How To Resolve External Labor Disputes

Times change for better or worse. Everyone must constantly adapt to new circumstances. Remote work a new dynamic where challenges arise continuously. Are you prepared to resolve external labor disputes?

Moving work to the home is not at all what many thought it would be when it started. It is not always possible to reconcile it with family life. Thus, people often end up working many more hours than their contracts dictate. Then there are issues such as disagreements, conflicts, performance evaluation, communication between groups and problem solving.

Both SMEs and large consolidated companies are experiencing dynamics for which they did not have infrastructure. Due to the current context, many organizations have had to improvise and start working remotely from one day to the next. They did not have the right conditions, so it’s all trial and error.

This type of work needs consensus and agreements from both the business community and public authorities. In the same way, it is also necessary to develop specialized teams to give directors, managers and employees advice on dealing with daily organizational problems. Of course, there are inevitable conflicts.

External labor disputes

The first attempts at teleworking began as early as the 1980s (Belzunegui, 2002). However, and because of the enormous resistance, companies did not establish them, not even on a trial basis. It was not until the 1990s that this modality began to develop in different countries. This is because ICT (information and communication technology) was already available.

However, companies have made little progress since then. For example, it is not a legal body that affects it. In fact, there is a lot of improvisation and arbitrariness. Employers take employees for granted and think they are doing them a favor by letting them work from home. They just assume they can be just as productive as when they are in the office.

There are not enough regulations on the modality of distribution and the companies lack preparation. There are also no tables and costs for the infrastructure used by the employees at home. In addition, there are no measures for coordination between the working groups, team leaders, managers etc. Therefore, labor disputes arise at work. Unfortunately, this is happening more and more often.

You were not online when they needed you!

Has it ever occurred to you that you leave your desk for five or ten minutes, and your boss or colleague needs you for a task at that very moment?  This can give rise to suspicions when it comes to measuring employee productivity. In fact, it only takes one miss to make a person believe that an employee is slacking off at work.

So how do you solve this? By carefully clarifying the conditions under which a person must perform the work, such as a schedule. The fact that an employee spends many hours in front of a computer does not mean that they are productive. Thus, you need to evaluate performance by goals or specific tasks instead of by attendance to simplify it.

External labor disputes: You have not responded!

Your boss or another colleague will send you an email. It takes you ten, twenty minutes or two hours to watch it because you’re making dinner. Problems and misunderstandings arise because many members of the organization forget that teleworking is not the same as working in the office.

External labor disputes: Who asked for what? Who did what?

There is always a time when chaos breaks out as soon as you turn on the computer. Actually, one of the most common conflicts in the workplace is that everything is random, and no one knows where to start, what to do, or how to solve so many coincidences at the last minute. The tension increases when someone blames a third party. Then the third party turns and blames another party, and the other party blames the tenth party. In the end, no one moves forward and that working day lasts twelve hours.

So how do you solve this? You must have an external team coordinator. This person will be responsible for coordinating tasks, as well as getting the organization to flow and set the daily agenda.

• To do this, it is important to arrange video calls and other communication channels between groups.
• These virtual meetings must be conducted at a specific time and without making anyone wait. It facilitates communication and reduces misunderstandings and external labor disputes.

To conclude, these factors add to stress, along with the feeling of isolation, the perception that you work more than you used to in the office, etc. There is still a lot of progress to be made, and a lot to reorganize and reconfigure. External labor disputes are a challenge that society must address as soon as possible for the benefit of all.