as well, and I can consider other options moving forward. Okay, so here's the situation. At a financial services company shifting to hybrid work, team lead Marcus enforced strict office attendance requirements to maintain team culture and spontaneous collaboration. So we've got Marcus who's enforcing the strict office attendance. I'm just going to put a note there about the fact that he's a team lead. I think that's often something that's quite relevant and useful to consider as well. So he's enforcing this strict office intendance requirements. I'm going to underline that word strict. I think what is strict and what isn't ultimately is probably more in the eye of the perceiver than either Marcus or his colleague that's in the case study today realize. And then there's the justification that he gives in order to maintain team culture in sort of quotation marks there as well. And he wants spontaneous collaboration. So I've jotted down those two. So to me, there's an element here that's the structural conflict already. It's that he's the team lead. Either he or the other person that he's dealing with could consider options for changing the structure, which might prevent some of these issues from coming up moving forward. Having more clarity around the roster, uh, figuring out a formal process that people can use when they want to swap shifts or something similar. There would be a number of different ways that we could change the structure here. Or the staff members involved could consider going outside of the existing structure. There might be other managers within the organization that they could involve. And so that would circumvent some of the natural power that the team leader has, especially if you're not particularly happy with the way that they're treating you or the different decisions that they're making and that kind of thing. So we've got the structural elements that are there. This word strict to me is the beginnings of what I would call value conflict. What do I think should happen? What do I think is fair? What is strict attendance? What is reasonable attendance? What's strict in terms of allowing flexibility and changes? What's not strict? What is appropriate individual autonomy that staff should expect from their team leader? Like these are all ultimately subjective perspectives that we have. We develop them based on all of the different experiences that we've had until now. So to me, I obviously see that word strict as a potential for exploring these two different perspectives. When it comes to value conflict, we often don't get very far when we say you're wrong. That's not reasonable. It's like, well, who's to say what is and what isn't? A lot of the time we can get further by talking about the behaviors. Like what is the amount of attendance that you would consider reasonable? And for you, what are the elements that you're looking at that lead you to that decision or lead you to that perspective? I'm kind of saying, what did you learn or what's happened that's made you confident that this is what's going to work? And then I might normalize my own perspective. I see things differently. I mean, that's to be expected, I guess. We've got different sets of experience. Even in the role that you're in, you've probably got different sets of priorities than I'm looking at in my day-to-day. Let's organize the time to talk this through. Let's organize the time to figure this out, to make sure that we're on the same page moving forward. So that's not about you're wrong and I'm right. It's often more about clarifying these two different perspectives, normalizing what's needed, and then deciding how assertively you want to negotiate after that. And then we've got these other elements of team culture and spontaneous collaboration. This is why the team leader wants his team to be in the office. So these are what I would think of as interest conflict. That's what I want versus what you want. The challenge with this kind of conflict is that there's often no magic wand that we can wave, is there? It would be nice if we can just push the button and you would have your needs met and I would have my needs met. Unfortunately, it's not often the case. So we need to consider how we're going to approach that issue of the interests. There might be some kind of a win-win that's possible if we take the collaborating kind of approach, but maybe that's not ideal. Maybe this is a situation where it would be better to stick to our guns. Or maybe we could compromise and negotiate. Look, I understand that you'd like us to be all in there three days a week. If it's two days, it's something that I can tolerate, but three days for me, it's just too challenging working around all of the commitments I have outside of the office. Family, my extended family, different community activities that I'm involved in, that kind of thing. So I'm not sort of seeing how we can still have a positive culture even if I'm only in the office two days a week. That's where we collaborate. Let's come for a win-win. Here it's more like, okay, I'm not going to do 100% of what you're asking me to, but could we meet in the middle here? Maybe there's some kind of a split the difference option that might work. So if you don't have much time or the issue isn't worth much to you, there's not much at stake, maybe just splitting the difference and get on with it makes a lot of strategic sense. In other situations it would be worth it to sit down and talk through options and see if you can come up with something that's more of a win-win, I guess. So let's continue on with that scenario. Meanwhile, high performing analyst Priya, a working parent with two young children, requested more flexible remote days, citing her consistently strong results and efficiency from home. So what jumps out at us there? She's a working parent with two young children. There's nothing there about her other family members, but does she have a partner? Does she not? Um there other extended family members that are around? Where does she live in relation to the office? Uh what are the arrangements for childcare at the moment or preschool or school? Like there could be a number of different variables there which would influence just how willing Priya is to come into the office, right? But broadly speaking, we would expect that she's always going to be caught in the dilemma that she would prefer to spend time with the family, or she thinks that something would be ideal for her kids, and then she's not able to do it. Like she might have to miss an event at their school because you don't have the option to give her flexible working hours because of the way that your appointments are structured, or something else. So again, this jumps out at me is interest conflict. What's in it for Priya? What's in it for her in terms of her role as a mother, her as an individual, and then what's in it for the team leader, Marc, for him as an individual, for the team more broadly speaking, and even considering the organization. So another example of that interest conflict, I think, jumping out at me there, but what do you think? She's requested more flexible work days. That to me is what I would consider data. Let's clarify the expectations. What do you need from me and what are you prepared to do in response? So how much flexibility is she asking for? There's often a lot of room there to clarify. Well, okay, you've talked about this request as being over the top. What would be the kind of request that you would be able to agree to? And can you walk me through a bit of the logic there? What's what are the factors that you're primarily considering in your thinking? And I want to learn a bit more about it, but often as people explain their perspective, they realize that actually this isn't as much fact-based as I thought it was. Maybe there's the value or the interest or one of those other factors that's contributing here. So she says, I have consistently strong results and I'm very efficient working from home. We could either approach this as data, like Priya could send Marcus a list of recent projects that she's worked on, giving some evidence for the fact that she is actually efficient. We could deal with that as just we're not understanding the same facts here. Or we could deal with it as interest. If you can give me more flexibility, this is what I can do for you. So instead of just saying, Don't you realize how valuable I am, there might be options that Priya could consider, which are more along the lines of, what do you need from me? Like, what would you need to see from me in order for you to agree to this? Or what are the concerns that you've got? If you did agree to it, what do you worry might happen? Maybe there's some other options that we could consider to mitigate those eventualities from actually playing out. So we could deal with it as data, we could deal with it as interest, we could deal with it as value, like what is a strong result when she says that she's had strong results, what benefit has that brought to the organization? Maybe she thinks that it's fair enough that high performers are rewarded with flexibility, but where did that perspective come from? It will be based on all of the other places that she's worked, what she would do if she was in that role, what her parents did when they were bringing her up. There's so many complex, nuanced factors that go into all of these expectations that we develop. I'm still surprised that I talk to people and they refer to something like common sense. And I often say to them, where did you get this idea from? Have you ever met people? There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of common sense going around. I'm not exactly sure what you're basing that on, you know, bedumching, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've got these new sound effects that I can put on, and I think yeah, the cricket noise is probably something that's appropriate when I'm uh talking to myself and talking to the camera and doing it in more of a loopy kind of way. Anyway, let's continue on with the case study. Marcus interpreted her requests as resistance to company expectations, while Priya saw his rigid policy as outdated and unfair to parents. That's an interesting word there that Priya's using, isn't it? Unfair. People are naturally inclined to be seen as fair, so another option that Priya could consider would be asking Marcus to demonstrate how this is fair. I beg your pardon, but how does this seem fair given the fact that I'll now have to miss all of the different extracurricular activities that my kids are involved in? How confident are you that this will actually achieve the kind of positive team culture that you're looking for? Because to be perfectly transparent, I'm not feeling overly positive about the way that the organization reciprocally treats its stuff. So I'm kind of saying, can you just let me know how this is fair? How does this make sense? Given the fact that we're coming in more frequently than we used to previously, and now you're actually talking about increasing it rather than adjusting. So and then Marcus's perspective about Priya as well. Marcus sees her requests as resistance to company expectations. Well, what does that mean? Resistance to company expectations. If I was a mediator and I was coming in a meeting with him, I would say, can you talk to me a bit more about that? All of the bits of it. What do you mean about resistance? When you say company expectations, I'm of the belief that not all teams within the organization have similar work from home guidelines there. So there might be elements that do come from the company, but there is some variability between teams. So, Marcus, I wonder if maybe this is also something that you're also quite committed to. So, you know, Marcus saying that you're resisting the company expectations, I think that also opens up a few different options for Priya to deal with this. Like, what do you mean by resistance? You're expecting us all to go along with every single request that gets made? I'm sorry, but I consider the employee to employer relationship as one that needs to be reciprocally beneficial. And for me, these are the challenges that would come up if I were going to agree to what you're asking me for right now. Are there any other proposals that you would consider? Is there a different kind of flexibility or adjusting the arrangements that you think might work if it wasn't this original proposal that you've sent me? So I'm kind of saying, like, what do you mean by resistance? Don't you think this is always going to be give and take? And then talk to me about flexibility here. Like, I'm not going to just negotiate with myself. You say four days a week, I might say two or something like that. You stick with four, I'm going to go to three, you stick with four. I mean, I wonder how long you would expect staff to sit around if that's the way that they're being treated. I've talked to a few of different bosses that I've had, which has been quite helpful in salary negotiations, just talking to them about give and take and the fact that I've been willing to go a bit above and beyond in these kind of areas. And it's quite disappointing now to have these kind of requests rejected just under the premise of we want to have a blanket rule within the organization. I don't know, I'm probably a little bit more stubborn and I don't like agreeing to these kind of things maybe more than other people, but I think I probably would argue with Marcus a bit more here, and that resistance and what's considered resistance, as well as what's a company expectation. What right does the company have just to enforce arbitrary decisions that they make? And what level of input or feedback should staff be expected to be able to offer as well? And then Priya's view about this is a rigid policy, this is unfair to parents. I think there's a number of different areas to explore there as well. So this whole thing, I think we could unpack that. Whether I was sitting in Marcus's position or Priya's, or maybe I was a senior manager, and this has just come across my desk because they've both suddenly made formal complaints against one another or something similar like that. So then the end of the case study here, the disagreement escalated during Priya's performance review, leading to raised voices and creating factions within the team. Trust eroded, engagement dropped, and several deadlines slipped as a result. Okay, so this whole last section here is talking about the outcomes. I think sometimes can people confuse the drivers for conflict with the outcomes of conflict. Like they might talk about the stress that's involved or something, and they think that it's a symptom, but actually that's probably contributing to the way that they react. They might be a bit more hyper-vigilant given the fact that they feel like they've been bullied previously, or they cover their backs and put everything in writing, CCing in a CC a senior manager, because in the past they've been burnt by stuff saying that they weren't given clear instructions or something similar. So are these symptoms like the outcomes of the effective conflict, or do they contribute? It's really this sort of reciprocal pattern, isn't it? There's one against the other, and probably that's going on for me, and that's going on for you. And if we could zoom out a little bit more, we've got person A here, person B here. We've constantly got this interchange going on between them, as well as a constant interchange with the outside world, like all of the things that's going on in my personal life outside of the office, all of the other factors that change for me as I get married or get divorced or have kids or lose a loved one, or there's a health diagnosis that questions what we expected for the next few years. There's so many of these different variables that are constantly changing behind the scenes for everybody involved in these workplace conflict situations, but we still oversimplify it. We still think they did this for this reason. So I think here with those outcomes, I'm also thinking about it's sort of like outcomes slash causes, isn't it? Because the disagreement escalated during Priya's performance review. So that would be an area where we could clarify the data. What was actually said, who actually did what there? But I don't know, I don't often find that going back and sort of clarifying they've got two different perspectives on what happened or whatever, there's not a whole lot of benefit that's gained there. I might say to them though, what was that like for you during that time? How have things been since? What do you think needs to be different moving forward? So we've got a little bit of detail there. We've got raised voices, creating factions within the team. I wonder how that played out. Was that one or the other that did something after the performance meeting? Were there people observing it and they stepped in sort of to advocate for Priya or a senior manager that stepped in to hold the line for the organization or something? Like how did these factions develop? That's something that I'm quite curious about. Because there's different reasons that that might be happening. It's possible that Prier is enlisting allies and she does have a bit of a campaign to change the company policy, but it's possible that she hasn't slept for three nights and she's really at the end of her tether and feeling quite overwhelmed about it all. And so other team members are thinking I'd I want to support Prier. I can see the effect that it's having on her or whatever. So there's different reasons that this might be developing. I don't want to jump in and make assumptions about why or blame either of the people that's involved. These factions to me are more like an organic next step when the conflict isn't able to be resolved between the two people that are dealing with it. So the final bit there, trust eroded, engagement dropped. I wonder if there's some kind of metrics or like KPIs or something like that that's measured within the organization. That would be potentially quite helpful data to have. And several deadlines slipped as a result. That again is a time when I'm considering the interest of everybody involved. What happens when those deadlines are missed? Is there some kind of a bonus structure or something else? Uh, does the organization have a performance management process that would eventually be brought in if those deadlines keep slipping? Like there's a number of different areas there to unpack as well. And I think for either Marcus or Priya, they could choose to deal with the conflict at a number of those different levels. Like I could just deal with it in terms of the data. You're wrong about that. You think these are the facts, but that's not the case. You're missing this, you're misinterpreting this, you're not aware of this, whatever. Or I could deal with it in terms of values. It sounds like we've got pretty different perspectives about what we want from one another. Again, that makes sense given our different experiences until now. Could we organize a time to talk it through in terms of what you need from me specifically and what you would be prepared to do as a result? So I'm not necessarily jumping into the what do you want? I'm not prepared to do that, like the horse bargaining kind of options. It's more like let's just sit down and figure out what's going on here. How did we get to this position and what's going to help moving forward? I know the last thing that we want is negative conflict to sweep us up. In fact, it's already caused, I think, a number of different negative impacts on the team. And I'd like things to get back to the way that they were. So at least for my part, I'm prepared to consider options and I'd really like to hear your perspective about what might help moving forward as well. So we could deal with it in terms of the value. What are both of our perspectives? perspectives here, these worldviews, these different norms. We could deal with it in terms of the data. What are the facts? You've got that wrong. We could deal with it in terms of interest. I'm prepared to do this for you if you can help me out here. Or I can tolerate it for the next six months but not beyond that. Or I will come in but I'm going to leave a little bit early on those days. Maybe there's some kind of a compromise that could be possible there. Or I suppose we could deal with it as the relationship. I might sometimes say to my manager like Mark Marcus, you don't seem like yourself. Like I know this is a difficult issue to navigate. I really appreciate the time that you've already spent on it and agreeing to speak to me. This way that we've been communicating isn't like it normally is between us. I wonder if maybe there's something else going on, if this is putting undue pressure on you. I mean I know that you've got a lot on your plate at the moment so maybe it's a combination of the number a number of different factors that you're considering. Can you talk me through your perspective? What's going on? Have I got that right or maybe I'm misreading things. And it's this very non-judgmental curious approach to saying are you okay? Is everything alright? You don't need to talk to me about it if that's not something that you'd like to do. But the last thing I want is for you to suffer some kind of a negative impact. We can disagree and it sounds like in this situation we've got different perspectives here. But we don't have to be enemies that's not my intention I'd like things to move towards more of a collaborative positive relationship like we've had previously what's your take on all of this so what what do you think? If you were in Priya's position what would you do? I think a lot of people just deal with it as data. That's not what the policy says that's not what the policy says that's not what the Australian standards are. There's been a recent lawsuit where people were punished for doing this kind of thing or whatever. You can't do that. They just talk about the facts whereas actually I think when we deal with it in maybe the other ways first or we combine a few of those different options that I've explored there, we might be able to get to a better outcome. Now as a final thing I wanted to discuss, we've sort of been focusing on the different lanes so to speak that the person should could deal with I just want to mention quickly this idea of conflict modes developed by Thomas and Kilman. So we do have the option when it comes to these kind of issues of just avoiding the conflict that obviously doesn't lead to a lot of long-term changes, long-term solutions, but this might be the kind of situation where Priya can just deal with it at least for the next few weeks. She knows that right now they're short staffed and under the pump and so she's not likely to get a whole lot of positive response from Marcus if she brings it up right now. So we've got that first option of avoiding and then the other option that we have here is accommodate. This is where I just basically agree to what they've asked me to do. So Priya has that option as well. In the middle we've got the compromise I will come into the office but I'm going to need to leave at 2.30 to pick my kids up from school that would be an example of that. We could also consider competing or directing that's the more assertive option that we've got that's where we basically just say no. And then finally we've got the option of collaborating I just wanted to explain those in a little bit more detail because I've been referring to those terms throughout the video so far. So both Priya and Marcus have these five different options that they could consider. They could avoid it not respond decide not to bring it up they could accommodate just basically say yes at least for now at least in the short term they could compromise that's to split the difference nobody gets 100% of what they want. Marcus would prefer that Priya comes in and stays in the office until 5 but they might reach some kind of an agreement. Then we've got the competing directing kind of approach of just saying no this is the way that it is I'm sorry but this is the decision that's been made there's no flexibility here. It's not negotiable. Or Priya could say something like that's not something that I can agree to. Then we've got the option of collaborate. That's where we sit down and go through options and see if we can come up with a win-win that works for everybody. Like maybe Priya does work from home but she changes her tasks. So she picks up more of the finance kind of roles within the business which is stuff that you can do from home and there's somebody else who picks up more of the front desk customer service kind of options. Like we move different elements around we expand the different factors that we're considering instead of approaching the conflict as a zero sum kind of game where it's me versus you it's more like what's going to work for all of us that are involved here. I don't know does that sound helpful for you have you dealt with an equivalent of Marcus who was a bit of a tyrant maybe making these autocratic decisions without consulting the people that were involved I know for me a lot of the most challenging bosses that I've dealt with have been the micromanaging ones especially when that's combined with a slightly low IQ people that want to micromanage you but they're kind of dull, incompetent a little bit or just slow I just find it so incredibly frustrating. If you're going to micromanage me then at least be better at me than the job. That's my motto but I suppose that's an example of value where I've got a slightly different perspective to all of you listening. But thank you very much for visiting with the Conflict Skills podcast today. I do really appreciate you sticking until now if you've got a case study a situation that you would like me to discuss you can email it through it's podcast at simongood.com but otherwise all the best especially if you are dealing with these work from home conflicts yourself they can be incredibly challenging to navigate. So good luck and all the best with that and I'll hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills podcast. Bye for now