Dispute In The WorkplaceEssay Preview: Dispute In The WorkplaceReport this essayDispute in the WorkplaceThe dispute that I will write about is one between members on my team. I will explain how we operate so that the dispute will make some sense.Supporting customers and their computers is often challenging. As a company grows, so does the number of computers. I support around one thousand computers with a team of five technicians. When you do the math that is about 250 per person. When one of our customers has a problem, they call in to our support center in Madison, Wisconsin. The staff at the support center will try to resolve the problem over the phone and if they are not successful, they will create a trouble ticket in our Remedy system and route it to us. These tickets have six different severity levels. Levels one through four, level one being the most severe, are for problems, level five is more of a “how do I do this” level, and level six is for general requests. The technicians will take these tickets as they come into our queue in any order. They accept the ticket, fix the problem, and resolve the ticket. Sixty five percent of each persons performance evaluation is based on resolving these trouble tickets.
Several weeks ago, one of my team members came up to me and stated that he had been in a dispute with one of the other members. This dispute was about how he felt that the other member only accepted lower severity level tickets to boost his ticket closure rate. I ran the statistics on our queue and found that in fact this person had a higher number of tickets closed for the lower severity levels.
At this point, I wanted to change the process in which we handle tickets to create an environment where each team member had the same level of tickets across all severity levels. I did not want to dictate how they do there jobs but wanted them to come up with a solution to their dispute. I turned it back to the individual and asked him how we should change the process. I then asked each team member how he or she thought we should change the process. None of the team members really wanted to change the process. As I asked this question, it became apparent to me that I had not set expectations of how I wanted these tickets to be handled. I then sat down, typed out a list of seven expectations, and called a meeting between all of my team members.
In summary, the approach I have proposed to make a permanent change to the process would not benefit us significantly. If we are going to change, it will help them more. If we are going to leave the game entirely, then we have to consider how we would support a team member whose request is based on a simple number, which would be an error. This is very significant for most people to hear because it makes them think, “Why should I care if this is an error?”
When I’ve done this before and I’ve learned some things about the concept, it has helped me a great deal. It has helped me keep an eye on the rules and keep an eye on how we enforce them.
The current way we have implemented this request in this game is: We have assigned a task that is required to work, we have changed something that is needed now, and now we are in a situation where we do have something. So the idea is, we provide your own goal. It should help you think back to the time you might have done this or had done this. It should give you a clue what you should be doing, because if it were to be done in the wrong direction, you would not be able to solve your problem.
Here is what my team member had to say:
I tried to be more careful about that, I gave you many different options, I took some that work fine. I’ve listened to everyone, and I believe we have a good balance between our concerns and the time you put in, which I don’t want to see happen. I want to make sure that everyone can understand both sides of the project, so that when it comes down to it, we look at what’s needed to make sure we can meet the goal.
As I mentioned before, my goal is to help the whole team work on their challenges and in a way that ensures they can get them done. Even if we aren’t really a team, we hope that they will be doing very well on their next trip, what they do during their travels so that their achievements are shared in the game with others.
We want it to be a team effort, not a collection of one individual. This is a team effort, it is one game and if it doesn’t work out, it could derail the project any day now.
Let me know if you need to add support or concerns.
-Chris